Word: trumpeter
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...great white chief of the Sigafoose Indians, Smith has traded in his lion tamer's suit for fringed buckskin, but still struggles manfully with such gadgets as the Plapdoodle and the Scopedoodle. To keep things moving he plays the piano, accordion, drums, organ, guitar, ukulele, string bass, trumpet, saxophone, clarinet, trombone, tuba, and such novelty instruments as the tonette and slide whistle. He can also arrange music and imitate a bass fiddle...
Kirk Douglas, still looking more like a Champion than a genius, plays the musician, Rick Martin. For the behind-the-scenes trumpet they could have picked Bobby Hackett, the last fine musician of the Bix school. They could have selected any one of a number of good young California trumpeters who worship Beiderbecke's records. So they chose Harry James. This only adds to the public illusion that jazz was discovered in New Orleans by Larry Parks, that it was brought up to Chicago on the riverboats by Arturo de Cordoya, and that every great jazz trumpeter must have sounded...
Rick Martin is an orphan, brought up by his sister in Los Angeles. At an early age he meets and grows to worship a Negro trumpeter, Art Hazard (a "preaching" role, played uncomfortably by Juano Henandez), and takes lessons from him. It soon becomes apparent that the trumpet is the only thing Rick can rely upon completely...
Musically, Young Man will offend jazz purists, however it may send the jukebox set. Most of the trumpet work, dubbed by Harry James while Douglas goes skillfully through the motions, is badly out of character. It has all of James's technical finesse but it is often nearly as commercial as the kind of music that Trumpeter Douglas rails against. Jazz fans will also be surprised to learn that a Greenwich Village jazz haunt's customers all wear impeccable evening dress...
...trumpeter's pianist sidekick, Hoagy Carmichael gives one of his effortless performances. Actor Douglas gives plenty of vitality to the central role, but he is called on to repeat a good deal of what he did in Champion; one scene, in which he bangs a trumpet to pieces and breaks into sobs, is almost a remake of the climax of his earlier film. Having discovered what Actor Douglas does best, Hollywood apparently is determined to work him to death...