'You want to make a silent film – about jazz?'

Charlie Chaplin's City Lights and its live score opened Dan Pritzker's eyes to the possibilities of silent movies. But was choosing Louis Armstrong as his subject a step too far?I was working on a screenplay about Buddy Bolden, "inventor" of jazz, when I went to a screening of the classic Chaplin silent film City Lights. Dimly lit beneath the silver screen was the Chicago Symphony Orchestra playing the score live. I'd never seen anything like it. By the time the Little Tramp restored the Blind G...

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