......the story of an "ubermensch" musician,a man with no peers in his field,young,gifted and misunderstood. Unfortunately because he is played by Mr K.Douglas with his rictus grin,rictus scowl and rictus every - bloody thing,he evokes very little sympathy; in me at any rate. More Bunny Berigan then Bix Beiderbecke,Mr Douglas is one hell of a trumpet player.Like in countless movies before and since he wants to play "his" music and refuses to "sell out". But jazzers who don't "sell out"quite often starve. A later echo might be seen in "New York,New York" where Mr De Niro ends up on the coat tails of Miss Minnelli until he can no longer live with himself. No such quibbles for Kirk who burbles away behind Doris Day in the end. Before then he takes to the demon drink,enters unsuitable relationships and does all the jazz - ish things Hollywood producers fondly imagine creative musicians like to do. Doris Day seems more comfortable in her role than Lauren Bacall whose more complex character eludes her. Nice rather than amazing trumpet playing by Harry James complements the movie which is directed by Michael Curtiz with his customary panache and professionalism. A better film about a jazz trumpet player is "Pete Kelly's Blues" which is actually set in the Beiderbecke era. But "Young man with a horn" from a somewhat florid novel by Dorothy Baker is well worth watching for all that.

Rick Martin is a young boy who finds the love for music after his mother dies. The trumpet becomes his instrument, and he learns to play it from an old master called Art Hazzard. Young Man with a Horn from 1950 is directed by Michael Curtiz. Rick Martin is first played by Orley Lindgren, then by Kirk Douglas. Lauren Bacall plays his troubled wife Amy North. Doris Day is the singer friend Jo Jordan. Hoagy Carmichael is the pianist friend Willie 'Smoke' Willoughby. Juano Hernandez portrays Art Hazzard. The cast is quite superb. Douglas does excellent job in the lead. Especially when Rick starts having problems with the alcohol, then Kirk really has to act. And that he does really well! I think the movie becomes more interesting when it portrays all those problems this young man starts having. Problems with marriage, drinking. When it's not just about music and how good he is at it. Bacall's performance is very film noir, which works fairly good in this movie. Day is very touching in the caring she has for her friend. And she can really sing, which we all knew! If you're a fan of the main trio, if you like good music, if you like drama you should see this movie.

This is largely a fun, yet serious, musical film noir, one of my favorite films. The screenplay centers on Rick Martin: a virtuoso jazz pianist and trumpet player. He has a natural ear for music and spends all day and all night on his music. He is rebellious, loving to improvise rather than sticking to the sheet music sometimes provided. Besides, he doesn't read music very well. "I don't play for people. I play for myself". This attitude almost ends his musical career, until he finds an accommodating band, and goes on to become famous among musicians. Music composer and pianist Hoagy Carmichael opens the film with an explanatory narration. This is followed by a characterization of Rich as a boy, played by Orley Lindgren, floundering as a virtual orphan and street urchin, until he discovers he has a natural ear for music. Kirk Douglas plays Rick as an adult and is excellent.The characterization of Rick is loosely based on the novel of the same title, which is loosely based on the life of Bix Beiderbecke: storied, but doomed, jazz pianist and trumpet player of the 1920s, dying at age 28, apparently of alcohol poisoning. The film provides an apparently happy ending, presumably guessing that this is what most audiences would prefer. This also provides hope that addictions to drugs and all consuming passions can often be cured by sufficient insight and motivation.Hoagy knew the real Bix and provided some pointers to Douglas how to play him. He also serves as one of Rick's few consistent friends, as Smokes, appearing occasionally throughout the film, usually as a piano player or narrator. Another good friend is African American Art Hazzard, who much helped him get started playing the trumpet and appears periodically until he is hit by an auto, in a seemingly suicidal incident. Rich plays his trumpet at his funeral....Famous Harry James apparently did all the trumpet playing for Douglas, although he receives virtually no credit. Doris Day is present as Jo, a friend and sometimes girlfriend to Rick. Her acting clearly is not as polished as that of fellow stars Douglas and Lauren Bacall, but she brings a calming and upbeat presence with her singing and motherly attention to Rick. Unfortunately, she's not willing to go further, saying she doesn't get too involved with married men, meaning Rick's devotion to his trumpet. She calls him "a crazy young man with a horn". In being a big band singer, Doris is playing herself from 1939-47, singing several standards, among other songs.The other woman who pops into Rick's romantic life is Amy, well played by Lauren Bacall. Amy is introduced to Rick by friend Jo. By Amy's admission, she and Rick are polar opposites in most important ways. Yet, Rick soon develops a romantic interest in her, despite several warnings by her that she will be poison in a marriage. She quips "Don't fall in love with me. Only people who respect themselves are capable of real love. I don't happen to respect myself". She envies both Jo and Rick for their superb musical talents and commercial success. However,she dismisses jazz as "a cheap narcotic". In contrast to Rick, she has tried out various jobs, but hasn't found anything sufficiently interesting to hold her passion, or that she is good enough at to rise professionally. Currently, she hopes to become a psychiatrist, but soon flunks out. She's still 'a little girl lost'. She is frank about herself in many ways, but doesn't reveal that she has lesbian tendencies. The film censor board wouldn't allow direct references to lesbians. Thus,we are only given indirect hints. Jo says she's a strange girl and is all mixed up inside. Rick later tells her she is sick and needs to see a psychiatrist. During their brief marriage, she decides to take a trip to Europe with a girlfriend. During their marriage, they were mostly on different shifts, thus didn't see much of each other awake. He says he married her because he thought she was an intelligent classy girl, but found out otherwise. She says she married him because she thought some of his focus and drive would rub off on her. Opposites sometimes attract, and sometimes this works out, but this marriage was doomed from the beginning.There is a curious incident toward the end. While drunk, Rick wanders into a music store and buys a beat up second hand trumpet. I think he is making an analogy between that trumpet and himself. If you have seen "Lust for Life", released a few years after this film, you will see that Douglas portrays a similar insecurity and intensity to both unbalanced men, whose art or music was their all consuming passion. It drove each man mad that they couldn't fully convey their passion in their work. They were pathological perfectionists.

