Movies - Young Man with a Horn

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	Movies - Young Man with a Horn

Young Man with a Horn is a 1938 novel by Dorothy Baker that is loosely based on the real life of jazz trumpet player Bix Beiderbecke. It is also a 1950 film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Lauren Bacall and Kirk Douglas.

The book and the film

The book was made into a movie in 1950 by Jerry Wald (producer) and Michael Curtiz (director), and Carl Foreman & Edmund H. North doing the screenplay. By today, the movie has surpassed the book in terms of fame.

The film is considered to be the first contemporary big-budget jazz film, a genre that became common not shortly after the release of the movie. Furthermore, it is regarded as one of the first major Hollywood productions to portray a character with obvious lesbian undertones, this meaning Lauren Bacall's blatant affection to Doris Day.

Kirk Douglas plays the lead character, Rick Martin, who is undoubtedly based on Bix Beiderbecke. Lauren Bacall performs the second lead. Bacall's turn as the tough, promiscuous Amy North was widely praised by the critics of the time. It was one of the few scripts Bacall, famous for her uncompromising habit of turning down projects she was asked for but wasn't interested in, accepted, and it has later become one of her defining roles, even though she admitted not thinking highly of the part (she stated this in her 1979 autobiography). The character of Amy North brings forth a lot of the ingredients of Bacall's iconic status: the self-irony, the androgyny, the tough edges, as well as some physical details such as the constant smoking.

The rest of the cast includes Hoagy Carmichael and Juano Hernandez, and Louis Armstrong (who appears as himself). Douglas's horn playing is dubbed by Harry James.

Trivia

Because of its controversial subject matter, lesbian love, the film was banned in many countries until it was released worldwide in 1962. However, ironically enough, the US, the movie industry of which was still controlled by Will Hays, was happy to show the movie to a wide audience when it was released. Some film critics have suggested that this may have been because the Hays Office felt that the film demonstrated the "immorality" of lesbianism and warned "normal" women to return to the kitchen.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Young Man with a Horn ]

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