Tag: musical

John Murray Anderson

 

John Murray Anderson, “King of Jazz”, 1930, Computer Graphics, Film Gifs

“King of Jazz” is a 1930 American pre-Code color film starring Paul Whiteman and his orchestra. The film title was taken from Whiteman’s self-conferred appellation. At the time the film was made, “jazz”, to the general public, meant the jazz-influenced syncopated dance music which was being heard everywhere on phonograph records and through radio broadcasts. In the 1920s Whiteman signed and featured white jazz musicians including Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang, both are seen and heard in the film, Bix Beiderbecker, who left before the filming began, Frank Trumbauer, and others.

“King of Jazz” was filmed entirely in the early two-color Technicolor process and was produced by Carl Laemmie, Junior for Universal Pictures. The movie featured several songs sung on camera by the Rhythm Boys, which included Bing Crosby, Al Rinker and harry Barris. Bing Crosby performed several off-camera solo vocals during the opening credits and sang very briefly during a cartoon sequence. The film still survives in a near-complete color print and is not a lost film, unlike many contemporary musicals that now exist only either in incomplete form or as black-and-white reduction copies.

 

Calendar: May 28

A Year: Day to Day Men: 28th of May

A Small White Space

The musical film “On with the Show!” by Warner Brothers Studio was released on May 28, 1929.

Filmed in Two-strip Technicolor, “On with the Show!” is noted as the first all-talking, all-color feature length movie. Warner Brothers promoted the film as being in “natural color”. This would be the first of a series of contracted films by Warner Brothers to be made in the Technicolor process. The film generated much interest in Hollywood; and other studios began shooting films in the process. The film, though a success, was eclipsed by the success of their next color film “Gold Diggers of Broadway”.

“On with the Show!” was a combination of a backstage musical using the ‘show within a show” format, a comedy and a mystery. The story and dialogue were written by Robert Lord with the music and lyrics by Harry Akst. William Bakewell was in the role of the head usher eager to get his sweetheart played by Sally O’Neil. Betty Compson played the temperamental star and the whiny young male star of the show was Arthur Lake. The vaudeville actor Joe E. Brown had a role as a comedian in the show; through this role his career shot to stardom status.

The film was a box office hit, with a worldwide gross of over two million dollars. Reviews from critics were mixed. Many thought the length was too long and the story was bad; however, most were impressed with the color process. Josh Mosher, the first regularly assigned film critic of the New Yorker magazine, wrote that the film was “completely undistinguished for wit, charm, or novelty, except that it is done in color. Possibly in the millennium all movies will be colored. In these early days of the art, however, not much can be said for it, except that it is not really distressing.”

The original color print of “On with the Show!” is lost, a fate of many of the early films printed on a nitrate film base. Only black and white prints of the film have survived. A 20 second fragment of an original color print surfaced in 2005; it was found in a toy projector. Other original color fragments have been discovered in 2014. The Library of Congress has long held a copy of the black and white version in its collection.