My new book. Available on AMAZON. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1736044672

Elmer Bernstein Concert / January 24/25, Gene Autry Museum, Los Angeles                               

by Ross Care

It was emphatically worth braving the grueling Los Angeles Friday gridlock for this unique, “once in a lifetime/only in LA” event. I prefer films of the studio era and its ensuing transitional period as American cinema gradually freed itself from decades of censorship and underwent a radical shift in style, content, and scoring in the 1950s and ‘60s. It was also the period in which Elmer Bernstein was to emerge as a key composer who would musically define this new era in both films and film music.

There was, however, a difficult early period.  According to a New York Times obituary Bernstein once stated  “I wasn't important enough to be blacklisted, so I was put on a gray list,'' but that did not end what had been a promising start in film scoring in the early ‘50s. He persisted by composing for documentaries and B-pictures (such as Robot Monster). In 1955 he introduced an intense, jazz-influenced sound for Otto Preminger's The Man With The Golden Arm, and in 1956 took on a more traditional (and intimidating) assignment when he replaced an ailing Victor Young on Cecil B. DeMille’s ultimate epic, The Ten Commandments.  
 
These two major scores proved that Bernstein could score virtually any genre, and not only was he versatile but amazingly prolific. Which must have made it a challenge to organize a representative program of his prodigiously varied work. However, with an ensemble of A-list instrumentalists and vocalists, concert producer, Henry Stanny, and host, Bruce Kimmel, succeeded in doing just that.

 

The concert was divided into two “acts” and included both instrumental and vocal performances. The instrumental ensemble brilliantly captured the duality of Bernstein’s various styles which draw on both symphonic/orchestral and jazz/pop influences. As did the idiomatic arrangements by William V. Malpede who was also music director and keyboardist.

I was curious to hear how some of Bernstein’s primarily orchestral scores would fare with this smaller instrumental combination and was amazed when a “chamber” suite from Ten Commandments evoked a whole new lyrical perspective on that epic score. And it was certainly thrilling to hear dynamic live performances of jazz main titles such as Man with the Golden Arm and Walk on the Wild Side, the latter accompanied by a clip of Saul Bass’s famous credit sequence of a black cat prowling the back alleys of the film’s seedy New Orleans setting.   

 

In a more delicate mode the chamber sound was perfect for what may be Bernstein’s most revered score, the magical To Kill A Mockingbird which provided a lyrical showcase for flutist, Sara Andon, violinist Nathalie Bonin, and cellist Circe Diaz. 

Bernstein is also well-known for his western scores and the concert ended with his “greatest hit,” the rousing theme from The Magnificent Seven.  Also included were excerpts from the big Cinerama comedy/western, The Hallelujah Trail, its gospel-tinged title song showcasing the choral ensemble. The choir was also called upon at various points during the evening, including for a more serious symphonic epic, Hawaii.

With the popularity of Dimitri Tiomkin’s “High Noon” in 1952 movie songs became a definite trend in the ‘50s, though not all film composers were capable of turning out hits. Bernstein’s songs were handled by Maegan McConnell and Robert Yacko whose varied vocal stylings reminded that Elmer could be a successful song composer as well, with several commercial successes.

A lesser-known gem was “Hello and Goodbye” with poignant lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman, from a Charles Bronson film, From Noon to Three (1976). Bernstein’s Broadway work was represented by a rousing show-stopper, “Step To The Rear” from How Now, Dow Jones (1967), and the dynamic “It’s About Magic” from 1982’s Merlin. 

I was personally pleased that one of my favorite title songs (and a best-selling single for Glen Yarbrough), Baby, the Rain Must Fall, was included, in an appealing vocal performance by guitarist, Gene Micofsky. Bernstein composed both pop songs and a minimal but moving background score for this sensitive and under-rated Robert Mulligan film. 

Lee Remick & Steve McQueen - BABY, THE RAIN MUST FALL

 
This remarkable tribute was a bit like sitting in on one of the most remarkable and constantly surprising studio sessions ever. The substantial evening zipped by and I’m only sorry I could not get back to experience it for a second time on Saturday.

It truly was about magic.

+++++
 
Ross Care has written about film music for the Library of Congress, Film Score Monthly (articles and liner notes), and the book, Music in the Western: Notes from the Frontier. 

As a composer he scored Academy Award-winning animator John Canemaker’s  documentary film, Otto Messmer and Felix the Cat.

