The Extras - Restoring Rhapsody in Blue

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

Send us a textGeorge Feltenstein from the Warner Archive joins host Tim Millard to discuss the remarkable restoration and reconstruction of the 1945 film "Rhapsody in Blue," now available on Blu-ray in its complete 161-minute version for the first time in 80 years.• Warner Bros.' restoration team combined original camera negative footage with a composite fine-grain master to reconstruct the complete film as director Irving Rapper intended• The rediscovered 5-minute Porgy and Bess sequence featuring Anne Brown's full performance of "Summertime" replaces the truncated 1:45 version shown in theaters• The Warner Brothers Studio Orchestra deserves special recognition for their outstanding musical performances and arrangements by Ray Heindorf• Many actual Gershwin associates appear in the film, including Paul Whiteman's orchestra, Oscar Levant, and Al Jolson performing "Swanee"• The film successfully portrays Gershwin's dedication to creating uniquely American music that incorporated jazz and diverse cultural influences• This frame-by-frame restoration delivers unprecedented audio and visual quality, surpassing even the original theatrical presentation• Robert Alda delivers a charismatic performance as George Gershwin, supported by excellent performances from Joan Leslie, Alexis Smith, and Charles CoburnPurchase Link: RHAPSODY IN BLUE (1945) [EXTENDED PRE-RELEASE VERSION] Blu-ray The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog Group As an Amazon Affiliate, The Extras may receive a commission for purchases through our purchase links. There is no additional cost to you, and every little bit helps us in the production of the podcast. Thanks in advance. Otaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. [e-mail]

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras. I'm Tim Larkin, your host, and joining me today is George Feltonstein from the Warner Archive. Hi, George. Hi, Tim.

Great to be with you, as always. Well, let's start off today, George, talking about this amazing film, Rhapsody in Blue. I I just thoroughly enjoyed watching this film. The restoration is so good and the music sounds so terrific. I just, I mean, it was just a pleasure the whole 161 minutes now that this film is this longer version, it was just so good. So I think we should talk about that restoration so that people really understand what makes this Blu-ray so important. Well, it's a combination of factors. I think first and foremost, as you just represented, the restoration done by Warner Brothers Motion Picture Imaging is amazing and outstanding.

It is a film that was very challenging for them to work with because the original negative had all sorts of weird funky damage that required extra care and scanning and then in in cleanup and so forth and we were actually working with two film elements so this was a reconstruction as well as a restoration when Irving Rapper completed filming in 1943, this film was I would say probably about 150 minutes long, maybe 151. That was his final cut.

Warner Brothers, particularly Jack Warner, didn't want to take very expensive films, which this was, and put them into the theaters when there was so much wartime activity and he felt it could do better business if they held it back because they had made such a substantial investment in the production. So we did not have any material that indicated there was a longer version. I had read there was. In my research putting together a George and I were Gershwin in Hollywood 2 CD set for our joint venture with Rhino Records years ago. I had gotten my hands on some playback discs, found longer versions of certain songs, and

of course I found the Overture disc. And it was only recently that I learned that the Overture was only used in the New York and LA premiere engagements. And we did use that overture on our DVD version. But finding this longer version seemed impossible. We checked everything, or so I was told, everything was checked. checked everything or so I was told everything was checked. What Warner Brothers did was something that was done by all the studios. All the studios were so behind our fighting men

and women overseas during World War II that they made films available to the armed forces long before they got a theatrical release to theaters in the United States and elsewhere. So the original cut of Rhapsody in Blue was shown to the Army and Army Air Corps and the Navy and so forth and so on during I think late 1943 and 1944. So there was this longer version and I went down to USC and went through the Warner Brothers archive files that are maintained at the USC Library of Cinema and Television and confirmed that was the length of of Rapper's cut and also that they had indeed sent it overseas.

