King of Jazz **** (1930, Paul Whiteman, Bing Crosby, Al Rinker, Harry Barris) – Classic Movie Review 12,239

Bandleader Paul Whiteman’s rich, appealing and enjoyable 1930 early two-colour Technicolor musical revue film The King of Jazz boasts Bing Crosby and a batch of hit songs of the day. It dumps any narrative in favour of a series of diverse musical numbers, with brief comedy sketches with abrupt punch line endings and other short introductory or linking segments. It is produced by Carl Laemmle Jr for Universal Pictures.

Portly Paul (1890-1967), a dead ringer for Oliver Hardy, is good fun and the thoroughly entertaining film is an Aladdin’s cave for nostalgists. Highlights are director John Murray Anderson’s staging of George Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ and the closing ‘Melting Pot of Jazz’. It also features several songs sung on camera by The Rhythm Boys (Bing Crosby, Al Rinker and Harry Barris), as well as off-camera solo vocals by Crosby during the opening credits and, briefly, during a cartoon sequence, providing the singing voice for Whiteman in the animated cartoon singing ‘My Lord Deliver Daniel’.

Bing sings ‘Music Hath Charms’ over the title credits and, as one of The Rhythm Boys, performs ‘Mississippi Mud’. Despite the title, which is Whiteman’s nickname, there is not much jazz, but instead there is swing though. The jazz music here means the jazz-influenced syncopated dance music the public heard on phonograph records, on radio broadcasts, and in dance halls.

King of Jazz is filmed and available in two-tone Technicolor. It still survives in a near-complete colour print.

Anderson’s and Crosby’s débuts.

Gershwin can be seen at the piano playing his ‘Rhapsody in Blue’.

It runs 105 minutes but there is also a cut version of 93 minutes.

Paul Whiteman stars in the King of Jazz.

The two-tone, or two-colour Technicolor process is properly called Technicolor Process 2 (1922) and is often wrongly called two-strip Technicolor today.

In the 1920s Whiteman signed and featured white jazz musicians, including Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang, who are in the film, and Bix Beiderbecke, who unfortunately had left before the filming.

The Rhythm Boys sing ‘Mississippi Mud’, ‘So the Bluebirds and the Blackbirds Got Together’, ‘I’m a Fisherman’, ‘A Bench in the Park’, and ‘Happy Feet’.

It is the first feature film to use a mostly pre-recorded soundtrack made independently of filming. Whiteman successfully battled studio executives to get the musical numbers with his orchestra pre-recorded for the best sound.

Hard-drinking Crosby went on several benders during filming. He crashed his car on Hollywood Boulevard, badly injuring his female passenger, and, showing up in court in golf gear, and wise-cracking to the judge, was sent to jail for 60 days. Whiteman replaced him with John Boles for ‘The Song of the Dawn’.

One of the singers in the film is Delbert Cobain, the great-uncle of musician Kurt Cobain.

The film was selected for preservation in the US National Film Registry by the Library of Congress In 2013, as being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,239

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