Listen to the opening film music to "Young Man With a Horn":

 

 

"A finely wrought melodrama of its time" - Radio Times

Contrary to what has been written over the years about Doris Day's performance in "Young Man With A Horn", this was not one of her great performances. She was still "in training" at Warner Brothers and seemed to be rushed into this film to prove that she could act, not just sing. Day had not received all-out top billing in any of her previous pictures, although she had certainly been the centrepiece in all of them. In this film, she received third, but equal billing with Kirk Douglas and Lauren Bacall and for the first time, she was not the main character, Douglas was, as Rick Martin, a character based on the great trumpet player, Bix Beiderbecke, who grew up poor with an older sister who cared more about living her own life rather than properly raising her young brother.

Rick becomes fascinated by music at a young age, first by the piano, which he learned to play in one day, and later by the trumpet, which he purchased one day after wandering the streets. After he meets Art Hazzard (Juano Hernandez), a friendly black trumpet player who takes the young boy under his wing. Hazzard becomes the father figure in lad Martin's life. He teaches Rick how to play the trumpet and imparts valuable knowledge to him, not only about music, but also about life itself. Their relationship is so close, that Rick refers to Hazzard as "Pops".

Grown up, Rick is obsessed with music and has thoughts of nothing else. Hazzard, having lived a similar existence, doesn't want young Rick to end up like him, no wife, children or family. He tells Rick that he is like a "bird trying to fly on one wing...you'll stay up for a while, but then you're going to fall". After Hazzard leaves on tour, Rick secures a good job playing with Jack Chandler's band. There, he meets Smoke Willoughby (Hoagy Carmichael), pianist with the aggregation. The band's singer, Jo Jordan (Doris Day) is puzzled, but fascinated by the new player. The problem is, Rick Martin, has been jazz trained and Chandler's band plays for innocent dances where novelty tunes are all the rage. Even when Jo, in rehearsal, sings "The Very Thought of You", Rick is compelled to play jazzy riffs behind her, much to the dissatisfaction of the bandleader. He is ordered to follow the music, verbatim.

Jo gets to know Rick after one of their shows. She recognises his style of playing as being very much like a "guy who is on records, Art Hazzard". This pleases Rick, who tells her that it was Hazzard who taught him to play and fuelled his obsession with the trumpet. Jo realises, like Hazzard, that Rick is consumed with his music. She warns him that he'll "go off his rocker" if he doesn't develop some other interests. My interpretation of what she meant by "other interests", perhaps, was her. His vow to someday "do something on the trumpet" and to "hit a note that nobody's ever heard before" frightens Jo, whose concern for Rick grows. Chandler, the bandleader, is a kind of boyfriend to Jo, but her feelings are moving steadily towards Rick. Chandler knows this and becomes hostile towards Rick when he and a few of the other musicians jam to a jazz tune between shows. He fires Rick. Jo tries to help Rick by talking to Chandler, but Rick is determined to leave. Jo, exasperated, calls him "young man with a horn, crazy young man with a horn". This is a very touching scene and Doris and Kirk play it well. Their goodbye ends with a handshake, not a kiss.

Rick leaves, but not alone. Smoke quits the band and they both set out to conquer the music world. They play in every dive, burlesque house and juke joint from coast to coast. Meanwhile, Jo Jordan begins to enjoy greater success as a singer, appearing in top clubs from New York to California. After not much luck, Smoke goes back to Indiana and Rick goes it alone. Arriving in New York, where Art Hazzard is playing at Galba's, a swank club in Greenwich Village, Rick encounters Jo Jordan again. She is headlining at the Strand Theatre. Rick listens backstage as she sings "You're Just Too Marvellous For Words" and revels in how good she has become. Rick's reunion with Art is heartfelt. Art insists upon Rick playing a number and Jo, who accompanies him to the club, is enthralled by his brilliant playing of "With A Song in My Heart". Jo arranges for Martin to meet Phil Morrison (Jerome Cowan) who is looking for a trumpet player for his orchestra, which is playing at the Netherlands Roof, an A-list spot in Gotham. Soon Rick receives billing with the band and his star begins to rise quickly.

At Galba's one evening, Jo brings her friend, Amy North (Lauren Bacall) to hear Rick play. Amy is sophisticated, educated and studying to become a psychiatrist. She says to Rick, "tell me about jazz, you think it's purely African...I didn't come here to listen to it...I came here to study the people, watch their faces, they're interesting..." Well, Rick was "interested" in Amy. She was cool, beautiful and sexy. In her eyes, Rick saw many things that he'd never seen in Jo. During Jo's song, "I May Be Wrong", Amy comments, "Jo is interesting, isn't she? So simple and uncomplicated..." Amy on the other hand is complicated. She has a bird named "Louise" whom she introduces as her "best friend", describes herself as an "intellectual mountain goat" and she lives in a luxurious apartment. They become inseparable and he falls in love, despite the warning she gives him about " not falling in love" with her.

Rick sends for Smoke and gets him a job in Morrison's orchestra. Meanwhile, Jo confronts Rick about Amy, telling him "if I can only make you believe that I didn't come here because I'm hurt or jealous...Amy isn't a stage door pick-up, I know her much better than you do, Rick...she's a strange girl and you've never known anyone like her before, I can understand all that...but inside, way inside, she's all mixed up..." Today, most critics interpret that speech as a warning that Amy was a lesbian. Certainly, her relationship with another woman, later in the picture, supports this theory. Jo's speech is interrupted when Amy walks in from the adjoining room to announce that she and Rick were married the day before.

