Paul Whiteman
Feature-length compilation of 1920s newsreel footage, with commentary about news, sports, lifestyles, and historical figures.
Paul Whiteman, the orchestra leader, is a resident of the town of Libertyville, New Jersey, a quiet community where the farmers, including Mr. Whiteman, raise Black Angus cattle. His story is how the townspeople got to together in a town meeting to find a solution to the helter-skelter activities of the local teen-agers Saturday nights.
The story of Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey from their boyhood in Pennsylvania through their rise, their breakup, and their personal reunion.
Fictionalized biography of George Gershwin and his fight to bring serious music to Broadway.
In 1915, Atlantic City is a sleepy seaside resort, but Brad Taylor, son of a small hotel and vaudeville house proprietor, has big plans: he thinks it can be "the playground of the world." Brad's wheeling and dealing proves remarkably successful in attracting big enterprises and big shows, but brings him little success in personal relationships. Full of nostalgic songs and acts, some with the original artists. Reissued in 1950 as "Atlantic City Honeymoon".
Jeff grows up near Basin Street in New Orleans, playing his clarinet with the dock workers. He puts together a band, the Basin Street Hot-Shots, which includes a cornet player, Memphis. They struggle to get their jazz music accepted by the cafe society of the city. Betty Lou joins their band as a singer and gets Louie to show her how to do scat singing. Memphis and Jeff both fall in love with Betty Lou.
Jimmy and Mary get a group of kids together to play in a school orchestra. A huge contest between schools is coming up and they have a hard time raising money to go to Chicago for the contest.
Ronny Bowers, a saxophonist in Benny Goodman's band has won a talent contest an got a ten week contract with a film studio. On his first evening he is supposed to go with the studio's star Mona Marshall to a movie premiere. But this lady doesn't want to go, so the bosses decide to use for Mona a double, Virginia. When Mona finds out next morning that happened, she insisted to fire her double and Ronny. Ronny finds work as singing waiter in a drive in, and is spotted by a director of the same studio, who wants him to lend his voice for an leading actor in a musical.
Anxious to keep out of the rain on a bus layover in that ubiquitous little village in Pennsylvania, Dick Powell and his troupe of traveling musicians attend a political rally for governor-to-be Raymond Walburn. The candidate is an incompetent drunkard, and his Square Deal Party backers turn to Powell & Co. to liven up the campaign. A victim of circumstance, Powell soon replaces Walburn as candidate for governor with the hope of losing the election and gaining a radio career. Beating Preston Sturges’s Hail the Conquering Hero to the punch by about nine years, this is the rare political satire that’s more transcendent than mean (the New York Times noted it was “pardonable but definitely incorrect of you to assume from this that the new film is an attack on the intelligence of the Pennsylvania electorate”), and Dick Powell is at his pre-noir best. (Julian Antos, Northwest Chicago Film Society)
Walter Winchell meets a budding country journalist and shows her around the Biltmore Hotel.
Made during the early years of the movie musical, this exuberant revue was one of the most extravagant, eclectic, and technically ambitious Hollywood productions of its day. Starring the bandleader Paul Whiteman, then widely celebrated as the King of Jazz, the film drew from Broadway variety shows to present a spectacular array of sketches, performances by such acts as the Rhythm Boys (featuring a young Bing Crosby), and orchestral numbers—all lavishly staged by veteran theater director John Murray Anderson.
Oswald the Rabbit puts on a concert for a group of barn animals - but when they discover that he's miming to a record of his idol...
Reginald Denny hosts. Reginald Denny presents a performance by a famed female impersonator Julian Eltinage. Anita Page and Julia Faye discuss the latest fashions for women. Bobby Vernon attempts to provide musical entertainment.
