Best movies like Syncopation

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A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Syncopation Starring Adolphe Menjou, Jackie Cooper, Bonita Granville, George Bancroft, and more. If you liked Syncopation then you may also like: Virtue, Riverboat Rhythm, Jammin' the Blues, Alibi, Babes on Swing Street and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.

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Virtue

Given a second chance after her arrest for prostitution, Mae decides to go straight. Mae is soon befriended by kindly cab driver Jimmy Doyle who gets her work at a diner, where she meets Gert, another former prostitute. Mae and Jimmy fall in love, marry and save to buy a small business. Gert then pleads for money from Mae, which results in her unwitting involvement in a crime. Believing Mae has lied and cheated him, Jimmy threatens to leave her.

Riverboat Rhythm

A financially-strapped showboat captain struggles to stay in business.

Jammin' the Blues

In this short film, prominent jazz musicians of the 1940s gather for a rare filming of a jam session. This highly stylized chronicle features tenor sax legend Lester Young.

Alibi

Chick Williams, a prohibition gangster, rejoins his mob soon after being released from prison. When a policeman is murdered during a robbery, he falls under suspicion. The gangster took Joan, a policeman's daughter, to the theater, sneaked out during the intermission to commit the crime, then used her to support his alibi. The detective squad employs its most sophisticated and barbaric techniques, including planting an undercover agent in the gang, to bring him to justice.

Carolina Blues

When he loses his lead singer, bandleader Kay Kyser can't find a replacement he likes.

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Tensions rise when the trailblazing Mother of the Blues and her band gather at a Chicago recording studio in 1927. Adapted from August Wilson's play.

I Love a Bandleader

A painter suffering from amnesia convinces himself that he's a famous bandleader and finds romance with a pretty singer. Comedy with music.

Is Everybody Happy?

It is the story of Ted Lewis, popular band leader and clarinettist. The music for the film was written by Harry Akst and Grant Clarke, except for "St. Louis Blues" by W. C. Handy and "Tiger Rag". The film's title comes from Lewis's catchphrase "Is everybody happy?" The film's soundtrack exists on Vitaphone discs preserved at the UCLA Film and Television Archive, but the film itself is considered a lost film, according to the Vitaphone Project website. A five minute clip from the film can be found on YouTube.

Gang War

Saxophone player Clyde meets a woman named Flowers, and teaches her to dance. He later discovers that gangster boss "Blackjack" is also in love with her. "Blackjack" is also battling gang boss Mike Luego in a violent turf war.

New Orleans After Dark

Cops go under cover to track down a Mafia drug kingpin who has re-entered the country to sell "junk" to the prostitutes and "hopheads" on Bourbon Street. Edited from TV series N.O.P.D.

Ding Dong Williams

Ding Dong Williams, a clarinet player who can neither read nor write music is employed at a motion picture studio. The studio plans to use him and his six-piece band but his musical deficiencies are discovered and the plan scrapped. But the secretary of the head of the music department intercedes on his behalf and he is given a chance in the film.

What Am I Bid?

Discharged serviceman stops off in Hollywood and gets discovered as a next potential big country music star. Really just an excuse to have several country acts perform on film.

Born to Gamble

A wealthy man relates how gambling had tragic consequences for his family.

Blues in the Night

A struggling band find themselves attached to a fugitive and drawn into a series of old feuds and love affairs, as they try to stay together and find musical success.

Rainbow Over Broadway

Ex-vaudeville performer Trixie makes a come-back, and threatens to thwart the ambitions of her song-writing step-children, Bob and Judy.

Satchmo the Great

In this 1957 biography film of the jazz-great Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, he and his band tour the world as American good-will ambassadors bring jazz at its best to the people of the world. Within the film, the life of Louis Armstrong is portrayed through the music. One of the outstanding scenes in this "biography/docudrama" shows blind songwriter W. C. Handy, with tears streaming down his face, as Armstrong, backed by Leonard Bernstein leading the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, play Handy's immortal "St. Louis Blues."

New Orleans

A gambling hall owner relocates from New Orleans to Chicago and entertains his patrons with hot jazz by Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Woody Herman, and others.

Do You Love Me

Katharine Hilliard, mousy dean of a stuffy music school, meets and is insulted by swing band leader Barry Clayton on a train. To "show" him she takes a friend's advice, removes her glasses, and puts on a designer gown. Naturally, she becomes gorgeous. Soon, both Barry and crooner Jimmy Hale are after her, and she finds herself in the midst of triangles and misunderstandings.

The Powers Girl

Two small-town sisters who've come to New York City for very different reasons find themselves competing for the affections of a brash magazine photographer. Comedy.

The Last Parade

During the war two friends love the same nurse. After the war one becomes a detective, the other a racketeer.

The Man Who Dared

An "imaginative biography" of Anton Cermak, mayor of Chicago who was killed in the line of fire during an assassination attempt on President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in Miami on February 15, 1933.

Young Man of Manhattan

Two flappers try to get their newspaper reporter boyfriends to pay attention to them.

Fox Movietone Follies of 1929

Lila Beaumont is an understudy in a Broadway musical. Her boyfriend, George Shelby, arrives in New York hoping to take Lila back home with him to marry.

Safety in Numbers

Before handing over a large inheritance, a guardian hires three chorus girls to educate his charge about the "underside" of big-city life.

Sitting on the Moon

A successful songwriter and a struggling singer become involved professionally and romantically on the road to stardom.

Swing Out, Sister

Universal cowboy star Rod Cameron plays Geoffrey, conductor of a high-toned symphony orchestra. Secretly harboring the desire to become a swingin' jazz trumpeter, Geoffrey takes a job at a "hot" Broadway nightclub. Here he meets and falls in love with café songstress Donna (Frances Raeburn), who has led her family to believe that she's studying for a classical-music career. Meanwhile, a comedy-relief romance develops between Geoffrey's snooty valet Chumley (Arthur Treacher) and Donna's best pal Pat (Jacqueline De Wit). For those not interested in the plot (what there is of it), Swing Out, Sister includes specialty numbers by organist Selika Pettiford and the Lou Diamond Quintet.

Swing Out the Blues

The film is partly a parody of The Goodwill Court, a popular radio problem hosted by advice-dispenser "Mr. Anthony". The host of a "What's your problem?" radio hour tries to smooth the romantic path of singer Rich Cleveland (Haymes) and his socialite wife Penelope (Lynn Merrick). The fly in the ointment is Dena Marshall (Janis Carter), who has set her sights on the handsome Rich.

Pete Kelly's Blues

In 1927, a Kansas City, Missouri cornet player and his band perform nightly at a seedy speakeasy until a racketeer tries to extort them in exchange for protection.

Birth of the Blues

Jeff grows up near Basin Street in New Orleans, playing his clarinet with the dock workers. He puts together a band, the Basin Street Hot-Shots, which includes a cornet player, Memphis. They struggle to get their jazz music accepted by the cafe society of the city. Betty Lou joins their band as a singer and gets Louie to show her how to do scat singing. Memphis and Jeff both fall in love with Betty Lou.

Good Morning, Judge

A songwriter is sued for libel, and when he gets to court he discovers that his girlfriend is the plaintiff's attorney.

Larceny with Music

A former bootlegger is now the prosperous owner of a popular nightclub. A hustling promoter manages to pass off a young singer as the heir to a fortune and gets her booked at the club.

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