Way Back When: synchronized glamour before the Rockettes ruled Radio City.
We’re going an extra “Way Back When” with the Russell Markert Girls, showing off some spectacular synchronization in the groundbreaking 1930 musical revue King of Jazz.
The segment is called “Meet Our Girls” — sometimes shortened in listings to “Meet the Girls” — and it is basically two minutes of precision, formation work and the kind of tightly drilled ensemble movement that would soon become inseparable from Markert’s name.
King of Jazz — 1930
Before the Rockettes, there were the Russell Markert Girls.
Universal’s lavish early Technicolor revue captured Russell Markert’s dancers in razor-sharp synchronization years before Radio City Music Hall made that style world-famous.
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Russell Markert Was Already Building the Rockettes Formula
Markert had been developing his precision-dance style since the 1920s. His troupe performed as the Sixteen American Rockettes before his work with impresario S.L. “Roxy” Rothafel eventually led to the ensemble becoming the Radio City Rockettes when Radio City Music Hall opened in 1932.
So seeing the Russell Markert Girls in King of Jazz is not merely watching a random chorus line from an old movie. You’re watching the visual language of the Rockettes taking shape on film: matching lines, matched timing, no one dancer pulling focus and the whole group moving like one giant mechanism.
“King of Jazz” Was Built to Show Off Spectacle
Directed by John Murray Anderson and produced by Carl Laemmle Jr. for Universal, King of Jazz was less a conventional narrative movie than a giant filmed revue built around Paul Whiteman and his orchestra. It was photographed in early two-color Technicolor and packed with singers, dancers, comedy bits and enormous Art Deco production numbers.
The Russell Markert Girls appear throughout the film, including in “Meet Our Girls,” “It Happened in Monterey,” “A Bench in the Park,” “Happy Feet” and the “Rhapsody in Blue” production. Markert himself is credited as the film’s dance director, which explains why the group’s precision feels so central to the movie’s visual identity.
And as of 2026, “King of Jazz” Is Public Domain in the U.S.
There is also a very 2026 reason to revisit it now. Because the film was published in 1930, its U.S. copyright term expired at the end of 2025, placing King of Jazz in the American public domain on January 1, 2026.
That includes the sound recordings as they appear inside the motion picture. Separate standalone sound recordings from 1930 follow a different copyright timeline, but the audio fixed as part of the film entered the public domain with the movie itself.
Which means one of the most visually extravagant early sound musicals — and this crisp little burst of Russell Markert synchronization — is now even easier to revisit, study, restore and share.
Way back when, indeed. Long before the Rockettes became a New York institution, Markert’s dancers were already proving that precision could be its own form of spectacle.
Watch the Russell Markert Girls in 1930’s “King of Jazz”
Our clip revisits the Russell Markert Girls’ synchronized “Meet Our Girls” sequence from Universal’s 1930 musical revue King of Jazz.
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Sources: Turner Classic Movies; The Criterion Collection; Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain.
