Jazz Boat: a face on the cutting room floor

Jazz Boat sailed without me. In 1959, circumstances led me to London and consequently to believe that I might have made a brief appearance in a crowd scene in the 1960 Anthony Newley film. Part of Jazz Boat was filmed on the south bank of the Thames. I searched for the film for fifty years but to no avail.

I eventually told the story this year in a February posting called My Film Career (Offstage). Enter the good Matthew Coniam (Movietone News) of London, who read the posting, told me he had a copy of Jazz Boat, and sent a Region 2 DVD copy to me. (I have thanked him separately, and do so here again.)

In late spring of 2010, circumstances again led me to London and provided me the where-with-all to play the DVD. Came the scene, came the one frame at a time, step by step, came the dawning. A lifetime of watching films, with nary an appearance within one, remained unsullied. Jazz Boat sailed without me.

I informed Matthew, who, not surprisingly, summed up my absence perfectly. He told me in a comment:

“So sorry your fifty year quest for Jazz Boat ended up with the disappointing view of the underside of the editor's table from the vantage of the cutting room floor, but hopefully the scene itself brought back some memories, and remember that the camera does not catch all, merely that which fate casts within its four walls - you are still 'there', even if the lens is not sharp enough to spot you.”

Who could add to that?

My Film Career (Offstage)

June 26, 1959

London

When I was a young soldier in the United States Army, I was stationed in Germany in 1958 and 1959. In the summer of 1959, I took a ten day leave to London. Being a tourist, and an incurable Anglophile, I gravitated to the river Thames. South of the river, probably in Southwark, I happened across a camera crew shooting a scene for a film. I was told the film was to be called Jazz Boat. Anthony Newley was the star.

I believe I appeared in one scene. The crew was shooting a group of revelers ascending a gangway onto a Thames craft. I was in a crowd of onlookers -- on the left side when facing the boat, and would be easy to locate because I was in uniform. Of course, the scene I was in likely found its way to the cutting room floor. But even if cut, perhaps I was once seen in the rushes. And most of us know David Mamet’s comment that even Moses looked good in the rushes.

Jazz Boat. My brilliant career.

Postscript: I have sought a television showing, a video or a DVD of Jazz Boat for years – to no avail.