Emmet Ray (Sean Penn) is a jazz guitarist who achieved some acclaim in the 1930s with a handful of recordings for RCA Victor, but who faded from public view under mysterious circumstances. Though a talented musician, Ray's personal life is a shambles. He is a spendthrift, womanizer and pimp who believes that falling in love will ruin his musical career. Due to his heavy drinking, he's often late or even absent for performances with his quintet. After music, his favorite hobby is shooting rats at garbage dumps. Ray idolizes famed guitarist Django Reinhardt, and is said to have fainted in his presence and to have fled a nightclub performance with severe stage fright upon hearing a false rumor that Reinhardt was in the audience.
Le jeune et riche Danny Churchill ne s'intéresse qu'aux filles, au vin et à la musique. Qu'à cela ne tienne, son père décide de l'envoyer dans un établissement scolaire strict où aucune présence féminine n'est tolérée. Mais la rencontre du jeune homme avec la dénommée Ginger Gray va changer la donne.
Durant la parenthèse de sa carrière (1975-1981), Miles Davis, à la dérive chez lui, se fait dérober une bande enregistrée. Le trompettiste se fait aider par Dave Brill, un journaliste de Rolling Stone, afin de la retrouver. Entre-temps, il se remémore ses années glorieuses sur scènes et ses années malheureuses avec son épouse Frances Taylor sous l'emprise d'alcool et de drogues avant son grand retour en 1981…
Dale Turner, a famous African-American tenor saxophone player in Paris in the 1950s is befriended by Francis, a struggling French graphic designer specialized in film posters, who idolizes the musician and who tries desperately to help him to escape alcohol abuse. As he succeeds, the budding friendship they develop changes their lives forever.
Cynthia Pilgrim (Betty Grable) is the top typewriting (Typewriter) student of the first graduating class of the Packard Business College in New York City, and as such she is offered a position with the Pritchard Shipping Company in Boston. There, she finds an office of men overseen by office manager Mr. Saxon (Gene Lockhart). When Cynthia introduces herself to company co-owner John Pritchard (Dick Haymes), he tells her he thought all expert typists were male and his policy is to hire only men. Cynthia asks for an opportunity to prove she's as efficient as her male counterparts, but John refuses and offers her train fare back to New York.
The young Benny Goodman is taught clarinet by a Chicago music professor. He is advised by bandleader Edward Ory to play whichever kind of music he likes best, but to make a living, Benny begins by joining the Ben Pollack traveling band.
Cantor Rabinowitz wants his son to carry on the generations-old family tradition and become a cantor at the synagogue in the Jewish ghetto of Manhattan's Lower East Side. But down at the beer garden, thirteen-year-old Jakie Rabinowitz is performing so-called jazz tunes. Moisha Yudelson spots the boy and tells Jakie's father, who drags him home. Jakie clings to his mother, Sara, as his father declares, "I'll teach him better than to debase the voice God gave him!" Jakie threatens: "If you whip me again, I'll run away — and never come back!" After the whipping, Jakie kisses his mother goodbye and, true to his word, runs away. At the Yom Kippur service, Rabinowitz mournfully tells a fellow celebrant, "My son was to stand at my side and sing tonight – but now I have no son." As the sacred Kol Nidre is sung, Jakie sneaks back home to retrieve a picture of his loving mother.
Maggie Prescott (Kay Thompson) is a fashion magazine publisher and editor, for Quality magazine, who is looking for the next big fashion trend. She wants a new look for the magazine. Maggie wants the look to be both "beautiful" and "intellectual". She and famous fashion photographer Dick Avery (Fred Astaire) want models who can "think as well as they look." The two brainstorm and come up with the idea to find a "sinister-looking" book store in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan. They subsequently find a bookstore named "Embryo Concepts."
Peter P. Peters (Fred Astaire), an American ballet dancer billed as "Petrov", dances for a ballet company in Paris owned by the bumbling Jeffrey Baird (Edward Everett Horton). Peters secretly wants to blend classical ballet with modern jazz dancing, and when he sees a photo of famous tap dancer Linda Keene (Ginger Rogers), he falls in love with her. He contrives to meet her, but she is less than impressed. They meet again on an ocean liner traveling back to New York, and Linda warms to Petrov. Unknown to them, a plot is launched as a publicity stunt "proving" that they are actually married. Outraged, Linda becomes engaged to the bumbling Jim Montgomery (William Brisbane), much to the chagrin of both Peters and Arthur Miller (Jerome Cowan), her manager, who secretly launches more fake publicity. Peters and Keene, unable to squelch the rumor, decide to actually marry and then immediately get divorced. Linda begins to fall in love with her husband, but then discovers him with another woman, Lady Denise Tarrington (Ketti Gallian), and leaves before he can explain. Later, when she comes to his new show to personally serve him divorce papers, she sees him dancing with dozens of women, all wearing masks with her face on them: Peters has decided that if he cannot dance with Linda, he will dance with images of Linda. Seeing that he truly loves her, she happily joins him onstage.
Ce film est une interprétation cinématographique de la vie de Charlie Parker, alias "Bird" (Yardbird en VO), jazzman visionnaire et musicien accompli qui éleva le saxophone à un niveau d'expression inédit. Le film dépeint alternativement la jeunesse et la maturité de cet homme et de ce créateur de génie, sa carrière et ses drames personnels.
Set in 1960s Bombay, the film tells the story of Balraj (Ranbir Kapoor), a street fighter/boxer who is in love with the jazz singer Rosie. Seeing Rosie (Anushka Sharma) with wealthy men further sparks his dream of becoming a "big-shot", believing that if he manages to become rich, he might win Rosie's heart. Balraj and his friend Chimman (Satyadeep Misra) then catch the eye of Kaizad Khambatta (Karan Johar), a wealthy businessman who is impressed by Balraj and offers him to manage his club "Bombay Velvet", which Khambatta uses to further his illegal tasks and activities. He also nicknames Balraj "Johnny", which then becomes his identification. As well as this, Johnny and Chimman fulfill minor tasks for Khambatta, including capturing a dirty photograph of a minister who Khambatta wants to blackmail. This news reaches Jimmy Mistri, a media reporter, who also happens to be the same wealthy man Johnny had previously seen with Rosie.
Everyone on staff at Tottney Castle knows that the lovely Lady Alyce Marshmorton must marry soon, so a wager is proposed as to the identity of the lucky man. With all the likely candidates already claimed, young footman Albert places a bet on a "Mr. X," someone totally out of the blue.
The action takes place in the early 1960s in Paris suburbs. Maurice Papon was Prefect of Paris Police for several years in the capital of a French company that has returned some racism in the minds.
A kidnapping goes down in 1934 Kansas City. Blondie O'Hara's petty thief husband Johnny is taken by gangster "Seldom Seen" and held prisoner at the Hey Hey Club, one of the hot spots of the Kansas City jazz scene. Blondie herself kidnaps Mrs. Stilton, the wife of a local politician, played by Michael Murphy; Mrs. Stilton is addicted to laudanum (an opium liquid) and has secrets of her own. Blondie's plan is to blackmail Mr. Stilton into helping to free Johnny.