 

Green Mansions - Bronislau Kaper/Villa-Lobos

GREEN MANSIONS (Score, FSM CD)

Composers: Bronislau Kaper, Special Music Created by Heitor Villa-Lobos Orchestrations: Robert Franklyn, Sidney Cutner, Leo Arnaud– Film Score Monthly vol 8, no 3, TT: 79.53, 21 tracks (stereo)  ***** 

Producer: Lukas Kendall Performed: MGM Studio Orchestra  Conductor: Charles Wolcott

 
Green Mansions is a 1959 MGM CinemaScope film based on the 1904 novel by British writer, W. H. Hudson. The classic fantasy concerns Rima (Audrey Hepburn), a mysterious “bird-girl” living in the unexplored depths of the Amazon forest (the “green mansions” of the title), and her ill-fated romance with Abel (Tony Perkins), a South American political refugee. 

These two leads are certainly photogenic, and the film has its moments, but some novels  just do not translate to a visual medium. Though director Mel Ferrer removed most of its overtly fantastic elements, Green Mansions remained one of these elusive literary properties and the film was a commercial and artistic disappointment at the time of its release.
 

GREEN MANSIONS French Poster

Today the film is best remembered for a lavish symphonic score with a controversial creative history. Brazilian classical composer, Heitor Villa-Lobos, was originally signed to do the music but, due to a series of circumstances well documented in the liner notes, MGM’s Bronislau Kaper, himself a classically trained musician well-versed in concert techniques, was also brought in. Kaper both adapted and augmented the Villa-Lobos music and created a title song that is judiciously used in the underscoring. 

Villa-Lobos rearranged his music as Forest of the Amazon; his last great concert work for orchestra with soprano and chorus, and recorded it for United Artists Records. (It was recently redone with Renee Fleming as soloist). This, however, is the first recording of the original film soundtrack. A 5.24 “Main Title/Chase/River Boat” sets the tone and modus operandi of the entire score. An exotically mysterious Villa-Lobos opening (including dramatic statements of his “Rima” motif) is intercut with a brief phrase of Kaper’s title song that will also serve as the film’s love theme. Kaper’s wild “Chase” seems influenced by the “Dance of the Earth” from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, as do other minor bits of his work.
 
The restrained title song is more in the mode of a folk song than Kaper’s other great pop standards  (“Invitation,” “On Green Dolphin Street,” “Hi Lili, Hi Lo”). Tony Perkins, who had a moderately successful (but today mostly forgotten) secondary career as a singer and recording artist in the ‘50s, performs it in a substantial sequence in the film, but his version is not included here. 

One of Tony Perkins' LPs for RCA Victor

Orchestrally the song’s refrain (“Tell me, Rima, where are the meadows of June?”) is heard at various points in the score, notably the opening, of “It’s Gold” and “Is It You?” Villa-Lobos created the ethereal Rima theme, magically orchestrated in “At the Pool/First Visit” (the latter, however, submerged under real birdcalls in the film). The 79.53 score is allowed much time to develop, and builds to a series of profoundly moving final cues in which poignant new Villa-Lobos themes underscore revelations of Rima’s past and her tragic demise.
 

Green Mansions is (aside from its tumultuous, somewhat schizoid “End Title”) no conventional Hollywood offering of the period. It’s a sumptuous, expansively symphonic score that captures the magic and menace of an otherworldly, ultimately lost Eden with a power and mystery sorely missing from the often unpleasantly literal film itself. The sound is remixed in stereo from original 3-track recordings and beautifully showcases the impressionistic, opulently Ravel-ian orchestrations. 

Charles Wolcott, a Disney studio veteran who became a part of the MGM musical staff, conducts, and also had the delicate executive job of liaison between Villa-Lobos and Kaper while the score was being finalized.
 
Bill Whitaker and Jeff Bond’s notes discuss the film’s history and the score’s involved Kaper/Villa-Lobos issues, as well as providing a cue-by-cue description of the mostly seamless meshing of the two composers’ contributions. Kudos to FSM for making this magnificent score finally available in such a complete and definitive version.
 
Ross Care

Miklós Rózsa's SPELLBOUND Twice

SPELLBOUND (1945) - Alfred HITCHCOCK

Stereo ReRecording of Miklos Rosza's complete score for the romantic Hitchcock suspense classic.

Originally released on Warner Bros. records with Ray Heindorf conducting the Warner Bros. studio orchestra. ReReleased on a Stanyan Record CD.

Includes one of thde most beautiful love themes to come out of Hollywood and some incredibly intense psychologically suspense scoring.

CD of Stereo ReRecordings of the Film Music of Miklós Rózsa from the original 1974 LP.
   

Includes The Thief of Bagdad, The Lost Weekend, Double Indemnity, The Jungle Book, Ivanhoe, and other scores.