When it was time to release the movie and the New York and LA premiere engagements were I think at the end of June 1945, so just about 80 years ago to now, they had cut about 12, 13 minutes out of the film. The film was mounted originally on 18 reels. We found out that some of the reels of the original negative were only like 300 feet out of a possible thousand. The reel count was the same, but what we needed to do is a footage count and we brought in the original camera negative from the Library of Congress which had quite a bit of damage, but of course it was the short version. That's all anyone has seen for 80 years until now. We went through some prints and fine grains that were at UCLA, which

is where Warner Brothers Studio Nitrate Holdings have been cared for and on deposit since 1979. And we did what past colleagues didn didn't do which was to bring in everything and measure it and sure enough. There was a beautiful composite fine grain For those who don't know a fine grain is a Basically a print made off the negative with extreme care for protection and it used a fine grain stock, hence the name fine grain. Composite fine grain means that the audio is also on that fine grain composite master.

We had a source now for all the picture that had been cut out and all the sound. So what we did was we scanned the original negative, which of course was cut. We scanned the composite fine grain of the longer version. We laid the longer version down as a bed. Both elements were scanned at 4K. And we replaced 90% of what was in the longer fine grain with the camera negative material.

And that enabled us to have the full film as the director intended. And most of the added footage is somewhat inconsequential, but making up for that is something of enormous importance and meaning. And that is that in the released version of the film, Gershwin's Porgy and Bess was given, I think a minute and 45 seconds in a very brief half chorus of Summertime sung by the original actress who played Bess in Porgy and Bess and Brown. But in the original longer version, it was a five-minute sequence on Porgy and Bess and and Brown did a full rendition of the song to choruses. Angel, my angel, for I have a date with him here. It couldn't be that I have missed him.

I am a little early for him. Maybe, has one of you seen Joe? has one of you seen Joe? My love and mine, my Joe. Now, the character of Bess in Porgy and Bess is not the main vocalist for summertime, but the character of Bess does do a reprise later on in the opera. But this was truly a find.

The whole Porgy and Bess sequence, there's even a button on it because Ruben Mamoulian, who had directed the stage productions of Oklahoma, so many other important things, as well as Reuben Mamoulian did some really amazing films. And he plays himself. And we didn't know that because nobody could see this version until now. So putting everything back together as a reconstruction was an enormous effort. There were damaged areas in the camera negative

that needed a special amount of attention. And so the picture went through basically a manual frame by frame restoration, and the audio was not just a challenge for our archival audio team, but it was also very rewarding, because they told me that there was more frequency response in that optical audio track than they usually see from a film that was shot in 1943. So with the picture restored and reconstructed

and with the audio restored, this new presentation is, I think, a magnificent representation of a very important film in the history of Warner Brothers. That's an amazing story, George. I've heard you talk a little bit about it, but the way you laid it out of how you actually use both versions of the film, the fine grain and the original, really helped me picture how that restoration worked. And it makes so much sense now, having seen it, why it looks so good. And then this story about the additional footage in Porgy and Bess, that's a great scene.

I'm so glad that that's in there. And for anybody who had the DVD or saw the previous version of the movie, it's definitely worth getting this one for all of the reasons you just laid out and the great audio as well. The The The end I'm just thinking back to that performance of Rhapsody in Blue, the song. That is crisp. I mean, the audio is amazing and the visuals are so terrific. Really really who's you in that same but i'm the whole movie is fantastic but that one is just encapsulates how great this release is i think that song. George gershwin passed away from a brain tumor in 1937. He was 38 years old. And if you think of the body of his work from his very limited lifetime,

Gershwin's standards are still being performed today. best is it's performed in opera houses all over the world and it gets the respect that it didn't get when it opened on Broadway in 1935. Warner Brothers really wanted to pursue pursue Gershwin's life story. And the genesis of the project began as early as 1941. Some people have assumed that Warner Brothers made Rhapsody in Blue as a follow-up to the big success of Yankee Doodle Dandy, because that was the story of songwriter and performer George M. Cohen. That's not true. They started working on this before a single frame of footage was shot for Yankee Doodle Dandy. What needed to be done to get this into play was first and foremost the approval of the Gershwin family. George's brother

