JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH/THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR
Bernard Herrmann worked consistently, if somewhat intermittently, at 20th Century Fox between 1943 (when his association with Orson Welles led to his work there on JANE EYRE), and 1962 (and a sad waste of his talent on a fitfully fascinating, if otherwise undistinguished adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s TENDER IS THE NIGHT).
Herrmann’s Fox oeuvre includes both well-known scores, including such genuine classics as THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (now a collector’s item among the first batch of Fox CD releases), and lesser-known efforts on such films as Joe Mankiewicz’s fact-based modern espionage thriller, 1952’s FIVE FINGERS, and the virtually vanished ‘Scope adventure yarn, KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES, from 1953. During Fox’s mid-’50s CinemaScope era Herrmann produced some of his least known compositions, among them scores for GARDEN OF EVIL, and an Edwin Booth bio-film, PRINCE OF PLAYERS (both 1954), the latter one of Herrmann’s more rousingly energetic and theatrical scores.
In 1959, the same year he scored both Hitchcock’s NORTH BY NORTHWEST at MGM and Fox’s BxW ‘Scope film, BLUE DENIM (one of composer’s rare forays, along with A HATFUL OF RAIN, into scoring Broadway theater adaptations), Herrmann also scored his first Jules Verne property, Fox’s JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH. A film neither terribly good nor terribly bad, and certainly not lacking in a certain innocent charm, JOURNEY ultimately seems a Harryhausen movie without Ray Harryhausen.
The wholesomely sexy cast, headed by Disney’s Captain Nemo himself, James Mason, and including Pat Boone (as a young Scotsman!), Arlene Dahl, and Diane Baker, (not to mention Peter Ronson as a hunky blond Icelander with a touching attachment to the personable if ill-fated Gertrude the Duck ), do their best with the modestly effective, if somewhat illogical screenplay.
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| Pat Boone & Arlene Dahl |
But the wonderful jolts of energy and excitement which Harryhausen’s legendary efforts bring to his similarly plotted (and sometimes equally mundane) projects are sorely in absentia here, replaced instead by several cosmetically altered pet-shop lizards (a species more distasteful than terrifying, and obviously related to those who would be seen the following year terrorizing Jill St. John, she of the hot pink Capri pants, in Fox’s even tackier Irwin Allen opus, THE LOST WORLD) and some obviously soundstage “bowels of the earth” settings.
Herrmann’s score for JOURNEY to a certain degree reflects the “can’t get started” pace of the film itself. Scored primarily for ponderously heavy brass and low woodwinds and augmented by organs, harps, and percussion, though highly effective in the film itself, the score on CD somewhat suggests a Herrmann pastiche, often more than a tad monotonous, and bringing to mind far more listenable moments from other scores, notably the spare triadic harmonies exploited in DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, and the harp effects from BENEATH THE TWELVE MILE REEF (which effectively and sensually plunges the listener into the depths of the ocean rather than the earth).
A good deal of the JOURNEY score is based on a droning progression of Herrmann’s always effective but by now familiar triads, often just two in this case, the primary interest of which lies in the composer’s always fascinating orchestral permutations on such spare and rather static material. Highlights include the “Main Title” with its wailing electronic organs and glowering trombones which seem especially emphasized in this new stereo remastering, and the main set-piece in the score, the Wagnerian “Sunrise” followed by the fantastical descending harp passages reminiscent of 12 MILE REEF as Mason’s team first descends into the subterranean passageway of the Icelandic volcano’s crater.
Herrmann’s droning mode continues pretty much throughout the entire score, extending even into his patented “creature” cues, notably for the “Giant Chameleon” track featuring Herrmann’s introduction of the serpent, an ancient (ill)wind instrument that Spike Jones would have loved. Ethereal vibraphone passages, quite similar in sound to the deleted “Space Diamonds” cue from DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, add a welcome touch of lightness to the cumbrous goings-on, and one of the final cues, “The Lost City/Atlantis,” is scored solely for vibes and organ, a simple and haunting track (one of the few in JOURNEY where you feel Herrmann that was actually inspired to push his imaginative envelope).
Three innocuous tunes (two deleted from the film) written by Jimmy van Heusen and Sammy Cahn for Pat Boone, are also included (if anyone is interested) as well as the vocal/accordion march heard as the expedition first starts down the underground passageway, certainly the jauntiest cue on the entire CD. Obviously both the film of JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH and Herrmann himself would have profited by Harryhausen’s input, given that Bernie concocted a much more powerful ambiance for the Columbia/Harryhausen Verne adaptation, MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, in 1961 (recently and beautifully re-issued in stereo in the recent Silva Screen CD of the nearly complete score).Though the film of JOURNEY concludes with the odd effect of an a cappella student chorus underscoring the “End Title,” the CD also provides the deleted instrumental finale.
The second Herrmann disk in the new Fox series is the complete score to THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR. Though the profuse array of brief cues, 33 in all, makes for somewhat fragmented listening, the score remains one of Herrmann’s most beautiful, a haunting fusion of mystical sea music laced with a sense of romantic yearning which pre-echoes the similar mood of longing and liebestod that would so consummately be evoked by Herrmann’s music for Hitchcock’s VERTIGO over a decade later.
Fine as these first two batches of strikes from the rich musical lode of the 20th Century Fox musical archives are (along with the first series of CDs on Fox’s own now-defunct label), there is much more rare wealth to be mined there, and I certainly wish and hope for continued success with Kimmel, Redman, and Co.’s welcome exploration of one of the richest of Hollywood’s musical gold mines.
Long live 20th Century Fox!
Ross CARE
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Ross CARE has contributed two feature articles to “Performing Arts: Motion Pictures,” an anthology of essays from the Library of Congress in Washington. The first is concerns “RAINTREE COUNTY: The Novel, The Film, The Score,” and the second affords an overview of the music and composers of the Hollywood studio system during its peak and final days circa 1950/1965.
