Among the more exciting rediscoveries in recent film preservation history is King of Jazz, a lavish, two-strip Technicolor extravaganza celebrating the hugely popular, and allegedly regal, bandleader Paul Whiteman. A hugely expensive production, The King of Jazz was an unusual “prestige picture” for Universal and a pet project of Carl Laemmle, Jr., who, as head of studio production, shepherded some of the Depression era’s most fascinating films. This is certainly true of King of Jazz, which has an unstoppable, almost overwhelming energy, unfolding Arabian Nights-style, one eye-popping performance after another shaded all the while in shimmering emerald green and candy-apple red. The show must and does go on, and on, but it is well worth the price of admission, which includes performances by a young Bing Crosby and the Rhythm Boys as well as George Gershwin himself. While offering a vibrant document of American popular music, King of Jazz also proposes a novel, and rather troubling, “history” of jazz that is as bizarre as many of the eccentrically staged numbers themselves. Broadway director and onetime filmmaker John Murray Anderson stages many pre-Busby Berkeley moments, most pointedly in his spectacular Art Deco rendition of that infectious classic “Happy Feet.”