Ira who is portrayed in the movie was integral in that. George Gershwin's estate belonged to his mother because George Gershwin died without a will. So George Gershwin's mother had to approve the deal as well. The Gershwins were very handsomely compensated for the use of their music. But it was also incumbent on the Warner Brothers legal department to clear the use of compositions that were written for Broadway shows that became movies made by other studios. So like they had to go and get permission to use I Got Rhythm, I believe from or Embraceable

You they were written for Girl crazy and I believe MGM had bought the rights to girl crazy from RKO by that time and so all the studios were really cool with each other when these kinds of things came up and nobody was being a hard ass and saying no we're not gonna let you have that. The studios all cooperated with each other when these kinds of projects came up. So you had to get clearances from the producers of the Broadway shows that the songs were written for and it was an enormous task. And I've gone through all that paperwork to understand it. So also telling George Gershwin's life story required really good writing and

initially playwright Clifford Odetz was signed to write a first treatment on the screenplay. And I've heard that Odetz first treatment was like 900 pages. That may be apocryphal. I don't know. But Ira Gershwin was a consultant on the project at the very beginning, but it was actually too painful for him to continue on in that role because he, along with the rest of the world, George was mourning his brother. George Gershwin had only been dead for four years when this movie went into production. So, you know, it's an aching wound for any lover

of the great American songbook that George Gershwin's life was curtailed by a brain tumor. But the work that he left behind was so substantial that it could carry the film. And composer biopics, as we call them, they were made by Warner Brothers, they were made by Twentieth Century Fox, they were made by MGM.

And usually the life story of a particular songwriter is not going to be particularly interesting. And Clifford Odette's treatment wasn't quite what Warner Brothers had in mind, so they brought in new writers. The irony of it is that what Clifford Odette wrote was actually used to some degree in the earlier parts of the 1946 film Humoresque, which is about a young violinist growing up on the Lower East Side played by John Garfield and his friend is Oscar Levant. Well, Oscar Levant was George Gershwin's best friend and it's the George Gershwin, Oscar Levant banter

in Rhapsody in Blue that is often the highlight of the comedy in the film. So a lot of that, a lot of the plot devices that Odette's had come up with were used later in humorous, but they came up with like a final list of songs. And when I had the good fortune of introducing this new reconstruction and restoration at the TCM Film Festival, I did say to the audience there is There is a member of the cast so to speak here that's not on camera that Deserves your attention and applause and that is the Warner Brothers Studio Orchestra

What the Warner Brothers music department achieved here particularly under the direction of. Ray hindorf who is the musical i did all the arrangements he put together that incredible overture. He won two oscars during his tenure here was nominated for a lot more. He won Oscars for Yankee Doodle Dandy in 1942 and the Music Man in 1962. He's a brilliantly gifted individual. And combined with the instrumentation that he did on the orchestrations, as well as the underscore of the movie which was written by Max Steiner

who used his talents to weave Gershwin melodies in between his original themes. This is something that wasn't new to Max Steiner because he did the same thing on Casablanca with As Time Goes By, which he did not write, but he wrote his own music and interwove As Time Goes By in the themes. Same thing happened to a different degree. Gone with the Wind, Max Steiner wrote hours of original music, but used Civil War songs, for lack of a better word, in the score and wove them together. So you had the Warner Brothers Music

Department on just full kilter here. And that's an amazing contribution to why the film is so important because it does write by Gershwin's music in terms of the sound. And in terms of the storytelling, George Gershwin was, you know, successful. I think he was 20 years old when he had his first hit song, Swanny, with lyrics by Irving Caesar. And that was introduced by Al Jolson. And they got Al Jolson to reprise his performance in this movie, which is really important. And at that moment in time, Al Jolson had yet to have his life turned

into a hit movie. 1946, the Jolson story was made at Columbia Pictures and Jolson, much to his unhappiness, was too old to play himself in the movie. But he pre-recorded all the songs and actor Larry Parks mauled them. It was one of the most successful films of the 1940s and began a sequel and also made Jolson popular again to new audiences. But when Rapsody in Blue was filmed, he was doing radio, but he wasn't the superstar that he had once been. I've been away from you a long time. I never thought I'd miss you so. he had once been. strumming soft and low. I know that you yearn for me too.

