Today is the 125th anniversary of Duke Ellington’s birth. With late April temperatures expected to push 90 on the East Coast, here’s a photo of this coolest of cats keeping cool with some ice cream.
Duke’s cool lesson lost on an uncool audience
The Duke and Ella on Ed Sullivan
“Hot and Bothered”
“Mr. Gentle and Mr. Cool”
Duke unadorned (highly recommended)
In “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Lionel Barrymore plays heartless Old Man Potter, a modern-day Scrooge, who views his fellow citizens of Bedford Falls as so much grist to be ground for his own profit. Barrymore the man, however, was full of generous human qualities, with a great enthusiasm and aptitude for the arts. I’d long known that he was also a composer, but it is only in doing a YouTube search this week that I discovered a broader cross-section of his output than the last time I checked, now perhaps eight years ago.
Barrymore was born in Philadelphia in 1878. He was, of course, part of a venerable acting dynasty that also included his famous siblings, John and Ethel Barrymore. He’s also the great-uncle of Drew Barrymore.
He was especially fine in character roles, playing a variety of them on screen, in retrospect perhaps most memorable for his curmudgeons. He played the irascible Dr. Gillespie in the “Doctor Kildare” movies of the 1930s and ‘40s. He was Ebenezer Scrooge in annual radio broadcasts of “A Christmas Carol.” Of course, he is probably most familiar these days as the soul-crushing capitalist Mr. Potter. He was honored with an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in “A Free Soul” in 1931.
Despite his natural aptitude and widely acknowledged success in the field, it had never been his ambition to act. Instead, he was interested in being a visual artist. He even trained in Paris, and his prints and etchings were widely circulated.
As a composer, several of his piano works were published. His “Tableau Russe” was played, in both its piano and orchestral versions, in the film “Dr. Kildare’s Wedding Day.” His orchestral piece, “In Memoriam,” written to the memory of his brother John, was performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra. He also wrote an historical novel, “Mr. Cantonwine: A Moral Tale.”
Barrymore died in 1954. He had suffered from crippling arthritis for decades, which is why you’ll generally see him a wheelchair in most of his later films. He also broke his hip twice. He required morphine and cocaine to get through a shoot and to get to sleep at night. It was only through frequent injections of painkillers that he was able to get through “You Can’t Take It with You” on crutches.
Barrymore’s “Halloween Suite” can be heard here, beginning at the 36-minute mark. Barrymore is the narrator. Mario Lanza also appears on the concert. Miklós Rózsa conducts.
More ambitious is a Piano Concerto, the first movement of which is posted here
Barrymore’s “Fugue Fantasia”
“In Memoriam John Barrymore”
“Tableau Russe,” as heard in “Dr. Kildare”
Barrymore etchings
https://hotcore.info/babki/lionel-barrymore-etchings.htm
Some of his paintings recall classic illustration
https://www.artnet.com/artists/lionel-barrymore/
A sample of his still lifes
Artistic renderings of Barrymore, mostly by other hands
Music for the ages? Who cares? I would be the first in line if Naxos were to put out such an album.
Happy birthday, Lionel Barrymore!
PHOTOS (counterclockwise from top) As Old Man Potter; as himself; behind the scenes of “Rasputin and the Empress” (1932), the only film he ever made with both his siblings; and at lunch with fellow composers Eugene Zador, Charles Wakefield Cadman, Nat Finston, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and Daniele Amfitheatrof.
Poland is in bloom! This Saturday on “The Lost Chord,” find refreshment in musical discoveries by four Polish composers.
We’ll hear a Fantasy for Cello and Piano by Aleksander Tansman. Tansman spent most of his career in Paris, with an interlude during the war years in the United States. Here, he met Arnold Schoenberg, wrote film scores, and developed an affection for American jazz. Still, his most enduring influences were those of his Polish and Jewish roots.
Hyper-romantic Mieczyslaw Karlowicz lived his life at such a heightened emotional pitch that he was perhaps fated to die young. His music certainly tends in that direction, occupied as most of it is with ecstasy and death. “A Sad Tale,” his last completed work, is a contemplation of suicide. Karlowicz himself was killed in an avalanche while hiking in the Tatras. He was 32 years-old.
On a lighter note, we’ll enjoy choral music by Andrzej Koszewski – his “Kaszuby Suite,” steeped in folk traditions of northwestern Poland – and a neoclassical woodwind quintet by Wojciech Kilar, who is probably best known in the West for his film scores, including those for “Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula,’” “The Portrait of a Lady,” and “The Pianist.”
It’s a flowering of Polish music on “Poland Spring,” on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Remember, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for those of you listening in the East. Here are the respective air-times for all three of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PM PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EASTERN)
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday on KWAX at 8:00 AM PACIFIC TIME (11:00 AM EASTERN)
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PM PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EASTERN)
Stream all three, at the times indicated, by following the link!
This Saturday morning on “Sweetness and Light,” it’s April in Paris.