The marriage is tumultuous with Amy returning to school during the day and Rick playing all night in clubs. The union suffers when their schedules conflict and Amy's demeanour turns cold and distant. When Amy starts staying out and not coming home, Rick takes to the bottle. Art tries to come to his rescue, but Rick is belligerent towards him. Confused and disoriented, Art is struck by a car and taken to Belleview Hospital. Rick, rushes to the facility to apologise, but he is too late. Art has died. In a poignant scene in the church during his funeral, Rick gets up and takes Art's trumpet which lies on his coffin and plays a mournful, "Nobody Knows the Trouble I Feel".

Amy announces that she and "a girl I met" may go to Paris to study art together, since she has flunked her final exams. She was aloof as she spoke, not considering the fact that she was a married woman. After Rick doesn't show for a party hosted by Amy, they argue and express their true feelings towards one another. Rick quits his job with Morrison who complains about his drinking and decides to play music the way he feels it. The trumpet has become a "drug" for Rick, and he wants to play day and night, trying to forget his mounting personal problems.

In a recording session, playing behind old friend, Jo Jordan, Rick trys to hit that impossible note of which he's always dreamed. Realising that the note was never possible, he parallels his life with the failure and has a mental breakdown, sinking deeper into alcoholism. Ending up in an alcoholic sanatorium, Rick is visited by pal, Smoke and the woman who really loves him, Jo Jordan. Rick tells Smoke, "I got lost". According to the ending of the picture, he recovered and went on to continue in a successful career. This was a well-written script by Carl Foreman and Edmund H. North, based on the novel by Dorothy Baker. The whole production was first-rate and the characters of Rick Martin, Jo Jordan and especially Amy North were finely drawn. Miss Bacall gave an excellent performance as did Kirk Douglas and Hoagy Carmichael. Juano Hernandez was good as Art Hazzard and Doris Day held her own in a different type of role. On this viewing, I appreciated her much more than before. I think it may take two or three viewings of this to really absorb the magnitude of all that happens here.

Listen to Doris sing "I May Be Wrong but I Think You're Wonderful"

The movie seems rather long at 112 minutes, but there is nothing here that won't be of interest to serious moviegoers. Much of the film looks to have been shot on location in New York, but if it wasn't, kudos must go out the set decoration by William Wallace. Michael Curtiz proved, once again, that he was one great director. Miss Day's singing is wonderful throughout and Harry James' trumpet playing (for Kirk Douglas) was thrilling. This is the movie that inspired a number of hopeful young moviegoers, like Frankie Avalon, Sal Mineo and others, to try acting as a profession. That's a respectful tribute to Mr. Douglas. 
Ralph McKnight, New York, October, 2001

 

Bix Beiderbecke taught himself to play the cornet when he was in his teens. During his brief career he became one of the true sensations of the Jazz Age.  Read story

Other Reviews - Derald Hendry:

“Young men who blow their own horns can be quite boring. In the case of this one, though, considerable interest is evoked, for the young man is Kirk Douglas, and as he becomes the trumpet-tootling genius of the late 20s a colorful era of jazz is explored. Chronologically the story traces the musicians life from a drab boyhood to flaming success. But we can tell you the going isn’t easy. Particularly when Mr. Douglas sidesteps amiable Doris Day and marries Lauren Bacall, who, we believe, is customarily described as “sultry” and we’ll let it go at that. However, for keeping Hoagy Carmichael and Juano Hernandez around, and for having Harry James do the trumpeting for Mr. Douglas, Michael Curtiz is entitled to at least a brass medal for directing this musically intricate pre-bebop piece.” Ladies Home Journal (?)

“Jo Jordan herself is a celluloid creation not far removed from the real Doris Day, when she was just the kid with the vocal chords, traveling from town to town on one-night stands. Although the songs in Young Man With a Horn are subordinated to the drama, Day’s renderings..are smooth and mellow, perfectly capturing the style and tone of the big band singer she is play. For once, even Ray Heindorf’s musical score is appropriate, a rich jazz flavor permeating the bluesy, smoky orchestrations.”
George Morris, Doris Day, A Pyramid Illustrated History of the Movies.

  When Isodore Demsky and Betty Perske dated in New York, they little dreamed they'd one day co-star in a movie biopic of their hero, jazz cornetist Bix Biederbecke. But here they are on the Warner Bros lot, now rechristened Kirk Douglas and Lauren Bacall respectively, he dubbed by the great Harry James on trumpet, and she playing a daring for its day society closet lesbian.
   Warners softened the source novel substantially, and, despite protests from brilliant director Michael Curtiz, a relatively happy ending was tacked on. Nevertheless, enough of the sordid drama managed to get through, and this is a finely wrought melodrama of its time, with Douglas particularly outstanding as the self-absorbed horn player, leading vocalist and good girl Doris Day on some superbly staged standards such as The Man I Love and Get Happy, and the whole tragic tale told in flashback by a warm-hearted Hoagy Carmichael. The sleazy tone of the original novel by Dorothy Baker is preserved, along with all the pseudonyms for the real people, but in the UK the American title was changed to 'Young Man of Music' when the original was deemed too sexually suggestive.

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