The film follows big band leader Glenn Miller (1904–1944) (James Stewart) from his early days in the music business in 1929 through to his 1944 death when the airplane he was flying in was lost over the English Channel during World War II. Prominent placement in the film is given to Miller's courtship and marriage to Helen Burger (June Allyson), and various cameos by actual musicians who were colleagues of Miller.
American World War II veteran Jerry Mulligan (Gene Kelly) is now an exuberant expatriate in Paris trying to make a reputation as a painter. His friend and neighbor, Adam Cook (Oscar Levant), is a struggling concert pianist who is a longtime associate of a French singer, Henri Baurel (Georges Guétary). At the ground-floor bar, Henri tells Adam about his cultured girlfriend. Jerry joins them later, before going out to sell his art.
As a young boy, after his mother dies, Rick Martin sees a trumpet in the window of a pawn shop. He works in a bowling alley to save up enough money to buy it. Rick grows up to be an outstanding musician, tutored by jazzman Art Hazzard. He lands a job playing for the big band of Jack Chandler, getting to know the piano player Smoke Willoughby and the beautiful singer Jo Jordan.
Mild-mannered Professor Hobart Frisbee (Danny Kaye) and his fellow academics, among them Professor Magenbruch (Benny Goodman), are writing a musical encyclopedia. In the process, they discover that there is some new popular music that is called jazz, swing, boogie woogie or rebop, introduced to them by two window washers Buck and Bubbles. The professors become entangled in the problems of nightclub singer Honey Swanson (Virginia Mayo). She needs a place to hide out from the police, who want to question her about her gangster boyfriend Tony Crow (Steve Cochran). She invites herself into their sheltered household, over Frisbee's objections. While there, she introduces them to the latest in jazz, with which they are unfamiliar, giving the film an excuse to feature many of the best musicians of the era. The songs they play include "A Song Is Born", "Daddy-O", "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You", "Flying Home", and "Redskin Rumba".
Biographie des frères Tommy et Jimmy Dorsey, instrumentistes et chefs d'orchestre américains de jazz, depuis leur enfance à Shenandoah (Pennsylvanie), en passant par leurs parcours individuels, avec leurs orchestres respectifs.
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.
Ce court-métrage est une jam session de plusieurs musiciens de jazz afro-américains dont Lester Young, Marie Bryant au chant et le danseur Archie Savage qui fait du Jitterbug dans une ambiance sombre qui correspond à la musique. Le film a été révolutionnaire en son temps et a été une vitrine pour les musiciens et les artistes alors peu connus qui, autrement, n'auraient pas été ainsi exposés au public.
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.