In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Betty Hutton made a half-dozen musical shorts before her feature debut in The Fleet's In (1942) and then continued to make shorts for the war effort.
Modern jazz was added to the mix in such films as the 16-minute Artistry in Rhytym (1944), with Stan Kenton and Anita O'Day, later re-edited into another short, Cool and Groovy (1956), which also featured Chico Hamilton and The Hi-Los.