Thursday, April 11, 2013 at 7:30 p.m.
(Michael Curtiz, 1950)
From the Academy Award winning, Hungarian-born director of Casablanca, Mildred Pierce, and many other classic films from a Hollywood career spanning three decades (1931–1961). Starring Kirk Douglas as trumpeter "Rick Martin," a character loosely based on cornetist Bix Biederbecke (1903–1931), Doris Day, Lauren Bacall, and Hoagy Carmichael as sidekick and narrator "Willie 'Smoke' Willoughby." Carmichael was a friend of the real Biederbecke's from the early 1920s to the latter's death in 1931. Trumpeter Harry James (1916–1983) plays for Douglas on the soundtrack, and served as musical advisor to the film's legendary Hollywood musical director Ray Heindorf (1908–1980), who, with Max Steiner, also composed additional music for the score, both uncredited. Heindorf also makes on uncredited on-screen appearance as an orchestra leader in Young Man with a Horn, and composed some of the additional music for the second film in this series, Pete Kelly's Blues.