Young Man With a Horn

Young Man With a Horn (1950)

  • 64% of users liked it
    (1,170 ratings)

The life of tragic jazz great Bix Beiderbecke is given the "a clef" treatment in Warner Bros. Young Man With a Horn. Kirk Douglas plays the Beiderbecke character, here named Rick Martin. An ace trumpter player, Martin is one of the few white musicians to flourish in the black-dominated jazz scene of… More

Unrated, 1 hr. 52 min.
Directed By
Michael Curtiz
Written By
Carl Foreman, Edmund H. North
Genres
Drama, Romance, Musical & Performing Arts, Classics
In Theaters
Feb 9, 1950 Wide
On DVD
Apr 26, 2005

Critic Reviews

  • Steve Crum, Video-Reviewmaster.com

    Fine Kirk Douglas character study directed by Curtiz.

  • Jeremiah Kipp, Slant Magazine

    Young Man With a Horn casts Kirk Douglas as a selfish artist who gets his comeuppance, but it's a theme that smacks of bull****.

  • Jeremiah Kipp, Slant Magazine

    Dramatically contrived and thematically feeble.

  • Christopher Null, Filmcritic.com

    a fair example of a somewhat overworked genre.

Critic ratings and reviews powered by RottenTomatoes.com

Fresh (60% or more critics rated the movie positively)

Rotten (59% or fewer critics rated the movie positively)

Featured Audience Ratings

  • AJ V


    Kirk Douglas plays a young man with a horn, a trumpet that is. He wants to play jazz, and he struggles through life and his alcoholism and bad love life. An interesting story, and great performance from Kirk. I liked this movie.

  • jay n


    Great music, good performances from the three leads.

  • Emily B


    Nothing very remarkable here. The story isn't exactly the most interesting or entertaining. The performances are all adequate, with Douglas playing the musician having to chose between the good girl or the bad girl (Doris Day and Lauren Bacall). By the time Bacall's… More

Cast

See full cast

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