Swanee, you're calling me. Swanee, how I love you, how I love you, my dear old Swanee. I'd give the world to be among the folks in D-I-X. I even know my mammy's, waiting for me, praying for me down by the swanee. The folks up north won't see me no more

when I get to that swanee shore. But having people who were associated with Gershwin performances originally is one of the real precious gems of this movie. And specifically, you have Paul Whiteman and his orchestra who performed the original Rhapsody in Blue at Aeolian Hall in New York City in 1924, Paul Whiteman is in the movie playing himself. There are some of his original band members in the on-screen orchestra recreating what they played when the work was first performed.

There's the concerto in F and Oscar Levant referred to it in real life, you know, to George and saying, our concerto and Oscar Levant went on to do the concerto in F on camera for comic effect almost in an American in Paris where all the different orchestra players were Oscar and you know, he's a whole character into and of himself, but The film created a fictitious love story

between a girl named Julie Adams, I think was the name for Joan Leslie's character. And Alexis Smith played this sophisticated divorcee living in Paris. I think her name is Christine. I think Christine Stewart. I could have the last name wrong, but they basically created these love triangles as the drama and the romance in the film. And there was a third character that is actually true. Gershwin is dedicated to his music and his consistent drive to want to. Bring new sounds into popular american music. What is more important to him than anything including.

very attractive and in some cases famous women who he was dating. He was a very popular man about town in Manhattan and he really did want to settle down and have a family someday, but certainly But certainly right up until the time of his death, the music was more important. And so to tell this story, Christine Gilbert, that was the character's name, Alexa Smith. Really, what they had to do is find a way to keep the songs going and the musical performances going and still tell a Pretty easy to follow Scenario if you will and I think they did a really good job but the best thing about the film is the way the music is portrayed and to play Gershwin, Warner Brothers went to New York and found Robert Alda, a stage actor, and signed him to a seven-year contract. They

thought his youthful charisma would be perfect for the character. So they were taking a big risk by not having a big star, you know, play George Gershwin. But altogether, the film was financially successful, it was very expensive, but it was financially successful. And nobody talked about the fact that the Pergian best sequence was cut short and there was footage seen by the soldiers. I mean that was not, it's not written about very much anywhere. That's why I had to go down to the files to make sure that it really did exist and finding that footage as long as a very long movie especially having the ten minute overture. What is breezes by so well because it is very well constructed. And with these composer biographies it's kind of and then i wrote and then i wrote.

I think they did a better job with that concept than certain other biographical composer movies. There was another way to handle that idea, and it was really something that was done by Twentieth Century Fox in 1938. They made a deal with Irving Berlin to have access to his entire song catalog. But Berlin did not want a film made about his life story. Film made about his life story would have been very interesting because he was such a groundbreaking trendsetter. And his first wife died when they were both very young,

and he never thought he'd get over that. And then he remarried and had three daughters. His life story and his struggle with anti-Semitism, that would have made a great story. Maybe somebody will tell that story someday, but Berlin didn't want that. So the movie Alexander's Ragtime Band in 1938, which was totally blessed by Berlin and had access to all of his music, it was a cavalcade and it spanned 28 years of history, but the characters didn't age, which was a very interesting plot device.

But when this film went into production, the commitment to the Gershwin estate was to either make a biography and follow the life story or to make it a cavalcade, which would have no connection to Gershwin's life story and just be another scenario built around all his songs. Happily, they chose to tell his life story. I think they did a very effective job. And I've said this a million times before, but I'll say it again now when you take a film

and you restore it and make it look phenomenal and sound phenomenal it makes the film far more tangible for someone to reevaluate and say hey this is a good movie because this film has always had a little bit of a reputation of being a Good movie, but not a great movie. I wouldn't say that it is Cinematically one of the great motion pictures of our time or of the 20th century it it's not But it is very well produced and very entertaining. And it is a tribute. You walk away from watching the movie having such respect for George Gershwin and the lyrics of his brother, Ira. And it's just pure entertainment from start to finish.

