King of Jazz Russel Market Girls performer Film 1930-08-17 Universal Directed by John Murray Anderson and Russel Market. Original music by James Dietrich and Billy Rose and George Gershwin. Paul Whiteman and Orchestra. One of the first sound films to create the first popular form of the movie musical, the revue, featuring all of the stars under contract to each particular film studio, with dance interludes provided by precision line dancers and dance specialty acts. This was Anderson's first experiment with camera, prerecorded sound, effects and early Technicolor. The earliest sound films to create the revue musical capitalized on the enormous popularity of Paul Whiteman's orchestra and the attendant publicity that had enabled Whiteman to call himself "The King of Jazz." The film presented the Rhythm Boys (Bing Crosby, Al Rinker, Harry Baris) in one lavishly mounted production after another. However, when it tackled the visual explanation of the creation of jazz in the finale, entitled "The Melting Pot of Jazz" African Americans were deleted from the mix. The King of Jazz represents tap dance as a precision line of dancing leggy girls, the Russel Markert Girls. The finale is "Rhapsody in Blue" George Gershwin's composition, written for Whitman and performed in 1924 as "An Experiment in Modern Music." The film describes that "Jazz is born in the African jungle to the beating of the voodoo drum": and shows a surreal and terrifying image of a naked male body painted in black patent leather with a featured headdress, dancing on a large drum, with multiple rays of green, white, and red light focused on his dancing body for a visually rhythmic effect. Performing Arts Encyclopedia http://www.loc.gov/performingarts Billman, Larry: Film Choreographers and Dance Directors: An Illustrated Biographical Encyclopedia, 1893-1955. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland (1997). Frank, Rusty E.: Tap! The Greatest Tap Dance Stars and their Stories 1900-1955. New York, William Morrow. (1990). Tap Dance America http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/tda/tda-home.html tda IHAS 151216 loc.music.tda.42