![]() Her death was not unexpected, as she had contracted cold which developed into a complication of complaints either of which might have resulted in death. Yet the movie is worth seeing if only for one thing-the wonderful, brooding music of a man for whom recognition was long overdue. Scott Joplin, and a bride of only two months, after an illness of seven weeks duration, died Saturday after noon at 3 o’clock p.m. The movie implies they reconciled, which in reality never happened. It also touches on the growing animosity between Joplin and Stark, but this too is sugarcoated. ![]() They did collaborate on one piece, "Heliotrope Bouquet", when Chauvin was dying and no longer able to play-this the movie gets right. The movie implies they were friends from the earliest days, which they were not. ![]() Chauvin in his prime would compose beautiful rags on the spot, never to be heard again, because he could not write them down. Hayden is not even mentioned in the film, which prefers to focus on Joplin and the tragic, unsung musical genius Louis Chauvin, who Joplin barely knew. But the movie either ignores or glosses over certain details, such as Joplin's longtime friendship and collaboration with Scott Hayden. Billy Dee Williams is a superb Joplin, as is Art Carney as his publisher, John Stark. This movie rode the wave of his renewed popularity, but plays so loose with the facts of his life that we end up knowing little more about him. Joplin's work received long-overdue attention from music scholars, and he was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer for his body of work, some fifty known rags, waltzes, marches-and one opera, Treemonisha. In 1973, Marvin Hamlisch used the then-largely unknown Joplin's music in the movie "The Sting," spurring a ragtime revival and a renewed interest in Joplin specifically. The man who gave us the Maple Leaf Rag and the Entertainer, Scott Joplin, once said that he would not become known until fifty years after his death.
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