Scott Joplin

"Scott Joplin" is an unusual made for TV film in that it was, briefly, released in theaters just before it aired on TV. It stars Billy Dee Williams as the famed composer. It's also unusual for its choice of Joplin as a subject for the film because the guy died from syphilis (something folks RARELY talked about in 1977) and his later years were spent deteriorating more and more--a tough sort of film to put over to the viewing audience. However, the film DID find an audience and won a Writer's Guild award.

The film picks up with Joplin an adult and playing music in brothels. Soon he meets and befriends Louis Chauvin (Clifton David) and they come to the attention of a music publisher/promoter (Art Carney). For a while, things look great--Joplin marries and he achieves moderate success. But because of his syphilis (which was pretty much untreatable at that time) his career and marriage slowly spiraled downward. His final years were A LOT worse than they show in the movie and his decline lasted far longer--but regardless, he died young in a mental institution--committed due to his dementia.

If you think this movie is a giant downer, you are right. The first half is quite enjoyable and I loved the music. The second half was a chore to watch--and the music portion of the film suffered because Joplin was no longer functional. Well done but hard to watch.

Scott Joplin (Billy Dee Williams) grew up in a musical family. After his mother's death, his father kept his music in church and nowhere else. He runs away and starts playing in a bordello. He would become one of the greatest composers during the ragtime era. He would be dead in 1917 at the age of 48 from syphilis.

The movie becomes a long downhill slide after an early run. Billy Dee Williams delivers a reserved performance and then some overdramatic work. Both of which results in a dour-noted tough watch for the second half. It feels rather flat and the pacing becomes slow. I don't know if this is all strictly true. The movie could be well-served with some dramatic fictionalization to make a more compelling film. It is still interesting history and worthwhile material.

Billy Dee Williams stars as the King of Ragtime in this musical biopic, with some interesting musical stars.

It's forthright about most of the problems that Joplin faced, although race is rarely mentioned. Dick Hyman plays the piano for Williams, who does some minimal faking on the keys. None of the numbers are played all the way through, although there is a wonderful staging for "Solace", and the ragtime competition at the start is lively and very amusing. Williams is very subdued in his performance, letting himself be upstaged by Art Carney as his publisher, and Clifton James, who gives an excellent performance as Louis Chauvin. Real performers who show up -- it was produced by Motown -- include Eubie Blake, Otis Day, Spo-De-Odee, and the Commodores.

The man who gave us the Maple Leaf Rag and the Entertainer, Scott Joplin, once said that he would not become known until fifty years after his death.

He wasn't off by much--it took fifty-six. In 1973, Marvin Hamlisch used the then-largely unknown Joplin's music in the movie "The Sting," spurring a ragtime revival and a renewed interest in Joplin specifically. Joplin's work received long-overdue attention from music scholars, and he was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer for his body of work, some fifty known rags, waltzes, marches--and one opera, Treemonisha.

This movie rode the wave of his renewed popularity, but plays so loose with the facts of his life that we end up knowing little more about him. Billy Dee Williams is a superb Joplin, as is Art Carney as his publisher, John Stark. But the movie either ignores or glosses over certain details, such as Joplin's longtime friendship and collaboration with Scott Hayden. Hayden is not even mentioned in the film, which prefers to focus on Joplin and the tragic, unsung musical genius Louis Chauvin, who Joplin barely knew. Chauvin in his prime would compose beautiful rags on the spot, never to be heard again, because he could not write them down. The movie implies they were friends from the earliest days, which they were not. They did collaborate on one piece, "Heliotrope Bouquet", when Chauvin was dying and no longer able to play--this the movie gets right.

It also touches on the growing animosity between Joplin and Stark, but this too is sugarcoated. The movie implies they reconciled, which in reality never happened.

Yet the movie is worth seeing if only for one thing--the wonderful, brooding music of a man for whom recognition was long overdue.

Whenever I try to conjure the zeitgeist of America during the time of Teddy Roosevelt, (a favorite pastime among US history buffs), it is this guy's beguiling, sad yet jaunty music that I hear and not Sousa's bombast. In other words, Joplin was a certified genius and certainly deserved better from Motown than this cheap, tinny, Universal back lot production with the Hollywood Hills in the background of shots purporting to be Sedalia Missouri, which was relatively flat last time I checked, and snow so fake it looks like director Jeremy Kagan sent a gopher out to a party store on Lankershim Ave with orders to scour the Yuletide aisle.

Perhaps the film's biggest sin, though, is its relative dearth of attention to ragtime music which Joplin is acknowledged to have fathered. Not only, as a previous reviewer noted, are none of Joplin's compositions played all the way through but in the key scene when Joplin's friend and sometimes creative collaborator, Louis Chauvin, is dying, (of the same syphillis that would kill Joplin), what music do they choose to honor him with?...the blues! Which Joplin had absolutely nothing to do with birthing! I'll be kind to Kagan here and pin the blame for this story abomination on scenarist Christopher Knopf.

So, a not very satisfying life story of the King of Ragtime. I will say, however, that Billy Dee Williams delivers one of his better acting jobs in the title role, managing to capture the aura of melancholy, warmth and formality that comes through in Joplin's music. Clifton Davis is also quite good as Chauvin. With his less disciplined, more fun loving persona he is a nice contrast with Williams' seriousness. Acting beyond these two is fairly "meh" with the most unusual and unwelcome sight of Art Carney kind of phoning it in as music publisher and Joplin patron/friend/ adversary, John Stark. Although, considering that Carney is given a lot of the script's stiff, declamatory "Can't you see what a genius we have here!" dialogue, maybe it's Knopf on the horn. C plus.