Words on the printed page captivate us so completely that it’s natural to assume that the lives of writers must be rich, full of incident, and very dramatic indeed. Surely that is sometimes the case. Who among us could keep up with a Byron or a Pushkin or a Poe?
Yet, with even the most outlandish writers, Hollywood for some reason often feels the need to fabricate. How else to explain “Devotion” (1943), Warner Brothers’ salute to the Brontës? Then again, the temptation must be strong to characterize the sisters who penned “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights” as tortured Romantics.
Ida Lupino plays Emily, the creator of Cathy and Heathcliff, and Olivia de Havilland, Charlotte, who conceived Jane and Rochester. Nancy Coleman is their sister Anne, who wrote “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,” and Arthur Kennedy, their dissolute brother Branwell. The film also features Sidney Greenstreet as William Makepeace Thackeray, Paul Henreid as an Irish priest, and – well, you get the idea. The casting, at times, strains credulity.
However, the music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold is up to the composer’s usual high standard. Korngold himself became so enamored of one of its themes that he recycled it for use in the first movement of his Violin Concerto. This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll have chance to sample some of it.
We’ll also hear selections from movies about Iris Murdoch (“Iris,” with music by James Horner), the Bard of Avon (“Shakespeare in Love,” with an Academy Award-winning score by Stephen Warbeck), and Samuel Clemens (“The Adventures of Mark Twain,” by Max Steiner).
Writers are such characters, especially when they’re depicted on the big screen. Everything’s writ large, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday at 11:00 AM EST/8:00 AM PST
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EST/4:00 PM PST
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
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