Young Man With a Horn

The 1950 film Young Man with a Horn has a special place in the iconography of jazz as the first full-scale Hollywood treatment of the jazz musician as tortured genius, with Kirk Douglas first essaying the role he would later perfect as Vincent van Gogh in Lust for Life. Though the film was based very loosely on the life of Bix Beiderbecke, his introspective music was jettisoned in favor of more conventional, flamboyant, bravura trumpeting (suggesting Bunny Berigan as an alternative model for the self-destructive hero). At the time, Doris Day was making the transition from band singer to a specialist in "good girl" movie roles, and she does a fine job on the film's torchy standards, especially "With a Song in My Heart," singing with a clear, distinctive voice that is so unaffected that it seems like a conduit for a songwriter's intentions. Harry James brings his rhythmic drive and sparkling technique to the soundtrack's hybrid of swing and '20s jazz, while his gorgeous sound is most striking on the lush, frankly Gershwin-inspired "Melancholy Rhapsody." --Stuart Broomer