We’ll hear April-and-Paris themed songs by Charles Trenet (“En avril, à Paris”) Georges Bizet (“Chanson d’avril”) and, of course, Vernon Duke (“April in Paris”), alongside a symphony for wind instruments by Charles Gounod (first performed in Paris in April 1885), a love song by Erik Satie, a suite (“Paris”) by British light music master Haydn Wood, and a work by Darius Milhaud as good as spring itself.
It will be an hour of cafés and croissants, blossoms and bisous, on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PST, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Stream it, wherever you are, at the link:
You might think me a “bold rascal” or a “saucy fellow” or perhaps even a “Saxon cockerel” this week on “Picture Perfect,” as I offer my highly-opinionated assessments of four screen adaptations of the Robin Hood legends.
We’ll begin with “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (1938), directed by Michael Curtiz, taking over from William Keighley. One of the all-time Technicolor classics, its stellar cast includes Errol Flynn, Olivia De Havilland, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains, Alan Hale, Eugene Pallette, Melville Cooper, and many, many others – a veritable who’s who of classic movie actors. Everything about it – the screenplay, the production design, the buoyant tone, the stylish choreography – is as a Robin Hood film should be. That includes, not least of all, its Academy Award-winning music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.
While Flynn will always be the definitive Robin Hood, we’ll consider another very interesting take on the character, which in my opinion doesn’t quite come off, in Richard Lester’s revisionist meditation, “Robin and Marian” (1976). Sean Connery plays a middle-aged Robin who returns from the crusades to rekindle his romance with Maid Marian, played by Audrey Hepburn, and to settle his account, once and for all, with the Sheriff of Nottingham, played by Robert Shaw. Again, you can’t beat the cast, which also includes Nichol Williamson, Richard Harris, and Denholm Elliot.
The elegiac tone is precisely what Lester was aiming for. The story is both a meditation on the beloved Robin Hood characters in middle age AND a melancholy reflection on the passage of time. However, the screenplay, by James Goldman, of “The Lion in Winter” fame, probably could have been a little more inventive, despite an ending that hues closer to the actual legends. It’s undoubtedly a moving film, but somehow it leaves one feeling rather grim.
There was some tension between the director and producer, Ray Stark, as to whether the film should be an artistic statement or hew more closely to the mainstream. Initially composer Michel Legrand was engaged to write the music. Lester found the results agreeable, but Stark did not. At the very least, Stark wanted a more insinuating love theme, as a concession to the audience. So John Barry was brought on board to write a replacement score. Out of necessity, Barry had to do so very quickly. But Barry being Barry, he was able to fulfill Stark’s objective and infuse the story with some memorable musical heartache.
At least there was some attempt at poignancy and philosophical provocation in “Robin and Marian.” By contrast, there was little reason to resurrect the legends for “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” (1991). Little reason, that is, unless they were going to make it GOOD.
The project seemed doomed from the start, with Kevin Costner cast as the lead. I have nothing against Costner, who made a string of very fine movies in the 1980s, culminating in his multiple Oscar-winner, “Dances with Wolves,” in 1990. But by no stretch of the imagination is he a believable Englishman. Pile on the grit and ramp up the violence, add a superfluous witch, forget to put in the FUN, and what’s left is a soul-numbing experience.
Alan Rickman brings the film sporadically to life with his lunatic update of Basil Rathbone. But the salt-and-pepper buddy approach, Morgan Freeman as Robin’s sidekick, and a battle-hardened Maid Marian, played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, don’t really ring true for the 12th century, although I suppose they are pretty characteristic of the 1990s – and the 2020s, now that I think about it. This Robin Hood truly was a prince of thieves. I certainly wished I had my two-and-a-half hours back.
I thought the score was pretty lackluster too, but having endured another 30 years of modern movies since then, the music for “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” has come to sound like a veritable classic. The score is credited to composer Michael Kamen, who had the assistance of no less than 15 orchestrators. There’s no question the theme is rousing. Like most of the elements of the film, however, I found myself questioning whether it is really appropriate. Judge for yourself.
We’ll wrap things up on firmer ground with an adaptation of Sir Walter Scott’s classic novel “Ivanhoe” (1952), in which Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, and of course Richard the Lionheart play important supporting roles. The film stars Robert Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor (no relation), Joan Fontaine, and the usually supercilious, but here somewhat sympathetic, George Sanders. The fine score is by three-time Academy Award-winner Miklós Rózsa, who of course is best remembered for having composed the music for such epic films as “Quo Vadis,” “Ben-Hur,” and “King of Kings.”
May I obey all your commands with equal pleasure, sire! We’ll make it our mission to fight for the rich and deprecate the poor (movies, that is), as we plunder the legends of Robin Hood, on “Picture Perfect,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Remember, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for those of you listening in the East. Here are the respective air-times for all three of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PM PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EASTERN)
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday on KWAX at 8:00 AM PACIFIC TIME (11:00 AM EASTERN)
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PM PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EASTERN)
Stream all three, at the times indicated, by following the link!
Robin is a bold rascal:
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