A LONG WAY FROM ‘THE GENE KRUPA STORY’

It has long been taken for granted in jazz circles that musicians will never be portrayed on the screen with any substantial measure of authenticity. Stereotyped characters and pseudo-hip dialogue have been the order of the Hollywood day for at least four decades. One has only to reflect on three egregious examples by way of illustration.

“St. Louis Blues,” released in 1958, was a patronizing biography of composer W.C. Handy, with Nat King Cole in the title role. The cardboard characters were given dialogue to match. Sample: Handy’s father issuing the stern warning, “Don’t play jazz, son--that’s the devil’s music!”

A year later, “The Five Pennies” purportedly recounted an episode in the life of cornetist Red Nichols--sensationalized, sentimentalized and fictionalized so absurdly that even a splendid cast including Louis Armstrong and Shelly Manne could not compensate for the screenplay.

In the same year, “The Gene Krupa Story” made a hideous botch of the drummer’s life, with Sal Mineo as Krupa. A mountain was made out of the molehill incident involving Krupa’s brief legal trouble after a marijuana bust.

Among the more or less fictional screenplays, two could be credited with good intentions but little more: The 1949 “Young Man With a Horn,” with Harry James dubbing the trumpet for Kirk Douglas in a vaguely Bix-inspired story; and the 1955 “Pete Kelly’s Blues,” notable mainly for the presence of Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald and, in a fine opening funeral sequence, cornetist Teddy Buckner. The 1961 “Paris Blues” was a notch higher, thanks to the Duke Ellington score and the scenes featuring Louis Armstrong, but the dialogue handed to Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier leaned toward platitudes.

The less said about “The Fabulous Dorseys,” “The Glenn Miller Story,” “Lady Sings the Blues” and the rest, the better.

But there is a double dose of good news. Two movies, one now playing, the other due for release in two or three months, offer remarkably realistic treatments of jazz themes, setting a new standard that may help to turn around the hitherto naive attitudes of producers, directors and screenwriters in the movies and on television.

“The Gig” is a lighthearted, occasionally sentimental story about six men who play strictly for kicks. One is a used-car salesman; another is a dentist; a third had shown promise as a trumpeter before he settled for the security of a real estate job in his father-in-law’s business.

One can understand why “The Gig” rings true, since Frank D. Gilroy, who wrote and directed it, was a frustrated trumpeter who gave it up because “I just wasn’t good enough.” His six musicians suddenly find themselves confronted with a professional job in the form of two weeks at a Catskills resort, the Paradise Manor. In a thoroughly believable scene, they all find excuses for turning down the gig--one is genuinely ill, another can’t leave his mother, the trumpeter has a problem with his wife.

Finally, they talk one another into taking the job--all except the bassist, who sends a sub. He turns out to be black, unfriendly and something of a snob, since he has worked with everyone from Ellington to Basie; but eventually he and the amateurs learn to relate to one another, and to deal with the problems at the Paradise Manor: miserable accommodations and an owner, Abe Mitgang (brilliantly played by Joe Silver), who wants them to cut out the “biff bam bang” and play gentle waltzes or horas. There is a delightfully real scene in which Cleavon Little, the bassist, calls out chord changes to the confused amateurs.

The rapport among the musicians as they try to accommodate Mitgang is warmly believable. Warren Vache, the only actor-musician who actually played on the sound track, succeeds admirably on both levels. The other men are represented by a set of seasoned pros: Milt Hinton did the dubbing for Cleavon Little, Kenny Davern is the sound-track clarinetist, George Masso the trombonist.

The story becomes a little too melodramatic when a former big-name singer, making a comeback at the Paradise, marches in with a tough manager and bodyguard, blows a fuse when the men can’t read the music and precipitates a somewhat contrived ending. Still, the overall feeling established by “The Gig” is good-humored and mostly credible. Wayne Rogers, as the used-car salesman who plays trombone, sets the mood from the very first moments in a hilarious sales pitch. You almost want to buy a car from him. Cleavon Little’s transition from sarcastic outsider to de facto leader is splendidly delineated in what may be his best gig since “Blazing Saddles.”

The other film that impressed me, “Round Midnight,” is a bird of a very different color, literally. Here, almost all the musicians are black expatriates in Paris, seasoned pros working at the celebrated Blue Note club. The low-key mood is accentuated by the dark settings in which most of the action takes place, either in the club or outside at night; there are very few daylight scenes.

Unlike “The Gig,” “Round Midnight” has musicians in all the acting roles. The story centers on Leo Turner, played by Dexter Gordon, a saxophonist whose life seems to be a mixture of Bud Powell, the pianist who spent most of his last years in Paris, and Lester Young, who played his last gig there just before he died.

The story line is not as eventful as it might be. Turner, clearly in bad shape, is taken in hand by Francis (played by Francois Cluzet) and eventually persuaded to return to New York for a job at Birdland (the action takes place around 1960).

More than any other aspect, the conviction with which the musicians speak their lines impressed me in this sometimes gloomy but often riveting tale. Several musicians have small acting parts: Herbie Hancock, who wrote the score; Bobby Hutcherson, as a vibraphonist who wants everyone to share in the home cooking at his pad; Wayne Shorter; and even journalist/trombonist Mike Zwerin, seen very briefly as a writer for the Paris Herald Tribune, which he is.

Drummer Billy Higgins, guitarist John McLaughlin and the attractive singer Lonette McKee also are seen and heard from in the Paris scenes. The New York episode briefly shows a group led by Freddie Hubbard, with Cedar Walton on piano, Frederic Sylvestre on guitar, Tony Williams on drums and Ron Carter on bass.

Gordon is completely believable as the world-weary, hard-living saxophonist. The music and the sound quality in the nightclub scenes are on a consistently high level. Under the guidance of Bertrand Tavernier, who directed as well as co-wrote the script, the story and the music ring true, with originals by Hancock, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell and others.

It is difficult to predict whether “Round Midnight,” a low-budget movie like “The Gig,” will enjoy a modicum of commercial success. Its downbeat mood may relegate it to limited acceptance as a cult production for art houses. One hopes for the best, because as the producer, Irwin Winkler, remarked last year when he embarked on the venture, this could truly be a milestone in the portrayal of jazz musicians who look, act, think and talk as jazzmen really do.

In any event, we have come a long way from those hep-to-the-jive musicals to the point where men like Warren Vache and Dexter Gordon, with believable roles and lines, can give the lay public a reasonably accurate picture of the jazz life and the various forms it can take for amateurs and pros, blacks and whites alike.