DEEP IN MY HEART

Rhino MGM Download -  24 tracks (stereo)  ****  Film:  Warner Archive Blu-ray.

Performed: MGM Soloists, Studio Orchestra & Chorus , Conductor/Music Supervisor: Adolph Deutsch
Arrangers: Alexander Courage, Hugo Friedhofer, Robert Tucker (vocals).

by Ross Care

Deep In My Heart (1954) is one of the last big all-star musicals from MGM, and also the last of their (in)famous musical biographies, in this case one freely adapted from the life of Sigmund Romberg. Like its predecessors (Words And Music/Rodgers and Hart, Till the Clouds Roll By/Jerome Kern, etc.) it also showcases a broad cross section of the composer’s hits and rarities performed by most of the stars still glimmering in the MGM heavens.

The real Romberg was born in Europe and became one of the most successful American operetta composers of the early 20th century. He moved uneasily into musical comedy in the ‘30s and ‘40s, though many of his operetta favorites (such as “Lover, Come Back to Me”) had a contemporary edge which allowed them to remain popular into the Big Band era. Like many film composer émigrés, Romberg was able to fuse Old World lyricism and schmaltz with American popular appeal. He had a long-standing connection with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Several of his operettas (The New Moon, Maytime) provided hit vehicles for Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy in the ‘30s, and in the ‘50s MGM remade his most famous work, The Student Prince, in CinemaScope.

Also like many film composers, Romberg had a secondary career as a recording artist. Thus RCA Victor released their own “Deep In My Heart” album with Romberg’s own recordings at the time of the MGM release.

              Helen Traubel and Jose Ferrer
 

Deep In My Heart, produced by MGM’s renaissance music man, Rodger Edens, stars Jose Ferrer as Romberg, and ex-Wagnerian soprano, Helen Traubel, as his platonic but supportative lady friend, Anna Mueller. There is also the obligatory transfusion of romantic interest, but anything resembling a plot is subsidiary to the on-going musical numbers that provide the substance of both film and this new “download only” Rhino soundtrack. MGM Records originally released Deep In My Heart as a deluxe boxed LP (a packaging format later followed by their Ben Hur and Mutiny on the Bounty releases). But like most of the MGM musical STs of the era, numbers were cut and edited to fit the track timing demands of the period. This new Rhino edition provides all the musical numbers in complete versions, plus a few incidental cues and out takes, and all in true stereo.

The angular Ferrer comes off as just rather odd as Romberg, especially in a virtuoso, if bizarre number in which he performs a one-man version of one of his shows (“Jazzadadadoo Medley”) to impress (?) his society sweetheart (Doe Avedon). However, the still golden-voiced Trauble is appealing and versatile, able to turn “Softly As In A Morning Sunrise”  - is there any other kind? – into a moving art song at one moment, then launch into an obscure bit of ersatz ragtime called “Leg of Mutton” with equal conviction. All this still leaves lots of room for a roll call of Romberg show excerpts performed by the likes of Howard Keel, Jane Powell, Vic Damone, Rosemary Clooney, William Olvis, and Tony Martin, right down to Gene Kelly and his brother, Fred.

                                Ann Miller Jazzes "It" Up

Ann Miller has one of her best production numbers with the frantic “It,” a lesser-known Romberg excursion into the Jazz Age. Dancers Cyd Charisse and James Mitchell perform a sensual “One Alone” from the popular Desert Song. While Charisse is voice-doubled by Carole Richards (who dubs Newman’s “Resurrection Song” in The Robe), no vocals are necessary to get the erotic charge emphatically across in this opulently staged and orchestrated (probably by Hugo Friedhofer) production number.

But then a spacious stereo mix and composer Adolph Deutsch’s conducting beautifully enhance all the lush orchestrations by Alexander Courage and Hugo Friedhofer. While I miss the informative liner notes that came with the Rhino CD releases, downloading seems like a convenient and effective process and I hope more new MGM releases will be forthcoming. And who knows, perhaps the entire catalog of MGM films (including such less familiar titles as Deep In My Heart) may eventually be available in this format as well.

Deep In My Heart was recently released on a gorgeous Warner Archive Blu-ray.

Into the future!

