W. Somerset Maugham is said to have been the highest paid writer of the 1930s.
This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll have music from four Maugham adaptations, including the 1946 version of “Of Human Bondage” (with music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold), the 1946 version of “The Razor’s Edge” (with music by Alfred Newman), and two versions of “The Painted Veil – one from 2006 (with music by Alexandre Desplat) and one from 1957 (released as “The Seventh Sin,” with music by Miklós Rózsa).
As a former medical student who experienced World War I, first as an ambulance driver and then in the British Secret Intelligence Service, Maugham endured adventures all over Europe and Asia, which he then turned to the service of his fiction.
In 1938, he remarked, “Fact and fiction are so intermingled in my work that now, looking back on it, I can hardly distinguish one from the other.”
Maugham also worked in Hollywood for a time, writing scripts and making a pretty penny from film adaptations of his books.
I hope you’ll join me for music from movies inspired by Maugham this week, on “Picture Perfect.” The show airs tonight at 6 ET, with a repeat Saturday morning at 6. You can also listen to it later as a webcast, at http://www.wwfm.org.
PHOTO: Tyrone Power sees the light in “The Razor’s Edge”
