Lonixcap I just watched this on Turner Classic Movies the other night after not having seen it in years, back when it was a pan-and-scan version loaded with commercials.It was great seeing it uncut and commercial-free in it's original letterboxed CinemaScope format. Director Jack Webb shows a creative visual imagination, and along with cameraman Hal Rosson he creates some decent period atmosphere, despite the limits of those early widescreen lenses. This would have been better in the old 3-strip Technicolor format, but that's really splitting hairs.The thing with this picture that never gets it off the ground is Jack Webb, the actor. He's just not believable as a jazzman. Despite Ella Fitzgerald, who is tremendous, and Peggy Lee, somewhat wasted in this role (in more ways than one) Webb is wooden and one-dimensional. Maybe Monty Clift or even Jeffrey Hunter would have been better. James Dean would have made this into a classic, despite the hackneyed storyline of musicians having to pay the mob to keep their gig.That plot point should have been a given, with the musicians doing their gig and paying the mob and playing their music against the backdrop of jazz age 1920's.This movie needed less plot and more atmosphere, and a better leading man. Webb the actor sinks this one.

kapelusznik18 ****SPOILERS*** Jack Webb riding high in his "Dragnet" TV series fans out here as a "Just the Music Mame" clarinet jazz musician Pete Kelly coupled as a crime fighter, like his Sgt. Joe Friday, in battling the mob headed by the whale like mobster Fran "Francis" McCarg, Edmond O'Brien. It's McCarg who's attempting to take control of Kelly's "Big Seven Band" working out of "Rudy's Speakeasy" in downtown Kansas City as well as all the other big bands in the Mid-West. That by McCarg forcing him to pay, 25% of the take, homage to him and his homeboys or else get his arms & legs broken. Acting at first like a tough cop instead of a sensitive clarinet player Kelly change his act when his drummer boy Joey Firestone, Martin Milner, who refuses to give into Mcarg's demands is gunned down by his boys one rainy evening leaving "Rudy's" to dry out after an all night binge of heavy boozing.Kelly now giving into McCarg's demands has his entire band start to check out on him for better pastures, or gigs, in the east which includes his fellow clarinet player Al "Gunny" Gunnaway, Lee Marvin. It's Gunnaway who takes Kelly's lucky mouthpiece, in revenge for breaking up that band of his, for his clarinet that he once gave him as a present.Living in limbo with no futures in the music or band business to speak of by being controlled by McCarg Kelly gets his big break when McCarg slips up by beating his girlfriend singer Rose Hopkins, Peggy Lee, almost into a coma. That by Rose, who was too drunk, being unable to belt out a song at the nightclub she was preforming in making him, who kept saying what a big hit she is, look ridicules.***SPOILERS*** Kelly soon finds out that Rose now mentally damaged with the mind of a five year old has information about Firedtone's murder that can send McCarg, who ordered it, straight to the electric chair! The ending is something like a scene out of "Gunfight at the OK Corral" with Pete and his girlfriend ivy, Janet Leigh, who just came along for the ride confront McCarg and his henchmen in this empty ballroom for a final dance. It's interesting to see how Jack Webb can pull all this off going from a crime fighter in "Dragnet" to a jazz clarinet player in "Pete Kelly's Bules" and does a fairly good job in doing it. It's just that the public warn't ready to see Webb change horse in mid-stream which had him go back to playing Sgt. Joe Friday for the rest of his career until the early 1970's with only one film "-30-" in between!.

bkoganbing The background of the Prohibition Era of Tom Pendergast's Kansas City in the Twenties at its height is the setting for the story of Pete Kelly's Blues. Jack Webb's crisp documentary like style honed by years of doing Dragnet on television is the manner in which Pete Kelly's story of resistance to the mob is told. All Webb in the title role wants to do is play jazz, but playing jazz in mobbed up Kansas City came at a price.The one who wants the payoff is political ward boss/gangster Edmond O'Brien. He's got the swinging part of Kansas City in his pocket where all the speakeasies and clubs are and he's thought of a new racket, charge protection to the musicians, even to the extent of moving their own legitimate agents out. And O'Brien wants 25% not the usual 10% real agents charge.Webb's defiant, cowed, and then defiant again during the course of the film. The murder of his drummer Martin Milner takes a lot of the fight out of him. But O'Brien pushes way too hard and he's a really crude sort of thug. In the end Webb snaps.With one exception the cast is great. The music end is taken by two really great singers Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee who have some great numbers that show why they were the best in their business. Lee even copped an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, but lost to Jo Van Fleet for East Of Eden. Lee Marvin is here and not playing a thug, but is a clarinetist and Webb's best friend. Webb plays the trumpet. Andy Devine is law enforcement and deadly serious. The squeaky voice is moderated and Andy's bulk is used similarly to Laird Cregar in I Wake Up Screaming and Orson Welles in Touch Of Evil. Andy never had a role this serious on screen. And Peggy Lee even with that Oscar nomination never followed up on it, my guess being she thought of herself as a singer not an actress primarily.Janet Leigh who usually is great disappoints me here. Her role as an air-headed party girl is really out of place and why Webb is falling for her is a mystery. Later on she nearly gets him killed when he finally decides to face down O'Brien. Janet does her best, but the part makes no sense at all to me.The locale of Pete Kelly's Blues in Pendergast controlled Kansas City is interesting. O'Brien is just the kind of guy Pendergast would have as a lieutenant. Pendergast's name is not mentioned, in 1955 it didn't have to be. The recent president of the United States, Harry S. Truman was a product of that machine and that was never out of the public's mind even after Pendergast was dead.Dixieland jazz fans will really like the music from Pete Kelly's Blues, I certainly did along with the rest of the film.

skallisjr Pete Kelly's Blues was one of three radio shows that starred Jack Webb. In addition to Dragnet, there was also Pat Novak For Hire. It, and Pete Kelly's Blues, dripped with colorful similes, which Dragnet didn't.For those who, like me, listened to the radio show, the film is especially nice; for those who didn't, the story might drag a bit.The story's simple: during the Roaring 20s, Pete Kelly headed a band that a gangster wanted a cut of the profits from. He leaned on Kelly, and after killing one of his band members, gets the bandleader to sign up. Then, he forces Kelly to "hire" a lady vocalist, the gangster's girlfriend. Eventually, Kelly gets into a shootout showdown with the gangster.Kelly isn't a stereotypical hero: he talks tough, but usually folds when the chips are down.But the atmosphere's really nice, and the music is great. The Pete Kelly theme is a little overused, but it still sounds good.