Ross Care

Untamed - Franz WAXMAN

 

Orchestrations:  Edward B. Powell, Leonid Raab – Film Score Monthly vol. 4, no. 4, Total Tracks: 65.43,  23 tracks (stereo)  *****  (Absolute Tops)  
Producers: Nick Redman, Lukas Kendall Performed: 20th Century Fox Orchestra  -  Conductor: Franz Waxman

by Ross Care

The 1950s were a great period for Franz Waxman (1906-1967). The composer won two back-to-back Oscars, for A Place in the Sun (1950), and Sunset Boulevard (1951), and the decade also saw the creation of some of his major scores for two giants of the late studio era, 20th Century-Fox and Warner Bros. His work at Fox included two certified masterpieces, Prince Valiant in 1954, and Peyton Place in 1957, but he also scored a number of lesser-known films for the studio that introduced CinemaScope in 1953. Among these epic scores for the wide-screen era is one for a somewhat obscure and mostly forgotten epic, Untamed (1955). 

The film, hyped as “Africolossal!” in the never-understated studio ad campaign, stars Fox stalwarts Tyrone Power, Susan Hayward, and ‘50s discovery Richard Egan, and deals with the Dutch colonization of South Africa and its ensuing, inevitable conflicts with the region’s Zulu natives.
    

Waxman’s great score is both epic and memorably melodic. It’s composed of three major elements, a heroic Main Title theme, a determined traveling motif, and a lyrical love theme. The recent Film Score Monthly restoration opens with Alfred Newman’s extended Fox CinemaScope fanfare  and immediately segues into Waxman’s thrilling Main Title (track 2) that opens with antiphonal fanfares from three choirs of French horns, these in turn embellishing the score’s heroic main theme. After a rather abrupt conclusion the horns, spread across left/middle/right channels in ‘Scope’s then-new 4-track stereophonic sound system, continue with track 3, “Fox Hunt” for the film’s opening sequences in Ireland. (Herrmann used similar stereophonic effects in his Garden of Evil ‘Scope score.)  

The main theme and an ensuing traveling motif (introduced in track 7, “Vorwarts”) are then inventively developed in an on-going series of epic symphonic cues over the course of the one-hour-plus score. The beautiful love theme is held in reserve until the cue “Paul Finds Katje/Hoffen Valley” with its ecstatic climax at about 3.20 on track 11. Another (very) brief haunting, almost Wagnerian statement of the main theme for massed French horns with distant trumpets and tremolo strings can be heard at about 1.25 in the lengthy (7.04) “O’Neill’s Garden/Cape Town Street” cue. (The moody Main Title in horn solo is heard again at the conclusion of another extended cue, “After the Fight/By the River”). In a livelier mode track 10, “The Commandos,” suggests Waxman’s thrilling Cossacks music for Taras Bulba (1962).
 

 

Several source music cues vary the underscoring, these including a short polka by Johann Strauss, Sr., and “Zulu Attack,” the latter composed of “wild” percussion tracks supervised by Waxman. If you stay tuned after the “Finale” (track 23) you get some first-hand insights into the recording of these primal sounds. A 14-page booklet of interesting notes by Jeff Bond and Jonathan Z. Kaplan are included and feature comments about the prolific composer’s creative methods and the Fox music department in general from John Waxman. Waxman never wrote a score that is less than fascinating and his lesser-known Untamed is an excellent and dramatically epic companion piece to his later and more celebrated Taras Bulba.     
    
 

Bernard Herrmann at 20th Century-Fox   
 
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.

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

****
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.

FINIAN’S  RAINBOW

Songs: Burton Lane (music); E. Y. “Yip” Harburg, (lyrics)

Arrangements/Orchestrations:  Albert Sendry (uncredited), Ken Darby - Rhino Handmade RHM 2 7857, TT: 46.54, 17 tracks (stereo) 

Film * * Score *****  

Producer: George Feltenstein, Performed: Warner Bros Soloists, Studio Orchestra & Chorus, Musical Director/Conductor: Ray Heindorf - 

Collectors' Choice Music released the original motion picture soundtrack on CD in 2007.

by Ross Care

Director Coppola was somewhere over the rainbow when he made this odd version of the Broadway classic. But the music is still GREAT.........

In his book Can’t Help Singin’ Gerald Mast describes the original theatrical version of Finian’s Rainbow as “a fanciful 1947 Broadway blast from the left.” The plot somehow managed to combine Irish characters and folklore (including an errant leprechaun) with some cutting social satire on American race relations in the mythical southern state of Missatucky. The show was a long-running smash, its score adding several classics (“Old Devil Moon,” “How Are Things in Glocca Mora”) to the American theater song repertory. But the 1968 film did not materialize until long past the golden age of the vintage studio musical, and when it finally did was directed by, of all people, Francis Ford Coppola. Cinematically Finian’s Rainbow is a stylistic mishmash of department store window studio sets and location shooting that makes Missatucky look suspiciously like southern California in drought season. 
               Concerning the direction Mast concludes:  “Coppola is a foreigner to the tongue in which musical is spoken.”      

