Year: 1930
Director: John Murray Anderson
Country: US
Language: English
Produced by Carl Laemmie Jr. for Universal Pictures King of Jazz is a rare pre-code colour (made entirely in the two-colour technicolor process) film that stars Paul Whiteman and his orchestra. At the time of its production, "jazz" didn't mean what it means today. Their idea of "jazz" meant the jazz-influenced syncopated dance music which was heard on phonograph records and radio broadcasts throughout the country.
This revue presents its numbers around the orchestra leader Paul Whiteman.
Universal expected this revue to make a large sum of money, mainly because their previous release Broadway (1929) was such a box office success. They put a staggering $3 million in depression-era money into King of Jazz. Unfortunately by 1930 the depression in the United States was in full-swing and audiences had grown tired of musicals, which had over-saturated the market since Warner Bros/ The Jazz Singer (1929). As a result the film made less of a third of its money back.
Over the decades, King of Jazz has become beloved as a piece of Hollywood recklessness. It's one hell of a mess that now shows the apex of early technicolor and a time capsule of popular American music. A succession of musical and comic acts staged with supreme originality, one has to enjoy this film as a curiosity. King of Jazz is a grand spectacle that is full of jaw-dropping performances and strange acrobatic positions.
Despite not making a dent in the North American market, the movie was surprisingly successful abroad, helping to salve some of the financial wounds. Many years after the 1930's the film was considered to be lost, but archivists were able to find a copy in the 1980's. In 2016 King of Jazz was finally restored to its original beauty.
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