Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Tyrannical Sea Captains Movie Music

This week on “Picture Perfect,” taste the lash and prepare to be keelhauled! We’ll have music from movies featuring tyrannical sea captains.

Tyranny and sadism are common ingredients in nautical adventure films, where hard-bitten sea captains find it “Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.”

At least that’s the mantra of Wolf Larsen, who does his best to uphold the philosophy of Milton’s Satan, in Jack London’s “The Sea Wolf” (1941). Larsen is a tough Norwegian sea captain who presides over his ship, the Ghost, with strength and brutality.

Edward G. Robinson plays Larsen. John Garfield is the working class seaman who opposes him. And Ida Lupino is the castaway with a past, with whom he falls in love in spite of himself. The score is by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who also provided the music for the seafaring adventures of Errol Flynn.

Captain Ahab requires little introduction. Everyone knows his ivory leg and his obsessive quest for the White Whale. Gregory Peck plays him in a film version of Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” (1956), which was adapted by Ray Bradbury and directed by John Huston. The score is by English composer Philip Sainton.

Humphrey Bogart was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance as Lieutenant Commander Phillip Francis Queeg, in a big screen adaptation of Herman Wouk’s “The Caine Mutiny” (1954). Queeg, in charge of a U.S. Navy destroyer-minesweeper, is pushed over the edge by his obsession with strawberries pilfered from the officers’ mess. Max Steiner’s upbeat, patriotic theme provides a nice counterpoint to the interpersonal turmoil aboard the Caine.

Finally, the most iconic of tyrannical sea captains, Captain Bligh, is represented by “Mutiny on the Bounty” (1962). Historical novelists Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall make hay from the 1789 insurrection aboard the HMS Bounty.

The classic film version from 1935 starred Charles Laughton as Bligh and Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian. The remake featured Trevor Howard as Bligh, with Marlon Brando, envisioning Christian as a kind of high seas dandy.

It’s said that Brando essentially directed all his own scenes himself. The film was colossal failure, earning back only $13 million of its $19 million budget. Nonetheless, it managed to inspire Bronislau Kaper to compose one of his most monumental scores.

Take a bucket of salt water with your stripes, you dog! Then join me for tyrannical sea captains 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 EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

CAPTAINS OUTRAGEOUS (clockwise from left): Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab, Edward G. Robinson as Wolf Larsen, Humphrey Bogart as Captain Queeg, and Trevor Howard as Captain Bligh

August 2, 2024
The Rocketeer A Retro Superhero Dive

In a lot of ways, “The Rocketeer” (1991) is an old-fashioned whiz bang adventure. There are the consciously-fabricated elements of a fabled lost America, with its sepia tones and well-dressed citizenry, an upright, uncomplicated hero (and seat-of-the-pants test pilot, played by Billy Campbell), his truehearted sweetheart (an aspiring starlet, played by Jennifer Connelly), and comic book Nazis. You know the kind of movie. Toss the Chuck Yeager scenes from “The Right Stuff” into a blender with “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

But looking back, “The Rocketeer” genuinely is from a more innocent time, before penny-pinching computer animation squeezed out analogue ingenuity, when superhero movies were still comparatively rare, and no studio release, not even one directed by Steven Spielberg, was expected to gross billions of dollars. Interesting to muse on the transformation of Disney from the studio that produced this squeaky-clean popcorn entertainment to the current Dark Lord of assembly line Marvel movies.

“The Rocketeer” rode the same aftershock of ‘80s blockbusters that yielded “The Shadow,” “The Phantom,” and later in the decade, “The Mask of Zorro,” before movies took a decisive turn down a darker, more violent, and decidedly dystopian trail.

Alan Arkin plays the Doc Brown character, a resourceful mechanic who can work miracles with spit and chewing gum. Paul Sorvino plays a mafia boss, who, when the chips are down, hates the Nazis every bit as much as Meyer Lansky did. Philadelphia’s Jon Polito, a Coen Brothers’ favorite, plays – what else? – the sleazy airfield boss.

For classic film buffs, there’s added enjoyment in the recreations of old Hollywood (from back in the days when the iconic sign still read Hollywoodland), with Timothy Dalton relishing his role as an Errol Flynn-like swashbuckler (one of the sets from “The Adventures of Robin Hood” is lovingly recreated), unsubstantiated rumors that Flynn was a Nazi spy (as asserted in a controversial 1980 biography by Charles Higham) here taken at face value. Remember this is fiction, folks, based on a comic book, in fact, by Dave Stevens.

There are also set pieces that are staged in a nightclub and a dirigible, Terry O’Quinn appears as Howard Hughes, other actors impersonate Clark Gable and W.C. Fields, and there’s even an uncanny resurrection of acromegalic actor Rondo Hatton (Tiny Ron quite convincing as the Creeper).

Most important is the jet-pack propelled Rocketeer himself, with serial icon Commando Cody given a seriously art deco makeover.