 

            However, the Warner Bros. film was blessed with a perfect cast, including Hollywood veteran Fred Astaire, and British pop stars, Petula Clark and Tommy Steele, and the recent Rhino re-issue serves to remind us of just how good these performers and the show’s score are. The multi-talented Clark came to Hollywood after a series of Top of the Pops hits equally successful in America (on Warner Bros. Records, by the way), but unfortunately had less luck with Hollywood films of the post-studio musical era. But she acquits herself beautifully in Finian, bringing a beguiling Irish brogue to both her best role and her distinctive vocals, notably the touching “Look to the Rainbow.” Steele (as Og the leprechaun) had just had a transAtlantic hit with the West End musical, Half A Sixpence, which was also turned into a 1967 Hollywood film, and duets with Clark in a quaint gavotte, “Something Sort of Grandish.” 

            The lyrical and varied music for Finian is by Burton Lane, a master melodist otherwise known for his superb score for MGM’s Royal Wedding, recently also restored on Rhino. Lyrics are by E. Y. “Yip” Harburg who had previously found gold at the end of another rainbow with his lyrics for The Wizard of Oz. The team also worked (but not together) on DuBarry Was A Lady, another recent Rhino release.

And, speaking of DuBarry, MGM would probably have, as they often did, tossed out half of the Broadway score and turned Finian’s Rainbow into a truncated, but perhaps more enjoyable and cinematic version of the original. But fortunately, at least for the listening public, Warner Bros. didn’t, and this (slightly) expanded version of the original ST LP provides a complete version of the great Broadway score in beautiful stereo and under Warner Bros. maestro, Ray Heindorf’s impeccable music direction.

"Disney Unlocks the Music Vault" Part I

A feature overview of the first relatively complete CD releases of the classic Disney animation soundtracks.
In THREE Parts.

The films range from SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS (1937), Disney’s first feature, to THE JUNGLE BOOK (1967), the last animated feature which Disney personally supervised.

This was written in 1998 for issue #27 of Scarlet Street, The Magazine of Mystery and Horror, for which I did a music column, The Record Rack, for over a decade.

PLEASE NOTE: Part III & SCARLET STREET cover at February 26 BLOG Entries.

 

"Disney Unlocks the Music Vault" - Part II

PLEASE NOTE: Continued - Part III & SCARLET STREET cover FOLLOW these at the February 26 BLOG Entries.

"Disney Unlocks the Music Vault" - Part III

"Disney Unlocks the Music Vault" SCARLET STREET Magazine, #27

        

SCARLET STREET #27, March/April, 1998

A LOST WORLD Revisited

Almost all of the 50 or more user reviews on the IMDB website have cited and re-cited the repulsively live lizards and overall B-movie ambiance of this controversial, some might say tacky, remake of the Conan Doyle novel and 1925 silent classic. Doesn’t anyone read anyone else's reviews before submitting?????

    

              At any rate, I'm going to try and say something new (or at least unsaid) about this slightly tarnished 1960 Golden Oldie.

I think one IMDB user did note the excellent score.

One of the best things in the film is the Main Title sequence with the tempestuous music of Paul Sawtell and Bert Sheftner playing against FANTASIA-like shots of swirling molten lava. (These are certainly more vividly fantastic than the disgusting looking goo that passes for lava at the climax of the film).

The LOST WORLD score is the joint work of the composing team of Sawtell and Shefter, musicians who also worked individually in a variety of mediums and scored many films on their own. But it is as a unique and successful musical team that they are now best known. During the ‘50s they produced quality, often highly advanced scores for films that ranged from low budget programmers such as IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE and KRONOS to Irwin Allen CinemaScope/stereophonic sound spectaculars such as  LOST WORLD and VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA, and Fox genre classics such as THE FLY and THE ALLIGATOR PEOPLE.

One might say  THE LOST WORLD goes downhill after the excitingly dynamic Main Title, but the DVD’s stereo version of the original 4-track CinemaScope soundtrack makes the entire score (and film) seem even better. The aerial shots of the Amazonian jungles during the flight to the plateau are an especially effective fusion of wide-screen cinematography and music.

And for lovers of high-end grade-B genre offerings it certainly has its moments.

 

             I personally was drawn back into this LOST WORLD after revisiting the great Circus-Circus casino episode in DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, one of the best sequences in the middle-period Bond cycle.

Her role as Bond girl, Tiffany Case, is certainly a high point of Jill St. John's film career. Her smart pants suits and stylish look in DIAMONDS are possibly modeled on singer Elly Stone in the long-running Off Broadway show, Jacque Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.

