Young Man with a Horn (1950) on Netflix
Orphan Rick Martin works as a bowling alley pin setter to buy a trumpet from a pawn shop. Jazzman Art Hazzard tutors him, and he would sooner improvise than play the arrangements.
- Netflix4.0/5
- IMDb7.2/104,308 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes86%
Trailer
Plot summary
Rick Martin grows up an orphan in the Midwest, raised by an elder sister with little interest in him, and is drawn first to the hymns at a mission for alcoholics. He takes a job setting pins at a bowling alley to buy the trumpet he saw in a pawn shop window, and the jazzman Art Hazzard tutors him into an intuitive player. A large dance band hires him, and there he meets the piano player Willie 'Smoke' Willoughby and the singer Jo Jordan; he ignores orders to stick to the arrangements. In New York he joins another orchestra and meets Amy North, a wealthy student of psychiatry who says she is incapable of loving anyone and warns him away. He keeps pursuing her and drifts from his old friends.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Young Man with a Horn (1950)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Jean Spangler, a hula-dancer extra, vanished soon after finishing her brief work on the film and before its release; a note addressed to "Kirk" was found in her purse. Kirk Douglas denied involvement and showed police he was in Palm Springs, over 100 miles away, on the night she disappeared, October 7, 1949.
- Dorothy Baker's novel described Amy North as having lesbian tendencies, so the film used period Hollywood hints and connotations to get around the Motion Picture Production Code and strongly imply her bisexuality.
- Trumpeter Harry James, not Kirk Douglas, played the solos heard in the film, dubbing Douglas' playing in the style of a Swing Era soloist.
SPOILER
The film's happy ending was tacked on; it can be found in neither the novel nor the life of Bix Beiderbecke, who died of alcoholism at 28.
