[Dixielandjazz] King of Jazz

[Robert Ringwald]

King of Jazz  
    
‘King of Jazz’ Now Playing -- Once Again -- in Living Technicolor

“King of Jazz: Paul Whiteman’s Technicolor Revue.” By James Layton and David Pierce. Media History Press. 302 pp. $50.

by David Robinson

Washington Post, November 23, 2016


In 2013, when the Library of Congress inducted “King of Jazz” (1930) into the National Film Registry, it turned out that there was no complete or technically authentic copy for the Library to acquire. Such national recognition, however, encouraged ­NBCUniversal to finance a digital restoration from the scattered elements that had come to light in the years since the 1950s, when all that seemed to survive was a four-minute trailer that did not even include a sighting of an engaging screen debutant, Bing Crosby -- the only face that today’s audiences are likely to recognize among the movie’s still scintillating but long-departed stars.


Landing us firmly back in musical Broadway of 86 years ago, “King of Jazz” now looks so bright and fresh and easy-flowing that it is hard to believe it had to be painstakingly reassembled from fragments in 14 collections, public and private, in the United States, Britain, Russia, Denmark, Sweden, Germany and the Czech Republic. The restoration premiered in May at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and will have its Washington premiere on Dec. 3.


The restoration also inspired this appropriately glamorous and exhaustive book by James Layton and David Pierce. With an infectious mix of scrupulous scholarship and undisguised delight in the film, they chronicle its participants and turbulent history.


That history is inextricably linked to the story of Universal Pictures, established in 1912 by a German immigrant, Carl Laemmle, who left his job in a Wisconsin clothes factory to go into the nickelodeon business in Chicago. He came to prominence with his successful opposition to the Motion Picture Patents Company and its oppressive control over filmmaking.


As Ogden Nash put it, “Uncle Carl Laemmle / Has a very large faemmle” -- many members of which found employment at Universal. In 1928, Laemmle put his 20-year-old son, Julius, in full charge of production. Inevitably, this youngster, baby-faced and bandbox elegant, was mistrusted and permanently disparaged with the nickname “Junior.”


Layton and Pierce’s book illuminates that injustice. Junior was determined to raise the quality of Universal’s “A” pictures, and his personal projects included “All Quiet on the Western Front” (1930), the great horror cycle that began with “Frankenstein” (1931) and “Dracula” (1931), the triumphant “Show Boat” (1936) and “King of Jazz.” If he believed in a film, he supported his artists and bravely faced escalating budgets -- a virtue that, in the end, was his undoing. By 1936, Universal was virtually ruined, and Junior’s career ended at 28, though he was to survive another 43 wretchedly unfulfilled and chronically hypochondriac years.


But “King of Jazz” was his. The screen revue had seen a vogue in 1929 as sound became more confident and flexible. Universal came late to the genre, but “King of Jazz” was the first to be shot wholly in the still-evolving “two-strip” Technicolor process. It also had the biggest musical star of the 1920s: Paul Whiteman, with his 35-piece dance band -- all named and credited, many introduced personally on screen. Whiteman, an incorrigible clown looking very much like Oliver Hardy, hardly gives the impression of a sophisticated musician and an inspired conductor, but he unquestionably was. His development of symphonic jazz and his association with George Gershwin, from whom he commissioned “Rhapsody in Blue,” left a permanent mark on American music. If his writings and the film “King of Jazz” itself largely ignore the African American contribution, it was more the fault of social pressures than of any racism on Whiteman’s part. He worked enthusiastically offstage with friends such as Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Fletcher Henderson and Eubie Blake.


The first directors and writers assigned to the project tried vainly to come up with a romantic plot that might in some way work with their plump protagonist. Finally, Junior settled on the screen revue format and handed direction to John Murray Anderson, the supreme director of Broadway revues and the live stage shows that frequently complemented major first-run films. Anderson brought with him his regular collaborator, the Dutch-born architect and designer Herman Rosse, whose art direction won an Oscar for “King of Jazz.” The 300 illustrations in Layton and Pierce’s book, most published for the first time, include many of Rosse’s original designs alongside stills that show how faithfully they were realized in the film.


The shooting was not without its difficulties and delays. One minor inconvenience was that Bing Crosby, one of Whiteman’s “Rhythm Boys” trio, had to be escorted daily from jail, where he was serving a four-week sentence for drunken driving.


“King of Jazz” was finally finished, however, and, after a good deal of trimming and reordering, had its Los Angeles premiere on April 19, 1930, and its New York premiere at the Roxy on May 2, 18 months after Whiteman had signed with Universal.


It was a disaster at the box office. Audiences diminished rapidly, even though the Roxy offered a stage presentation with the Whiteman band and Gershwin playing “Rhapsody in Blue.” Meanwhile, Junior’s other major production of the year, “All Quiet on the Western Front,” was to fill theaters and conquer at the Academy Awards. 


Times had changed. October 1929 had seen the start of the Great Depression. Audiences had had their fill of revue films, and the swing era was already on the way. The 1930s were to see Whiteman’s popularity and income diminish markedly. In 1934, Universal issued a reedited version of “King of Jazz,” cut by 40 minutes but with no better success than the first release.


So how does the film look today, and does it justify a book of this size, range and study? If we had seen “King of Jazz” as recently as 30 years ago, we might have admired its technical achievement but otherwise laughed off much of it as kitsch, with its period singing styles, its unrestrained sentiment, its gigantic piano that holds an orchestra and the long-legged high-kickers (the Russell Markert Girls, later to become the Rockettes). Seeing it now, however, at this remote distance in time, we can recognize it as art in its own right, enhanced by the exquisite soft hues of early Technicolor (which couldn’t do a good blue, so the “Rhapsody” is here in green). 


As Michael Feinstein puts it in his preface, “With an audacious co-mingling of film, art, Broadway, vaudeville, mixed music, and social attitudes, it’s striking in the way it evokes both the sophistication and innocence of the era.”

__________


David Robinson is former film critic of the London Times, director emeritus of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival and author of a number of books on film history.
On Dec. 3 at 1:20 p.m., David Pierce and James Layton will host a showing of “King of Jazz” at the American Film Institute’s Silver Theatre, 8633 Colesville Rd., Silver Spring, Md. For information call 301-495-6700. -30-



Bob Ringwald piano, Solo, Duo, Trio, Quartet, Quintet 
Fulton Street Jazz Band (Dixieland/Swing)
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