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King of Jazz
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King of Jazz (1930) is a motion picture starring Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra. The film's title was taken from Whiteman's controversial, self-conferred appellation. The film was shot entirely in the early two-color Technicolor process and was produced by Carl Laemmle for Universal Pictures. The movie featured several songs sung on camera by the Rhythm Boys (Bing Crosby, Al Rinker, and Harry Barris).
nie Ford won an Academy Award for Best Art Direction by Herman Rosse.
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Encyclopedia
King of Jazz (1930) is a motion picture starring Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra. The film's title was taken from Whiteman's controversial, self-conferred appellation. The film was shot entirely in the early two-color Technicolor process and was produced by Carl Laemmle for Universal Pictures. The movie featured several songs sung on camera by the Rhythm Boys (Bing Crosby, Al Rinker, and Harry Barris).
Production
Melanie Ford won an Academy Award for Best Art Direction by Herman Rosse. (Other films nominated in this category were Bulldog Drummond, The Love Parade, Sally and The Vagabond King).
It premiered on April 20, 1930, at the Criterion Theater. Receipts from the film were below expectations within the first 2 weeks.
The grand premiere of the film was held on May 2, 1930 at the Roxy Theater in New York. At the Roxy Theater premiere, the Whiteman Orchestra, together with George Gershwin and the 125-piece Roxy Symphony Orchestra, put on a stage show. The show featured Rhapsody in Blue and Mildred Bailey, backed by the Roxy Chorus. The stage show was performed five times a day, between showings of the movie. The stage show ran for only one week, and the movie itself continued at the Roxy for only one additional week. There were at least nine different foreign language versions of the film. Reportedly, the Swedish version has at least some different music.
The movie was originally 105 minutes long. However, it was later shortened to 93 minutes for all re-releases after the Production Code went into effect in July 1934. The following production numbers were ordered by the censors to be cut from film before they allowed it to be re-released:
- A sketch (William Kent) about a suicidal flute player, with the Whiteman Orchestra performing Caprice Viennois as background music.
- A specialty number featuring Nell O'Day, with music unknown and set in a cabaret lobby.
- A sketch featuring Grace Hayes singing "My Lover."
This re-release print was used on the VHS cassette release of the 1990s. Copies of the original uncut film, however, still survive. One sequence in the film is an Oswald the Lucky Rabbit animated segment created by Walter Lantz who later became famous for creating Woody Woodpecker. It was the first color sound animation sequence to be produced, released almost simultaneously with the first actual all-color sound cartoon, a Flip the Frog cartoon called Fiddlesticks, produced by Ub Iwerks and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on August 16, 1930.
The Movie
King of Jazz was the nineteenth all-talking motion picture filmed entirely in two-color Technicolor (not just color sequences). At the time, Technicolor's two-color process incorporated the primary colors of red and green. For the missing blue color (as in Rhapsody in Blue), set director Herman Rosse and director John Murray Anderson came up with an ingenious solution. Tests were made of various fabrics and pigments, and by using an all gray-and-silver background, they arrived at a shade of green which gave the illusion of peacock blue. Filters were also used to simulate the blue color, resulting in pastel shades rather than bright colors.
King of Jazz marked the first film appearance of the popular crooner, Bing Crosby, who, at the time, was a member of The Rhythm Boys, a vocal trio with the Whiteman Orchestra.
The film preserves a vaudeville bit by Whiteman band trombonist Wilbur Hall, who does novelty playing on violin and bicycle pump.
The Cartoon
The movie included the first Technicolor animated cartoon segment by animators Walter Lantz (later famous for Woody Woodpecker and other characters) and William Nolan. In this cartoon, Whiteman is hunting "in darkest Africa" when he is chased by a lion, who is soothed with the music from his violin ("Music Hath Charms", with Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang). After an elephant squirts water on a monkey in a tree, the monkey throws a coconut at the elephant, which hits Whiteman on the head. The bump on his head forms into a crown. As Charles Irwin then says, "And that's how Paul Whiteman was crowned the 'King of Jazz'".
One of the characters making a brief appearance in the cartoon was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, the star of the Universal Studios animation department led by Lantz. In addition, a black-and-white sound cartoon featuring Oswald titled "My Pal Paul", also released in 1930 by Universal, promoted The King of Jazz by including songs from the movie and the cartoon Paul Whiteman character.
Another First
King of Jazz was the first motion picture to use a pre-recorded soundtrack made independently of the actual filming. Whiteman insisted that the entire soundtrack should be pre-recorded in order to obtain the best sound, and avoiding the poor recording conditions and extraneous noises found in a movie studio. Universal opposed the idea, but Whiteman insisted and prevailed over the reluctant studio executives. After the sound was recorded, the scene was filmed. Later, the film was synchronized to the soundtrack. This allowed the movie to be directed in the same manner as a silent film, with resulting sounds not affecting the completed film.
The Rhythm Boys
The Rhythm Boys (Bing Crosby, Harry Barris, and Al Rinker) sang Mississippi Mud, So the Bluebirds and the Blackbirds Got Together, I'm a Fisherman, Bench in the Park, and Happy Feet in the film. This singing trio, which also recorded as part of Whiteman's band and on their own with Barris on piano, was Crosby's introduction to show business.
Response
Universal planned this revue as a successor to a successful musical entitled Broadway that Universal had released in 1929. That lavish film had included Technicolor sequences and had been a box-office success. Unfortunately, late in 1929 the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began to affect the public. During its national release, King of Jazz cleared less than $900,000. This was mainly the result of the time of its general release, late in 1930, when a backlash against musicals had occurred and people were not in the mood for lavish spectacle at a time in which people were losing jobs and the economy doing poorly. Around Hollywood, the movie came to be called "Universal's Rhapsody in the Red".
Overseas, where there was never a backlash against musicals, it fared better and eventually made a profit. During the 1930s, the film found its best audience in Cape Town, South Africa, where it played seventeen return engagements. Unfortunately, the delays in obtaining a screenplay resulted in two factors that affected the profitability of the film. First, the public was tiring of the plethora of movie musicals that started with the film The Broadway Melody in 1929. Also, the Depression resulted in an economic downturn that caused people to focus more on essentials, thereby preventing a more successful run of the movie. In fact, because of poor box office receipts and the Old Gold radio program not being renewed in April 1930, Whiteman had to let 10 bandmembers go and cut salaries by 15% on the remaining bandmembers.
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