<div dir="ltr">Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society is hosting a benefit showing and gala in Sacramento. Tentative date is 2/22/17.<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Nov 24, 2016 at 10:00 AM, Robert Ringwald <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:rsr@ringwald.com" target="_blank">rsr@ringwald.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<div>King of Jazz </div>
<div> </div>
<div>‘King of Jazz’ Now Playing -- Once Again -- in Living Technicolor</div>
<div> </div>
<div>“King of Jazz: Paul Whiteman’s Technicolor Revue.” By James Layton and
David Pierce. Media History Press. 302 pp. $50.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>by David Robinson</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Washington Post, November 23, 2016</div>
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<div>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.</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>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.</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>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.</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>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.</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>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.”</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>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.</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>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.</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>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.</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>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.</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>“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.</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>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. </div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>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.</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>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). </div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>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.”</div>
<div> </div>
<div>__________</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>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.</div>
<div>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 <a href="tel:301-495-6700" value="+13014956700" target="_blank">301-495-6700</a>. -30-</div>
<div> </div>
<div style="FONT-SIZE:12pt;FONT-FAMILY:'Calibri';COLOR:#000000"><br><br>Bob
Ringwald piano, Solo, Duo, Trio, Quartet, Quintet <br>Fulton Street Jazz Band
(Dixieland/Swing)<br><a href="tel:916%2F%20806-9551" value="+19168069551" target="_blank">916/ 806-9551</a><br>Amateur (ham) Radio Station
K6YBV<br><br>trump's first action after being sworn in will be an executive
order banning the sale of pre-shredded cheese, to make American grate
again.<br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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