At any rate, she looks great and the DIAMONDS wardrobe is certainly an improvement on the hot pink Capri pants she impeccably (and improbably) sports throughout the jungle madness and slobbering lizard attacks in LW. The versatile Ms. St. John also wrote a cookbook, which is still apparently in print.

            Claude Rains and Richard Hayden, the voice of the caterpillar in Disney's ALICE IN WONDERLAND, do the best they can with the material. Rains even looks something like the original Challenger in the classic silent version.

            Ray Stricklyn as David Holmes was nominated for a 1961 Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor in THE PLUNDERERS, and also for Most Promising Newcomer in 1959. But for better or worse LOST WORLD (and THE RETURN OF DRACULA!) remain one of the films for which he is remembered.  

            Scarlet Street, the cult genre magazine (for which I used to write about film music) published an interview with the then out-of-the-closet (and since deceased) Stricklyn in issue #35. 

The 2-disc LOST WORLD DVD set includes an excellent restoration of the original silent version. The dream-like, sometimes surreal imagery is made even more so by the restored multi-colored tinting.

For viewers who fondly remember the era of the original 1960 release a complete version of the Dell movie tie-in comic will be an especially welcome and nostalgic addition among the bonus features.

Ross Care

I wrote a column on film music for the genre magazine,  SCARLET STREET,  for about twelve years. In keeping with the sophisticated tongue-in-cheek vision of editor Richard Valley,  it was called the RECORD RACK, and in it I covered mostly classic film scores and the films for which they were created.

For an Asian themed issue (  #24, 1997 ) I did an in-depth look at Roman Polanski's classic retro-noir film, CHINATOWN, and the music Jerry Goldsmith composed for it. 

The occasion was also the re-issue of the classic original LP soundtrack LP on CD. The review is reproduced in two-parts below.

Please CLICK on pages to ENLARGE.

Ross CARE

Ross CARE/Scarlet Street: Jerry Goldsmith's CHINATOWN, Part I

Ross CARE/Record RACK: CHINATOWN - Part II

BORN TO DANCE - CLassic, witty '30s MGM/Cole Porter musical.

Composer/Songs: Cole Porter

Arrangements/Orchestrations: Edward Powell, (“Easy To Love” orchestrated by Powell and Leo Arnaud)

Born To Dance

Rhino Handmade RHM 27778, TT: 66.29, 18 tracks (mono and stereo) **** Quintessential

Producer: George Feltenstein, Performed: MGM Soloists, Studio Orchestra & Chorus, Musical Director, Alfred Newman

by Ross Care

            My admittedly biased opinion that Cole Porter is probably the greatest American songwriter (I once wrote a major Porter appreciation for the Library of Congress) has apparently been vindicated by the recent Porter media blitz. Four major Porter MGM musicals (including Kiss Me Kate and Silk Stockings) have been remastered on DVD, and the Rhino Handmade CD series which reissued The Pirate, has also released Porter’s first major original film score, MGM’s 1936 Born To Dance.

            Born To Dance was developed as a starring vehicle for MGM’s new dancing star of the 1930s, Eleanor Powell, but also introduced two of Porter’s most enduring vocal standards, “Easy To Love,” and “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”. Porter recycled the former from a Broadway show in which the leading man was intimidated by the song’s octave and a half range, but, apparently unaware of its vocal demands, a young James Stewart delivers a beguilingly artless rendition. His ensuing duet with Powell (voice-doubled by Marjorie Lane) is followed by an elaborate set of orchestral dance variations that commence in a sleek, almost 1950s mode, and climax with a nod to Ponchielli’s “Dance of the Hours”. 

           Porter out-Berlins Irving Berlin with “Rap Tap On Wood,” one of the most infectious and rag-ish tunes Cole ever wrote. Both “Easy” and “Rap Tap” are presented in stereo that must make them two of the earliest Hollywood numbers yet presented in true spatial sound. (While the instrumentals are admittedly thrilling like this, the new mix does tend to overwhelm the vocals just a tad).

            Aside from its great solos Born To Dance features several equally elaborate ensemble numbers. “Love Me, Love My Pekinese,” a droll operetta pastiche/parody, somehow manages to fuse Kurt Weill, Gilbert and Sullivan, the sailor’s hornpipe, and a grandiose Navy chorus into a uniquely high camp moment, as funny on CD as in the film. In contrast, another piece, “Hey, Babe, Hey,” is one of the most deliberately corny (yet appealing) MGM numbers prior to “You Can Count On Me” from the later On the Town. BTD musical direction by Alfred Newman, now topping his precocious New York theatrical career with a supra-Broadway Hollywood sound, and orchestrations by Edward Powell, fuse to provide some of the most stylish and vivid orchestral playing for some of the most elaborate Hollywood numbers up to this point. (The final “Swinging the Jinx Away” runs nearly fifteen minutes!) There is excessive noise on some of the cues, but considering the age of these tracks (vintage 1936) the results are still amazing.

