A Great Day in Harlem (1994)

On a summer morning in 1958 (no one is sure of the date), 57 jazz musicians gathered on the steps of a Harlem brownstone to have their photo snapped for Esquire. Robert Benton (then the magazine's art director, now the famous movie director) came up with the idea; Art Kane (then a young freelance art director, now a famous photographer who died on Feb. 24) hit the shutter. The result is one of the most famous images in jazz-a legendary moment in a glorious era, when Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Mary Lou Williams, Thelonius Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Marian McPartland, Sonny Rollins, and Maxine Sullivan (to name a few) could rub shoulders in the morning, then go their separate ways to define what's hip by night. A Great Day in Harlem (Castle Hill, unrated) is Jean Bach's loving story of the making of that photo; the hour-long film, narrated by Quincy Jones, has been nominated for a Best Documentary Oscar. Bach, worked on the project for tk years, interviewing participants (many of them now gone) and tracking down supporting footage and stills. (Great jazz is heard in vintage clips, particularly from Sullivan, clarinetist Pee Wee Russell, and trumpeter Roy Eldridge.) It's the backup stuff that enlivens this pleasant, somewhat clunky docu, especially the valuable addition of the 8-mm home movies shot by jazzman Milt Hinton's wife, Mona, as the musicians assembled. ''I better call my wife,'' Gillespie says at the end of the film. That homegrown charm carries this nice pic about nice times in a nicer New York a nice long way.

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