Another surprise is that this 1930 production is in color, using the two-strip process pioneered by Technicolor in the 1920s. It's an imperfect technology, making yellows look a little strange and rendering blues so impossible that the Rhapsody in Blue scene has to make do with greens. But it gives a deliciously off-kilter sheen to the fabulous sets and costumes, all concocted by Herman Rosse for director John Murray Anderson, a Broadway veteran with no other movies to his credit. One of the first sequences is the first-ever Technicolor cartoon, animated by Walter Lantz, later famous as the creator of Woody Woodpecker and known in 1930 as the impresario of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.
A third surprise is that King of Jazz doesn't tell a story, although this wouldn't have been surprising in 1930, when a series of revue-style movies had recently arrived - so many that the fad had faded by the time this picture premiered, dimming its box-office prospects. Lacking a narrative, King of Jazz presents a series of separate acts - songs, dances, comedy sketches, novelty bits like a man playing "The Stars and Stripes Forever" on a bicycle pump - framed by a gigantic Paul Whiteman Scrap Book that intermittently fills the background. Universal Pictures originally wanted Whiteman to star in a story about a bandleader resembling himself, but Whiteman refused to do anything that resembled acting, so producer Carl Laemmle Jr. fell back on the revue format. This was an ideal vehicle for Anderson, who took the directorial reins after Paul Fejos dropped out of the project, although Fejos's major contribution to film technology - a 28-ton camera crane built at Universal in 1929 - enabled much of the film's impressive look. Three cinematographers shot the picture: Hal Mohr did the basic tasks while Ray Rennahan concentrated on color and Jerry Ash focused on camera tricks, as when musicians emerge from a toolbox and take their place on a miniature stage that then dissolves into a full-size bandstand.
Optical printing was difficult in early Technicolor, so dissolves and other fancy visuals were created in the camera. The two-strip process required enormous amounts of light, moreover, and the resulting heat was extremely hard on the performers. When the band played Rhapsody in Blue while enclosed in a massive piano, the temperature soared so high it's a wonder the musicians didn't wilt. Despite such challenges, King of Jazz is packed with razzle-dazzle, ranging from abstract swirls to extravagant props such as a colossal wedding veil held by an army of bridesmaids.
Bing Crosby made his screen debut in King of Jazz, and future star Walter Brennan shows up in some of the blackout sketches. Also present are the Russell Markert Girls, who later morphed into the Radio City Rockettes, still famous for their precision dance routines. Everyone participates in the climactic number, built around a "Melting Pot of Music" in which musicians of various nationalities demonstrate their native styles before descending into a symbolic tub representing American music as a whole. Leaving aside how unpleasant it would be to get actually melted in such a pot, this sequence reinforces the film's regrettably closed-off view of where jazz actually came from: every musician is white and the overall vision is Eurocentric in the extreme. King of Jazz is both a dazzling musical revue and a vivid reminder of the racial and ethnic tunnel vision that has long afflicted American culture.
Director: John Murray Anderson
Producer: Carl Laemmle Jr.
Screenplay: John Murray Anderson
Cinematographers: Hal Mohr, Jerry Ash, Ray Rennahan
Film Editing: Maurice Pivar, Robert Carlisle
Settings and Costumes: Herman Rosse
Music: Milton Ager, George Gershwin, Mabel Wayne, Billy Rose, James Dietrich
With: Paul Whiteman, John Boles, Laura La Plante, Jeanette Loff, Glenn Tryon, William Kent, Slim Summerville, The Rhythm Boys, Kathryn Crawford, Beth Laemmle, Stanley Smith, Charles Irwin, George Chiles, Jack White, Frank Leslie, Walter Brennan, Churchill Ross, Johnson Arledge, Al Norman, Jacques Cartier, Paul Howard, Nell O'Day, The Tommy Atkins Sextette, Marion Stadler, Don Rose, The Russell Markert Girls
Color-100m.