You can see the kind of movie they wanted “The Rocketeer” to be. It was directed by Joe Johnston, who co-designed Boba Fett and was an Academy Award winning effects artist on both “Star Wars” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Among his more recent films as a director is “Captain America: The First Avenger.”

Unfortunately, “The Rocketeer” lacks uplift and euphoria. The film needed a Richard Donner (who directed “Superman”) or a Spielberg at the helm. Then it might have had that elusive spark, so that when an onlooking cries out, “It’s the Rocketeer!” we really want to laugh and cheer.

James Horner’s score captures the optimism of limitless possibility and wide-open adventure (how I miss Horner!), but he doesn’t offer a rousing secondary “super” theme that would have helped to sell the premise. In the action scenes, the music gets busy, but it fails to excite.

“The Rocketeer” never quite soars or attains the giddy heights it aspires to.

Not to talk it out…

“The Rockeeter” will be the topic of our weekly conversation on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. Get fueled up! Your presence in the comments section will give us a lift, when we livestream on Facebook, YouTube, etc., this Friday evening at 7:00 EDT!

https://www.facebook.com/roystiedyescificorner

August 1, 2024
Ruby Keeler Lee Dixon Magic Unseen CGI

More magic here than in any CGI I’ve ever seen. The next time I’ve got an article due, I’m calling Ruby Keeler and Lee Dixon!

July 31, 2024
Koussevitzky Champion of American Music

Friday was the 150th anniversary of Serge Koussevitzky’s birth, but I had just finished recording one of my radio shows, and I couldn’t muster the energy and focus to post about it. Even a photo with a link to one of his recordings would have been something, albeit inadequate in proportion to his significance as one of the great champions of modern music and, more specifically, American music.

It’s been calculated that, between 1924 and 1944, Koussevitzky presented 162 American works, 66 of which were world premieres. On his Concerts Koussevitzky, conducted in Paris in the 1920s, he also introduced Ravel’s enduring orchestration of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” and Honegger’s “Pacific 231.” As music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, he gave first performances of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra and Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” suite.

“Kouss” was in on the ground floor at Tanglewood. He mentored Leonard Bernstein and others. When his wife, Nadia, died, he set up the Koussevitzky Music Foundation in her memory, to support and promote living composers. Early Foundation commissions yielded Britten’s “Peter Grimes” and Messiaen’s “Turangalîla-Symphonie.”

Kouss began his career as a double-bassist and blossomed into one of the most important conductors of the 20th century. I was remiss in not acknowledging him on his birthday anniversary. Mea culpa, and happy 150, Serge Koussevitzky!

First recording of “Pictures at an Exhibition”

Broadcast premiere of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra (with the original wet-noodle ending, soon to be revised by the composer)

Live performance of Sibelius’ Symphony No. 7

Roy Harris’ Symphony No. 3

Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5

Rehearsing the BSO in Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade”

Filmed performance of Randall Thompson’s “The Last Words of David”

Playing the slow movement of his Double-Bass Concerto, with piano

10-minute documentary, “The Story of Tanglewood” (1949)

Serge Koussevitzky, holding hat, with (left to right) Olivier Messiaen, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein (lighting up), and Lukas Foss at Tanglewood in 1949 (photo by Ruth Orkin)

July 30, 2024
Benjamin Luxon Cornish Baritone Dies at 87

The Cornish baritone Benjamin Luxon has died.

Luxon made more than one hundred recordings, many of them devoted to English song. One of my favorites was a recital on Chandos Records devoted to the songs of Peter Warlock. Of course, Warlock being Warlock, a percentage of those songs are about drinking and milkmaids.

As an up-and-coming singer, Luxon joined Benjamin Britten’s English Opera Group and went on to appear in a number of the composer’s productions. Britten conceived the title role of his television opera “Owen Wingrave” specifically for Luxon’s voice.

Luxon sang at Covent Garden, the Glyndebourne Opera Festival, and most of the major European houses. He also performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. In his quiver of roles were Falstaff, Wozzeck, Don Giovanni, Eugene Onegin, and Papageno.

As a recitalist, his repertoire was broad, ranging from early music to lieder to contemporary song, music hall, and folk music. With tenor Robert Tear, he worked to revive forgotten and dimly-recollected parlor songs. In recital, he was frequently accompanied by pianist David Willison.

Beginning around 1990, Luxon began to experience hearing loss. He retired from singing, but continued to appear as a reader and narrator and to give masterclasses and direct. He lived his final years in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, also home to the Tanglewood Music Center, where he had been a frequent guest.

Luxon died on Thursday at the age of 87. R.I.P.

Channeling “MacArthur Park”-era Richard Harris (but in better voice)

“Johnny, I hardly knew ya’”

Peter Warlock, “Captain Stratton’s Fancy”

As Verdi’s Falstaff (1 of 2)

Falstaff (2 of 2)

Vintage music hall

Narrating Stravinsky’s “A Soldier’s Tale” at 82

A Cornish tale

2009 radio interview

“Give Me a Ticket to Heaven”

July 29, 2024

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