Kit
Latimer could have been a Marian McPartland from New Orleans. She was a proper
lady who played a mean piano and married a trumpet player from Chicago.
Unfortunately, the Hollywood of 1942 would only give a woman character limited
time on the bandstand. While Latimer spends most of the film cheering on her future
fiancé, the fictionalized jazz creation story in which she appears is still pretty
progressive for its era and swings quite nicely. Jazz musicians get one of
their better big screen treatments in William Dieterle’s Syncopation (trailer
here),
screening in its DCP restored glory this coming Monday, as part of a special
day of jazz programming at Film Forum.
As
a little girl, Latimer loved New Orleans, especially the music. She could pound
out boogie-woogie piano at a tender age and as fate would have it, her nanny is
the mother of Rex Tearbone, a trumpet Phenom transparently based on Louis
Armstrong. During those early days, the young Tearbone is taken under the wing
of King Jeffers, a clear King Oliver analog, played by longtime Ellington band member
Rex Stewart.
At
first, Latimer resents Chicago, but on her twenty-first birthday a chance
meeting with scuffling trumpeter Johnny Schumacher changes her opinion. He
takes her to her first rent party, where she hears Chicago-style jazz in its
infancy. That rent party nearly ruins Latimer’s reputation, leading to her
acquittal in a bizarre “jazz trial.” Regardless, Latimer and Schumacher are
meant for each other, but her childhood sweetheart and WWI complicate matters.
It
is easy to nit-pick details, but Syncopation
deserves credit for getting so much right, starting with the opening
montage depicting slavery and the subsequent hardships endured by African
Americans. It is an evocative sequence not unlike the Ellington short Rhapsody in Black and Blue, playing as
part of Film Forum other special Monday jazz program. One can also discern a
good deal of Bix Beiderbecke in Schumacher, who learns how to really swing when
jamming after hours with Tearbone, but finds himself stuck blowing in a
symphonic so-called jazz orchestra unambiguously modeled on the Paul Whiteman
outfit.
The
performances are mostly rather earnest and engaging, as well. Jackie Cooper has
the right balance of innocence and street smarts for Schumacher (whose solos
were mostly played off-screen by the tragic Bunny Berigan), while Bonita
Granville’s Latimer makes a glamorous and largely credible hipster (with Stan
Wrightsman handling her bluesy piano). Todd Duncan also adds considerable energy
as Tearbone, playing him as an unflaggingly cheerful figure, but in a way that
is sociable rather than servile. Although not a jazz musician, Duncan the opera
baritone will still be of interest to jazz fans for originating the role of
Porgy in Gershwin’s opera. Plus, Connee Boswell appears as herself (and
convincingly so), sitting in with Schumacher’s band.
