Birth of the Blues

Another of Der Bingle favorites with Mary Martin; wow, how I loved her; her heart really sang to Daddy. I haven't seen it for some years, but I do have it on VHS which I recorded. I have over 1000 recorded VHS movies all in the garage, so now that I am retired, I have time to look at some now and then. This also has Crosby singing with Louis Armstrong.

As with many musicals of the era, the little girl of the film sparks a sort of magic, something Carolyn Lee was quite good at. She first appears as six-year-old "Aunt Phoebe" sliding down a spiral banister and landing on Bing Crosby's lap, after which she smashes his lucky hat. Bing, nice guy that he is, takes her on his lap and smiles tremendously. So Phoebe becomes a sort of mascot/hanger-on of the early New Orleans blues band that struggles to survive against strong prejudices against "darkie" music. Every time she opens her little mouth to say a few lines I found myself giggling at her. Some of her pranks are quite memorable. I especially liked the scene where she paints herself in white-face and puts a girdle on for a dress. Her little broom dance with Rochester is also adorable. Carolyn was a very funny little girl. Towards the end of the movie Bing picks her up and lullabies her to sleep with the #1 hit song of 1941, "Melancholy Baby". I never imagined this song was written to sing to six-year-old Carolyn Lee. The Melancholy Baby scene alone is worth the price of admission.

The movie is well filmed, the jazz is great, the acting good and the story interesting. Bing is at his best, Mary Martin is gorgeous and Brian Donlevy with his rakish mustache is quite the rogue. One thing I liked about the film was the close, friendly relationships between the African-American and White jazz musicians. Seems like the jazz folks were ahead of their time and we can only wish that the rest of the country will eventually catch up.

Jazz lovers, go out and rent Birth of the Blues; even if you don't like old movies, it might become one of your favorites. Loosely based on real events, Bing Crosby plays someone who, despite his classical training, has jazz in his veins and insists on playing a new kind of music. When no one wants to listen to it, he forms a band with Brian Donlevy and Mary Martin and starts touring, forcing everyone to listen to it!

Cute little tidbits included in the screenplay will make jazz historians chuckle, like when one band member breaks his bow and is forced to improvise by plucking the bass fiddle with his fingers. Fans of the original jazz and blues movement will enjoy seeing Jack Teagarden perform, as well as Eddie "Rochester" Anderson enjoying a pretty big part as Bing's loyal friend.

I'm not the biggest fan of jazz, but I thought this movie was adorable. It's light and fluffy, with only a little smidge of drama, unlike some musical biopics. With "Melancholy Baby", "After the Ball" and the title song, there are tons of toe-tapping numbers to get immersed in. A new song was written for the film, "The Waiter, the Porter, and the Upstairs Maid", and for me, it was particularly fun to watch. I'd heard the song a million times on my Bing Crosby Greatest Hits CD but never knew what movie it came from!

In this musical comedy set in New Orleans in the 1890's, a clarinet player with a passion for jazz, played by Bing Crosby, organizes a band of white musicians in an effort to bring this "blue music" to the white café society of New Orleans, during an era when whites looked down on jazz as a product of Black people.

The film's screenplay is not very good. Characters are poorly defined. They exist only to further the contrived plot. For a musical, there's too much dialogue, composed largely of supposedly humorous one liners. That may have worked in 1941. But times change. Sixty years after the film, the script now seems dismissive of serious social concerns, and is therefore not funny.

Meanwhile, the shallow plot dilutes the impact of the film's music. Blues numbers include "Melancholy Baby", "Memphis Blues", and several others. But they are uninspired, and seem tangential to the talky script. The only musical number I found even faintly memorable was "St. Louis Blues", performed with passion by diva Ruby Elzy.

One thing I did find interesting was the inclusion of a couple of bit part actors who would later become well known. Mantan Moreland (from the Charlie Chan series) shows up toward the beginning as a trumpet player. And Barbara Pepper (as Doris Ziffel from "Green Acres") shows up off and on in the film as a nightclub hussy.

Given the title, I was expecting a blues extravaganza, not a talk fest. Even so, "Birth Of The Blues" might have some value given its historical subject matter. And it probably would be a good film for fans of Bing Crosby, for whom the film functions as a cinematic vehicle.

I think I saw a clip of this movie when I watched a special on PBS a couple of decades ago called "Remembering Bing", that clip being of Crosby and Mary Martin whistling. Anyway, this was quite entertaining despite the inaccuracies that abounded. In the New Orleans sequence where a bunch of black musicians were playing, it took me awhile to realize that one of them was Mantan Moreland with his familiar bug eyes-who I knew was a native of Monroe, Louisiana. Nice color sequence involving slides being shown. One might be put off by some of the violence shown near the end but it did result in a touching scene involving Eddie "Rochester" Anderson. So on that note, I do recommend Birth of the Blues. P.S. Since It's a Wonderful Life is my favorite movie, I do like citing when players from that are in something else. Here, it's Charles Lane, Sarah Edwards, and Lillian Randolph from there who appear here. Oh, and a few decades after this movie, Bing's daughter Mary played a character on "Dallas" who was revealed to have shot Mary Martin's son, Larry Hagman, as J. R. Ewing there.