William Dieterle’s Syncopation is a comic bio-pic about the evolution of New Orleans jazz. Basically a love letter to the New Orleans origins of jazz, and some say based on the Bix Beiderbecke-Bunny Berrigan-Louis Armstrong friendship, it’s a sincere white lefty plea to take jazz seriously as not only an African-American art, but as the true American art. It’s oddly uneven cinematically, with lots of conventional Hollywood studio devices of the time, but to a generous eye it has some real beauties — basically a B-pic made by a A-list director and crew. It’s also an acknowledgement of how jazz suffered by being co-opted by the Whitemans, as Jackie Cooper (playing a pre-Chet Baker white hipster cornettist) sells out for a while playing in a schlock jazz Hollywood Bowl orchestra before being liberated by Benny Goodman, Harry James, Charlie Barnett, et al. It is a true shame that Louis Armstrong wasn’t included, since it’s partly his story.
Dieterle was one of the most intellectual of the German emigre directors in Hollywood, and one of the most liberal. Originally a core member of the Weimar era Berlin theater and film world as an actor and director, he was close to many of the European emigrés working in Hollywood, especially Brecht. I view Syncopation as a sincere and brave attempt to mainstream African-American culture, but unable to really resist the totalitarian racism of even the liberal wing of Hollywood. Dieterle apparently was never explicitly blacklisted, but he was, as he put it, “graylisted,” and ended his career back in Europe. The script was co-written by Philip Yordan, who also wasn’t blacklisted but left the U.S. anyway, and eventually provided a creative sanctuary in Paris, a “script factory” for scriptwriters who had been forced out of Hollywood.
The film begins with a striking set of montages, connecting the origins of New Orleans jazz with slavery.
Young Rex Tearbone is encouraged by King Jefferson (clearly based on King Oliver), who’s played by Rex Stewart of Duke Ellington Orchestra fame. Stewart’s acting and his dubbed cornet playing aren’t credited.
The story obviously follows the racial rules: even though it’s explicitly about the evolution of an African-American artform, the protagonists are mainly white — and even young Rex Tearbone, who reappears as an adult in the film, disappears quickly from view. (This could be one of the many cuts that the studio insisted Dieterle should make — he complained to Brecht that the studio sanitized the film against his wishes). Still, Dieterle knew what he was doing. The main protagonist is Kit Latimer (played by Bonita Granville), who as a child in New Orleans is steeped in jazz, but must move with her family to Chicago, following the same river trail as the N’Orlins musicians. The story is a variant of the standard snobbish-establishment-fears-popular-rhythm-music-but-the- youthful-vitality-of-the-music-prevails story. You know, the basic rock and roll movie plot. There’s a strange but sweet moment when the lily white Kit has to defend herself for playing devil-music boogie woogie at a rent party by playing some for the judge.
Another interesting move comes in a scene when Johnny Schumacher (played by Jackie Cooper, no longer a child star), an eerie prefiguration of Chet Baker, is asked to sit in with Rex after hours in a Chicago club, a session that leads him to the brig for going AWOL. It’s interesting that Johnny is the only white player in the group, and is clearly the learner, not the leader.
For all its good intentions, the story remains the Appropriation Story, as the smoking jazz ensemble at the end has no Black members. It’s slightly redeemed by showcasing Connee Boswell singing “Under a Falling Star.” Boswell had been a member of the Boswell Sisters, an immensely popular and influential singing group in the ’30s who were considered important exponents of New Orleans style by both white and black audiences at the time.
A cute sidenote: the mildly villainous band leader Ted Browning, whose Hollywood Bowl-style schlock “classicized” jazz drives Johnny to depression, is played by Leith Stevens, who was Syncopation‘s musical director and the composer of “Under a Falling Star.”
Bonus round. Here are some videos of the Boswell Sisters in their prime
