Critics reviews

A succession of musical and comic acts staged and strung together with vivid originality by Broadway veteran John Murray Anderson (for his sole screen-directing credit), the film has historical importance for several reasons, one being that it’s the movie debut of a crooner named Bing Crosby.

A forgotten pop artifact painstakingly restored to its "two-strip" Technicolor glory, King of Jazz is a jaw-droppingly garish revue of songs and comedy sketches. . . . A technical marvel, the film utilizes the first Technicolor animation, and expert use of superimposition and crane shots.

It has a potpourri of special effects to enliven musical numbers – super-impositions, imaginative sets for the dancers, and more. But the camera, shackled by the as yet not fully understood demands of sound too often stares blandly from front on, never joining in the dance. The film was not a success on its release, and now is much more a curiosity, a brief time capsule of popular variety entertainment of the time.

A significant movie restoration not only can return a film's patina of newness but its place in film history as well. That may be the case when the musical revue "King of Jazz" (1930), brought back to something of its original splendor, emerges from the vaults in the soft, shimmering red and green tones of early Technicolor.