And now people can experience it with that overture that was only intended for the New York and Hollywood premiere and all the footage that the director shot and locked in now put in place. So it's time for reappraisal and I hope that people will buy this blu-ray and they'll certainly see the huge improvement from the DVD we released in 2012 which we worked really really hard on but we were working from a fine grain and there was a lot of damage in the negative

and that wasn't able to be addressed the way we can now. So this is really something to be, I'm a little enthusiastic about it as you can tell. But I'm very proud of what we as a team have been able to do for this movie and I hope the film fans enjoy it. It's wonderful, it's marvelous, You should care for me. Oh, it's wonderful, it's marvelous, That you should care for me, only me. Oh, it's wonderful, it's marvelous, That you should care for me, only me. And you said that this is an important film for Warner Brothers. Why do you say that? Because I think it reflects the music department.

And Warner Brothers, I think, just maybe a hair under it. I think MGM had the greatest music department of all the studios. But Warner Brothers was just so close to almost being an equal and they were on their game for this movie. The responsibility of putting the Rhapsody in Blue, which is actually, I think, 17 minutes, they had to make edits in the piece and the movie basically stops for a concert performance. And that isn't something that really had been done before. And they had amazing camera angles.

And of course, Robert Alda couldn't play the piano. So they used a lot of trick photography. And it reminds me a little bit of kind of like what MTV was doing with music videos in the eighties with you know. Crooked camera angles and all sorts of other things it's visually interesting. They found a way to bring you into the music and keep it cinematic. you into the music and keep it cinematic. And there are other wonderful performances in the movie. I mean, I've talked about Al Jolson, I've talked about Ann Brown. There's a gentleman who is completely forgotten in show business history today. His name is Tom Patrickola. He came out of retirement to do the number Somebody Loves Me, which he had introduced on the stage

20 years earlier, in 1923, because the film was filmed in 1943. He obviously was kind of eccentric dancer, if you will, and he just had a very cute little personality and he does that number with Joan Leslie Joan Leslie is one of the two romantic leads in this movie and Joan Leslie people remember fondly for her performance as James Cagney's George M. Cohan his wife Mary When in fact George M. Cohan didn't have a wife named Mary. His first wife's name was Ethel. And I always joke and I say, you know, the song,

before it was Mary, you know, we're gonna have a song like before it was Ethel, you know, that would not have worked. But Joan Leslie was a stalwart here at the studio and did some really great work. She carries herself well in the picture. Alexis Smith is a knockout and so beautiful. All the performances are completely top rate. And you also have Hazel Scott, the brilliant jazz pianist and singer. She was not really a Gershwin. Gershwin didn't write things for Hazel Scott,

but she was very hot at that time. And to find a woman who can play jazz piano the way she did and sing so beautifully, they had some very nice ways of giving her a showcase in this movie. And the most important ingredient in this film was the music and conveying the works of Gershwin. I long to be the gal I used to be Fascinating rhythm

Fascinating rhythm. What did she say it was? You mean to say you've never heard of george gershwin by his music's all the race just now his songs his rhapsody What we call the hot jazz I think it also At the end of the movie when they deal with Gershwin's death, they do so in a way that I defy people not to be deeply moved by it. It's a lot. I mean, I remember being a kid and loving Gershwin's music and George Gershwin died, you know, 40 years, 50 years, maybe even, you know, before I was around. But I always felt this sadness

that this man had died so young and I grew to love his music as I grew up and people are still discovering his music. And this film is a wonderful entree to discovering his music because there are people out there that need to discover his music and this film. Yeah. And I really enjoyed the fact that the film starts off telling his story growing up in the Bronx. To me, it makes it such an American story. And I think that's said over and over again throughout the film that he so represented the American ethic and found a way to take these elements of America and put them into

music and popularize them. And that full story where you start with him as a little boy, and you get to meet his father and mother and Ira, I like all of that as the beginning of it. But then, as you said, it's about the music after that. But knowing that is so interesting that he was just from this family of very just normal people who his parents had a store and they changed businesses frequently. He didn't come from money, any of that. He didn't have the best private tutors and everything. From the beginning, eventually he had some very good piano teachers. And I do love the actor's portrayal of the professor there.

