Paul Whiteman - Movie Appearances

Movie Appearances

In 1930 "Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra" starred in the first feature-length movie musical filmed entirely in Technicolor, King of Jazz. The film was technically ahead of its time, with many dazzling camera effects complementing the Whiteman music. Whiteman appeared as himself, and good-naturedly kidded his weight and his dancing skills. A highlight was a concert rendition of Rhapsody in Blue. Unfortunately, by the time King of Jazz was released to theaters, audiences had seen too many "all-singing, all-dancing" musicals, and much of the moviegoing public stayed away. (It also didn't help that the film was shot as a revue with no story and not particularly imaginative camerawork.) The expensive film didn't show a profit until 1933, when it was successfully reissued to cash in on the popularity of 42nd Street and its elaborate production numbers.

Whiteman also appeared as himself in the 1945 movie Rhapsody in Blue on the life and career of George Gershwin and also appeared in The Fabulous Dorseys in 1947, a bio-pic starring Jimmy Dorsey and Tommy Dorsey. Whiteman also appeared as the baby in Nertz (1929), the bandleader in Thanks a Million (1935), as himself in Strike Up the Band (1940), and in the Paramount Pictures short The Lambertville Story (1949).

Read more about this topic:  Paul Whiteman

Famous quotes containing the words movie and/or appearances:

    ... the movie woman’s world is designed to remind us that a woman may live in a mansion, an apartment, or a yurt, but it’s all the same thing because what she really lives in is the body of a woman, and that body is allowed to occupy space only according to the dictates of polite society.
    Jeanine Basinger (b. 1936)

    We often think ourselves inconsistent creatures, when we are the furthest from it, and all the variety of shapes and contradictory appearances we put on, are in truth but so many different attempts to gratify the same governing appetite.
    Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)