            This complete Born To Dance is a very special treat for lovers of early Hollywood musicals, exhilarating orchestral sound, and the late, truly great Cole Porter.

            (Now when will Rhino present us with the never-recorded On the Town with its wonderful Leonard Bernstein orchestral ballet music?)

Ross Care

           

OH DAD POOR DAD MAMA’S HUNG YOU IN THE CLOSET AND I’M FEELING SO SAD: Composer: Neal Hefti

by Ross CARE

BMG Music Spain S. A. 74321720602/RCA Victor (Re-Issue from Original LP), TT: 25.07,  11 tracks (stereo)  **** A Real DynaGroove

Orchestrations: Neal Hefti – Producer: Hugo & Luigi, Conductor: Neal Hefti

In the late 1950s, as the studio system gradually went dead in the water, old school Hollywood (symphonic) scoring slowly faded-out with it (though fortunately not terminally). But a new style of pop/jazz soundtrack did emerge at this time, pioneered by veteran arranger/composers from the big band 1940s who brought a fresh, playfully hip sound to the “new” Hollywood of the pre-psychedelic 1960s. Key among this new breed film musicians were Henry Mancini, Johnny Mandel, and Neal Hefti, with Hefti especially well respected for his charts for Woody Herman, Stan Kenton, Harry James, and William “Count” Basie.

            Hefti’s first major film was Sex and the Single Girl, a 1964 comedy loosely based on the book by Helen Gurley Brown, his score so successful that, with the exception of Harlow (‘65) and Duel at Diablo (‘66), the composer was generally typecast scoring comedies for most of his Hollywood career. The peak of his popular success, however, came with the campy 1966 Batman TV series and its colorful score including a dynamic blues-based theme punctuated by a chorus shouting out “Batman!” at key intervals. A “Downbeat” review of a reissued Batman CD recently praised Hefti for his “keen dramatic imagination” and “flair for zany, swinging popjazz entertainment”.

            Hefti also scored a major cult film, Lord Love A Duck in 1966, and in 1967 another film so far out that it has yet to touch down in even the outermost reaches of cultdom, an adaptation of Arthur Kopit’s Off-Broadway hit, Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feeling So Sad. Kopit’s play is a wicked send-up of momism with necrophiliac overtones. (Billboard called the movie version a “pitch-black film satire.” )  The plot, such as it is, deals with what happens when a domineering matriarch, Madame Rosepettle, vacations on a tropic isle with her neurotic son and the coffin containing the worldly remains of Dad, her late husband. Though the film version never quite worked and has pretty much dematerialized, Hefti’s score is brilliant, and very much of a piece with his Batman music; both scores were originally released as RCA LPs.

            The Oh Dad album is framed by a bizarre manifestation of the title song craze launched by High Noon in 1952, a singsong ditty for children’s chorus which attempts to “explain” the title (used intact) with the comment: “please remember, Mama’s always right!” Both tune and its equally catchy vamp are developed in ensuing cues.

            Like Batman, Oh Dad is pure appealing pop, a compendium of riffs from the big band ‘40s through hooks borrowed from miscellaneous early ‘60s pop. (The overexposed term, postmodern, does come to mind). Amazingly Hefti manages to fuse it all into a personal style which, while influenced by Mancini, is just as recognizable anddistinctive. Cues are tight, concentrated, and (like Mancini’s) specifically arranged for album listening.

Stylistically the score bears the influence of eclectic pop sources ranging from ‘50s instrumental hits such as Johnny and Hurricanes’ “Crossfire,” to Kai Winding’s two key surf albums on Verve Records. Technologically the influence of another big band veteran, Ray Conniff, hovers over the proceedings in Oh Dad’s heavily reverbed studio sound and subtly driving percussion/guitar rhythm tracks.

            Scoring comedy is an under-rated art, and Hefti is a master of the genre. His imaginative orchestrations showcase a Batman-style organ, electric and acoustic guitars, marimba and vibes, a few reeds, and lots of big band brass, all propelled by a rhythm section executing almost techno-precise beats. His seasoned instrumentalists display a righteous sense of style, attitude, and conviction that few ensembles today could muster, creating incredibly rich and contemporary-sounding blends of pop sonorities along the way.