Based on Dorothy Baker's 1938 novel "Young Man With a Horn," which emulated the life of jazz legend Bix Beiderbecke, the 1950 Warner Bros. filmization finds its star, Kirk Douglas, following up his knockout performance in 1949's "Champion" in truly winning fashion. Here, he plays Rick Martin, a gifted trumpeter whose love of improvisatory hot jazz keeps getting him in trouble with the more constrictive dance bands that he works in to make a living. His story is told in flashback by his pianist pal "Smoke" Willoughby (a particularly well-cast Hoagy Carmichael), who introduces us to the preteen Rick. A handsome, aimless youth, Rick only perks up when he discovers the piano at a local gospel meeting. His love of music fueled, Rick toils away in a bowling alley to earn money for a pawnshop trumpet, on which he is instructed by his mentor, Art Hazzard, leader of a band called Art Hazzard and His Dixie Pickers. The film follows Martin's rise to fame after arriving in NYC, and his involvement with two very different sorts of women: Jo Jordan, a sweet, wholesome big-band singer, and a mixed-up, sultry, neurotic bad girl, Amy North, who becomes Rick's wife. These two women are portrayed by Doris Day and Lauren Bacall, and really, is it necessary to even mention who plays whom?Though based on Beiderbecke's life, "Young Man With a Horn" contains some important differences. Beiderbecke, who played the cornet, not a trumpet, also started on the piano, which he taught himself at age 3; much younger than Rick. He did, however, start on the cornet at age 14, a fact that adheres fairly closely to the film. Also like Rick, Bix supported himself by playing in commercial big bands, while indulging his love for hot jazz on the side. Both men had alcohol problems, but whereas Bix died of pneumonia at the age of 28 (in 1931), Rick's bout with pneumonia only led to even greater success. And whereas Bix' heyday was the 1920s, Rick's was very much the noirish '40s. As mentioned, Douglas gives another spectacular performance here, really making us feel the anguish of the true artist. Just like his Vincent van Gogh in 1956's "Lust for Life," Rick follows his own muse and could not care less about the monetary aspects of his art. Douglas is completely convincing when required to simulate his trumpet performances (big-band leader Harry James, also the musical adviser on this film, provided the awesome, actual playing). Douglas, though portraying a rather mild-mannered, soft-spoken character, still gets to give one of his patented, seething rants, toward the end of his marriage with Amy; fans should just love seeing him shove Bacall around as he finally busts loose. Lauren, for her part, is just fine as his mess of a wife, and Doris gets to shine as well...and sing such standards as "The Very Thought of You" and "Too Marvelous for Words." Kudos should also go out to young Orley Lindgren, who plays Rick as a child--how touching it is when his eyes fill with tears, as he listens to Hazzard play for the first time!--and to Juano Hernandez as Hazzard himself, whose gentle instruction and support of Rick, throughout their careers, is a mainstay of the film."Young Man With a Horn" was yet another feather in the already crowded cap of Hungarian director Michael Curtiz, who here elicited sterling performances from his cast and gave his film an ofttimes noirish feel, especially in the picture's latter sections, which make excellent use of NYC locations (Rick's drunken stumble beneath the 3rd Ave. el may bring to mind Ray Milland's similar walk in 1945's "The Lost Weekend"). Curtiz, who had already helmed such Warner Bros. favorites as "Captain Blood," "The Adventures of Robin Hood" and "The Sea Hawk" (all starring Errol Flynn), as well as such "minor" films as "Casablanca," "Yankee Doodle Dandy," "Mildred Pierce" and "White Christmas," here worked with Douglas for the first and last time. He had already directed Doris in her first two films, the musicals "Romance on the High Seas" (1948) and "My Dream Is Yours" (1949), and would go on to work with her in 1951's "I'll See You in My Dreams"; likewise, he would go on to direct Bacall later that same year in "Bright Leaf."In a film with any number of superb scenes, several yet manage to stand out: Rick performs (appropriately enough) "With a Song in My Heart" in Greenwich Village's Galba's jazz club in front of his old mentor, Hazzard; Rick plays trumpet in accompaniment to the church spiritual "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" at Hazzard's funeral, following his drunken temper tantrum at the older man; a washed-up Rick hits the skids and wanders around town, in a sequence that may also bring to mind Susan Hayward's Lillian Roth character taking a similar, urban, sodden perambulation in 1955's "I'll Cry Tomorrow." But what most viewers will come away with here is the feeling of having encountered an uncompromising artist who holds true to his ideals no matter what, and a reaffirmation of real music's worth in an increasingly dumbed-down, commercialized industry. "They only buy the new songs to learn the words," Smoke tells Martin at one point; words that were never more true than they are today....