The last post about drummers in movies brings up the topic of the piano (and pianists) on the silver screen. While there are numerous documentaries about legendary pianists, rather few who tickled the ivories other than Hazel Scott appeared even briefly in big studio big budget movies.
The composer biopic is mostly a thing of the deep past in 2019, unfortunately.
Such biopics were more prevalent a few decades ago. None other than Cary Grant played Cole Porter in Night And Day.
Porter looked more like Fred Astaire and might have been played by a younger version of Clifton Webb. As wonderful as Grant is, there's something about the songwriting of Cole Porter, as much as his music provided cornerstones of the RKO musicals starring Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers, that remains elusive to the Hollywood movie sensibility. As enjoyable and entertaining as Night And Day is, it never quite gets to the essence of Cole Porter or his art. Not even Cary Grant could do that.
A few years later, Frank Sinatra did.
Another central cornerstone of the Astaire & Rogers movies was the music of George & Ira Gershwin. One of the more amazing examples of 88s on celluloid is from the Rhapsody & Blue segment from the 1930 Universal feature King Of Jazz.
For the 88s in the most visually spectacular fashion, the Rhapsody In Blue sequence from King Of Jazz remains the gold standard.
The sequence is still mind-blowing after all these decades.
The Gershwin biopic Rhapsody In Blue, directed by Irving Rapper and starring Robert Alda, shed light upon George Gershwin while also giving a key part in the movie to George's friend and frequent cohort Oscar Levant.
Fellow pianist/composer Oscar Levant proved among the most sensitive and prolific interpreters of the music by George & Ira Gershwin.
A brilliant classical pianist and composer, Oscar wrote three books, was among the stars of the radio hit Information Please and also periodically appeared as an actor in movies, essentially playing himself.
While Oscar played his inimitable chain-smoking self, at least he usually got opportunities to demonstrate his considerable prowess on the 88s at some point during whatever the movie was. Here he is in a musical interlude from the last Astaire & Rogers musical, The Barkleys of Broadway.
And, speaking of chain-smoking concert pianists, Geoffrey Rush portrayed Australian virtuoso David Helfgott in the 1997 movie Shine.
For an example of a movie starring a pianist who drives the storyline, look no further than the Francois Truffaut masterpiece Shoot The Piano Player.
It starred the legendary pianist and performer Charles Aznavour (1924-2018), who doubles very nicely as an actor here.
It's difficult not to regard this unique blend of film noir, music, Parisian atmosphere and the cinematic stylings of the French New Wave as Truffaut's greatest film.
If not the single greatest Truffaut picture, Shoot The Piano Player certainly ranks high among the numerous movies from his distinguished career. Meanwhile, Mr. Aznavour kept on scaling the heights as an songwriter, entertainer, pianist and vocalist.
Closing this post we note that, rather amazingly, the one and only Art Tatum, a piano virtuoso like no other, did have a brief segment in Alfred E. Green's The Fabulous Dorseys. Tatum, as was customary, played all 88 of the 88s.