Listen especially to the escalating instrumental layering of “The Revolt of Jonathan Rosepettle III,” and the Freudian over-determination of “This Is Mother”. “Home Movies” effortlessly melds from the bouncy to the ominous without missing a beat. “Heaven” is complete with harp, spacey cherubic choir, and a hint of Bach’s “Come, Sweet Death,” “Spooky Coffins” drolly macabre. For all its direct appeal, Oh Dad remains a sterling example of scoring that elusive genre, the black comedy.

            Hefti’s album is also one of the great pop statements to emerge from early ’60s Hollywood. Along with the Beatles’ white album, the penultimate Mamas and Papas LP, and fabulous soundtracks such as Charles Fox’s Barbarella, and Dave Grusin’s Candy, Oh Dad quickly became one of my favorite trip albums of the period. Recently re-issued as part of a BMG Spain series of classic RCA soundtracks, I’m relieved to report that it still gives my wig a solid flip, both for its high-gloss Dynagroove stereo sound, and, especially, for Hefti’s unique bubble-gum-with-edge sense of irony, satire, and pure unapologetic fun!

Franz WAXMAN: PRINCE VALIANT - Original Soundtack CD

PRINCE VALIANT: Composer: Franz Waxman- Film Score Monthly Soundtrack CD

Orchestrations:  Edward Powell – Film Score Monthly vol. 2, no. 3, TT: 62.17,  20 tracks (stereo)  *****  (Absolute Tops) 

Producer: Nick Redman, Lukas Kendall Performed: 20^th Century Fox Orchestra  Conductor: Franz Waxman

by Ross Care

The 1950s were a great period for Franz Waxman (1906-1967). The composer won two Oscars for his scores for Sunset Boulevard and A Place in the Sun, and created a body of classic scores for a variety of films, among them The Furies, Elephant Walk, The Silver Chalice, The Nun’s Story, and Sayonara.  In between music for these generally  high-toned literary adaptations came a stirring and jovial score for a film version of a different kind of literature, for 20th Century Fox’s Prince Valiant, a 1954 epic swashbuckler based on the popular ‘50s comic strip.

            However, Fox expended the same attention to quality to Valiant that it lavished on its all-star film version of another less than high-toned literary property, the lurid best-seller, Peyton Place (which also produced one of Waxman’s great ‘50s scores). If you can get by star Robert Wagner’s ridiculous pageboy wig and wooden readings of lines such as (to Princess Aleta/Janet Leigh) “Oh, forget it,” Prince Valiant is a rousing and romantic action saga with an engrossing overlap of subplots and enough visual beauty and splendid medieval pageantry to fill every foot of the then-new CinemaScope wide screen. Add to all this Waxman’s equally splendid score and you have a film which (on DVD) is still great fun today.

 

            Prince Valiant  is one of my personal favorite scores and it’s great to have the original Fox soundtrack still available in Film Score Monthly’s wonderful 1999 original soundtrack release.  Waxman’s score is based on a series of stirringly lyrical motifs for the various characters, and I see the film as one of the (many) influences, both cinematic and musical, on the later Star Wars. Indeed the Main Title in which Val’s heroic theme is immediately followed by the lyrical love theme for Princess Aleta is almost of blue print for the Star Wars Main Title. Valiant’s Darth Vader is the Black Knight, the devious Sir Brack, with his throbbingly menacing  theme (though we hear none of Holst’s “Mars” here), and though we also have no light sabers there is a singing sword with which Val vanquishes the evil Brack in the film’s athletic climax.

            FSM’s CD presents all of the film’s profuse music in mostly chronological order. The film’s first half hour is almost completely underscored with some of the most thrilling music in the film, including a kind of prologue (“King Aguar’s Escape”) in which the plot is set in motion. This is also the basis for one of Fox’s characteristic CinemaScope “travelogue” introductions, in this case a series of wide-screen vistas of coastal Britain against Waxman’s atmospheric music. Unfortunately one of the most substantial (8.25) cues from this section suffers from tape deterioration and is placed with the bonus section. This cue (“The Pledge”/et al) features an idyllic pastoral transformation of Val’s theme for flute and strings as he rows into the Fens, and the first statement of the frightening  Black Knight music as Brack passes by hidden in his black armor. Waxman created some of the most haunting melodies in classic film music, and an interesting sidelight to the Valiant score is that his Princess Aleta theme was so lyrical that lyrics (by Ken Darby) were added and it was published as a song, “I Do,” though it is not sung in the film.

In glorious Fox stereo Waxman’s Prince Valiant  is one of FSM’s most welcome and durable releases.

            - Ross Care