Professor Frank, there was no Professor Frank in real life. That was a conceit of the screenplay. But it worked as a device. Yes. Because what Gershwin wanted to do, and this is made very clear in the movie, is he wanted to make, and this is made very clear in the movie, is he wanted to make an American sound that brought in the influence of jazz.

People have also written that Hebrew melodies that would have been common among the Jewish people in prayers, that he somehow was able to use some of those thematics musically and the thematics of jazz from orleans and the south and so forth and so on and create this whole new sound because the work rhapsody in blue the musical work is still astounding to me and to me sounds modern 101 years later, um, and united Airlines has had a lot of fun using it as their theme. But they did manage to find a way to capture his orchestral pieces. There is a, I don't want to say long sequence, but there's quite a lot of footage dedicated to an American in Paris. And of course, you know, eight years later, Minnelli and MGM make this

magnificent movie with Gershwin songs all the way through it. But with the American in Paris ballet, I mean, you can't hear that music. At least I can't hear that music without thinking of Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron and Vince Minnelli. But I think they did a really nice job. And they relied on stock footage of Paris, because Paris was under Nazi occupation when this film was made. So there is this heart tugging aspect to it of the Paris that was lost when the Nazis invaded.

So that's certainly a part of the emotional stirring. But I think that all the supporting performances are really terrific. Charles Coburn as music publishing, Maven, Max Dreyfus, who was a real person, and George White, who produced the George White Scandals in the early 1920s, which Gershwin scored. He plays himself, which was cool that they were able to get him to do that and The cast all the way around Rosemary De Camp as his mother she played mothers which she was I think Three or four years older than Robert Alda, but she played Jimmy Cagney's mother in Yankee Do Dandy

That was the joke that Rosemary De Camp was always cast as the old mother when she was a young lady. But Morris Karnofsky was an actor from the Yiddish theater. He played Gershwin's father. He's hilarious. He had so much humor to the film with his watch. Right. He's such a cheerleader too for his son.

Yeah. A fine piece. 15 minutes, you know, but the other thing that's really You know very very emotional and moving is Oscar Levant playing himself Being the wit and raconteur. He became so famous for being He had been in a few movies before, but this movie really set him into the public eye a lot more. And he was a very beloved concert pianist. He had also written a lot of music, but most of his music never became that popular. But George Gershwin was his best friend.

And so there's a scene in Rhapsody in Blue where there's two pianos next to each other and George and Oscar are playing together and joking around. That was from real life, you know. And I regurgitated and even lent the productions some of George's paintings, just to try to increase the legitimacy, the accuracy to add to the environment. I just feel that it was a labor of love at this studio. They made a very large upfront investment

in getting the rights to the music and engaging all this talent. And now we're able, 80 plus years later, to make this something that people can have in their home with unprecedented quality. It never looked or sounded this good when it was finished. So you're hearing and seeing the film better than it could have been when it opened. And of course, when it opened, it was already shorn of those extra minutes. But we now have it. It's locked and it's available for people to buy and own and be very

important on their shelves. Yeah. And that's what makes this release, I think extra special, George. It's not just an upgrade to Blu-ray. It's not just an upgrade to HD. There was so much that went into this and it just puts kind of the DVD in the dust in a way in terms of if you're a fan of this film,

you're gonna wanna get this upgrade. And if you aren't familiar with this film, when you put it in, the music feels modern, the look of this film, there's no way you think that it's an 80 plus year old film just because of how great it looks. And the story is so entertaining. And I love the fact that many of the real people who were friends of George Gershwin are in the film.

Just adds to it to see them in it. Absolutely. As a historical piece. So just a terrific, terrific release George. Well, I'm excited that people can now own it. Yeah, that's important. Hi, this is Tim Millard host of the extras podcast and I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Bros.

Catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes.