Classic movie buffs remember choreographer and director Busby Berkeley primarily for his opulent dance numbers, in which the intricate movements of garishly-appointed showgirls create mesmerizing, kaleidoscopic patterns, frequently documented from on high. His influence was enormous, and his “style” is still being referenced in popular culture and the visual arts all the time.
But for a visionary and highly successful filmmaker, who provided amusement and escape for millions during the Great Depression and World War II, Berkeley struggled with his own personal demons. He was married six times, drank like a merman (and I don’t mean Ethel), and even attempted suicide.
In 1935, at the peak of his fame, he was in an automobile accident in which two people were killed and five were seriously injured, when his vehicle swerved into oncoming traffic and plowed headlong into one car and sideswiped another. He had to be carried into the courtroom on a stretcher. Witnesses at the scene testified that he smelled of alcohol. The first two trials, for second degree murder, ended with hung juries. He was acquitted in a third.
Somehow, through the grace of God, maybe, Berkeley managed to make it to 80 years-old. He died of natural causes in Palm Springs, California on March 14, 1976.
Despite his catastrophic personal life, as a creative artist, he was innovative and audacious. With good cause, TCM has been highlighting his films throughout the month of May. I had never seen this one, “Small Town Girl” (1953), with Ann Miller tapping her way through a Cocteauvian, “Beauty and the Beast”-style, partially submerged dance band!
“42nd Street” (1933)
Shadow Waltz from “Gold Diggers of 1933”
Human Waterfall from “Footlight Parade” (1933)
Cagney (also “Footlight Parade”)
Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney in “Girl Crazy” (1943)
Carmen Miranda as “The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat” (1943)
Esther Williams in “Million Dollar Mermaid” (1952)
Who knew that between the ages of 5 and 10 I lived next door to the world authority on the music of Edmund Rubbra? Who’d have thought that such a figure would have resided in Easton, Pennsylvania?
Rubbra is a now-underrated British composer of rewarding symphonies and choral music, sometimes overtly inspired by his Roman Catholic faith. The music is full of fantasy and often dreamy melody, but by no means at the expense of architectural logic.
Ralph Scott Grover joined the faculty of Lafayette College, in Easton, in 1965. He was the first head of Lafayette’s music department. His affection for Rubbra’s music yielded a book, “The Music of Edmund Rubbra,” published in 1993. He was also invited to write the Rubbra entry for “The New Grove Dictionary.”
Grover himself was a composer of art songs, or so I’m told. I remember he and his wife would spend time each year visiting at Rubbra’s castle in the UK. Earlier, in 1980, he had also written a book titled “Ernest Chausson: The Man and His Music.”
I find it amusing to reflect that as a boy I would be playing on the sidewalk, around a tree out front, not knowing the first thing about classical music – my grandfather, with whom I lived, was a product of the Great Depression and World War II, who spent most of his life working with his hands – and here I was, living next door to someone totally steeped in English music, which would later become one of my life’s passions.
Mr. Grover died in 2002. I am happy to say that I met him again later in life, by which time I had already become quite knowledgeable about the subject. In fact, I know he listened to me on WWFM. I remember that he and his wife pledged their financial support during one of my shifts. Grover also expressed an affection for the music of Gerald Finzi, whom I also happen to adore, and was a member of the Peter Warlock Society.
I do regret not having had more of a master-disciple relationship with him. By that time, I had already left Easton, and though he extended a non-specific invitation to visit, nothing ever came of it. We nearly missed one another entirely. I’m thankful we had the conversations we did, and that he saw that I had become something more than the goofy kid he scarcely regarded.
Happy birthday, Edmund Rubbra (1901-1986). It is you I have to thank for this reminiscence.
Here’s a sample of Rubbra’s music: “Overture Resurgam,” from 1975, inspired by a memory of the war and an example of the composer’s religious convictions translated to sound. In March 1941, Nazi planes bombed Plymouth and laid waste to much of the city, including the Church of St. Andrew. Only its tower remained intact. On the north door of the tower stood one word, “Resurgam” – “Risen Again.”
Time to get out the crazy party hats. You know, the ones with the horns and feathers. May 22 is the birthday of Richard Wagner (1813-1883). This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll honor the composer with an handful of vintage recordings.
American baritone Lawrence Tibbett never actually sang the role of Wotan on stage, in the context of a “Ring” cycle. However, he did record “Wotan’s Farewell and Magic Fire Music,” magnificently, in 1934, with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Leopold Stokowski.
Karl Muck was a casualty of anti-German sentiment during his time as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which, unfortunately, happened to coincide with the First World War. Be that as it may, he was held in the highest regard by fellow musicians and thought by many to be one of Wagner’s finest interpreters. We’ll hear a fascinating 1927 recording of the Transformation Music and the beginning of the Grail Scene from Act I of “Parsifal,” made at the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth.
The recording employs the original bells designed by Wagner, which would be melted down by the Nazis for ammunition during the Second World War. So this will be a rare opportunity to experience the “Parsifal” Wagner actually knew. Muck was principal conductor of the Bayreuth Festival since 1903. He conducted “Parsifal” at Bayreuth 14 times between 1901 and 1930.
Incidentally, it was on this date 150 years ago – Wagner’s 59th birthday – that the composer laid the cornerstone for his Bayreuth Festival Theater.
Finally, we’ll return to “Die Walküre” to wrap things up on a buoyant note with Siegmund and Sieglinde’s love music from Act I, which concludes with the lovers fleeing together into the welcoming spring. Nine months later, Sieglinde gives birth to Siegfried, the saga’s hero-without-fear. Lotte Lehmann strikes sparks with legendary Danish heldentenor Lauritz Melchoir in a 1935 recording with Bruno Walter and the Vienna Philharmonic.
The power of these performances remains undiminished by the passage of time. It’s a Wagner power hour on “Vintage Wagner,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
PHOTOS: Lotte Lehmann as Sieglinde and Lauritz Melchior as Siegmund
You know life has worn you down when all your wildest fantasies now involve the temperature staying under 70 degrees.
This week on “Picture Perfect,” it will be like sweltering under a Balrog in Moria, as we listen to music from movies constructed around fantasy quests.
For decades, “The Lord of the Rings” had been a kind of Holy Grail for genre fans, and anticipation ran high in regard to when exactly there would be a decent live action adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s magnum opus. Alas, either filmmakers couldn’t acquire the rights, or they were hampered by technological limitations. Though the realization of Tolkien’s richly-imagined world of hobbits, orcs and balrogs eluded many, fantasy films of a derivative nature were thick on the ground. Some were good, some not so good. But many of them had outstanding scores.
“The Dark Crystal” (1982), though produced by Jim Henson and company, was a long way from Big Bird and Ernie & Burt, with some pretty dark scenes. The score by Trevor Jones is first rate, given the full romantic treatment and recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra, augmented by Fairlight and Synclavier synthesizers, as well as the occasional period instrument.
“Willow” (1988) allegedly grew out of George Lucas’ desire to film “The Hobbit.” Rather than fork over a sizeable portion of his earnings to the Tolkien estate, he opted instead to take the “Star Wars” approach of synthesizing archetypal images, from the Old Testament through Ray Harryhausen films, to create his own original story. Except the influences weren’t so cleverly assimilated this time. Composer James Horner followed suit, with a score rich in allusions to Schumann, Wagner, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, and especially Prokofiev.
The first feature-length adaptation of “The Lord of the Rings” (1978) was literally rendered in animation. The film manages to cover only the first book-and-a-half of the trilogy, and the last half hour or so is probably incomprehensible to anyone who hasn’t read it. It had been director Ralph Bakshi’s plan to divide the trilogy into two parts – already a concession to the studio – but the first film’s modest performance meant there was no funding for a second.
Two-time Academy Award winner Leonard Rosenman was engaged to write the score. Rosenman composed the music for the James Dean classics “East of Eden” and “Rebel Without a Cause.” Bakshi had originally wanted to use Led Zepplin songs. He later expressed his dislike for Rosenman’s score, which he found to be too conventional – somewhat ironic in that Rosenman, a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg, Roger Sessions, and Luigi Dallapiccola, was known for writing some of the most challenging scores in film history, including the uncompromising music for “Fantastic Voyage.”
It would be over two decades before another feature film based upon Tolkien’s source material was mounted. Peter Jackson’s “The Fellowship of the Ring” (2001) is brimful of state-of-the-art special effects, so much so that a great many important details from Tolkien’s novel are lost in the shuffle. Still, Jackson’s trilogy went on to garner 30 Academy Award nominations, of which it won 17. Howard Shore’s music was recognized with Oscars for the first and third installments. The third, “The Return of the King,” inexplicably went on to become one of the most decorated films of all time.
Prophecies must be fulfilled, order restored, and the land made whole! We’re on a quest for fantasy music, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Anybody remember David Helfgott? I note that he is 75 years-old today.
Helfgott was the Australian child prodigy who attained international recognition as a concert pianist, only to collapse into mental illness. Then, after more than a decade of unimaginable travails, he rose Phoenix-like to fulfill, to some extent, his former promise.
Helfgott’s inspiring story became the subject of the film “Shine” (1996), which earned Geoffrey Rush an Academy Award for Best Actor and Helfgott a few recordings released on RCA.
While unquestionably Helfgott’s story is extraordinary and deserving of nothing but admiration and respect, I personally found the movie to be a 105-minute eyeroll. More often than not, I don’t like movies about music anyway. They almost always get it “wrong,” with some producer, screenwriter, or actor not understanding the first thing about it.
In the case of “Shine,” the venerable Sir John Gielgud is resurrected to slice ham as Helfgott’s Yoda-like mentor, expounding on the mystical underpinnings of “Rach 3” (shorthand for Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3).
Rush is a fine actor, of course, and the first, thanks to his work in “Shine,” to be honored for the same performance at the Academy Awards, the BAFTA Awards, the Critics’ Choice Awards, the Golden Globe Awards, and the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Admirably, in preparation for the role, he resumed his piano studies, which he had broken off at the age of 14. This allowed him to act as his own “hand double.”
But if you ask me, it was Noah Taylor, who played the teenaged Helfgott, who did most of the heavy-lifting. Rush appears only for about four minutes at the start of the film, and then he drops out until the second hour. It is Taylor with whom the audience bonds and who cements our belief in the character.
Undoubtedly, the motivation for getting Helfgott’s story on the screen was sincere. The film was something of a passion project for director Scott Hicks, who had seen the pianist perform in 1986, and was so moved by his story that he was determined to have it produced. Equally, he claims, he took care not to draw any “pop-psychology conclusions.”
But really, could “Shine” be any more pop? Granted, a dramatic film intended for mass consumption has to be entertaining, and to the average Joe or Jane, I’m sure “Shine” pushes all the right buttons, as it follows the classic arc of a sudser screenplay. But for anyone who actually knows music, it’s kind of like those movies that have actors pantomime a performance, when it’s evident no one on the set has any idea how a particular instrument should be held. I’m not saying Rush is unbelievable at the piano, just drawing a comparison in regard to the film’s execution.
It’s said that Hicks and screenwriter Jan Sardi tried to imbue “Shine” with a distinctive musical structure, so that the film might emulate a concerto. The screenplay is divided into “movements,” alternating fast-slow-fast, and employing the standard elements of exposition, development, and recapitulation. Reading this makes me curious to watch it again.
Hicks went on to direct two other music-themed feature documentaries: “Glass,” in 2007, and “Highly Strung,” in 2015.
“Shine” was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including one for Best Picture. Granted, it is a film I have not seen in a quarter-century. So perhaps I should give it another chance – even if I have no real desire to do so.
Again, this is not to belittle Helfgott’s very real struggles, courage, and determination, or the barbarity of the therapy to which he was subjected. After all, that’s really the motivation for the movie – the fact he was able to overcome so much and return to concertizing.
It’s just too bad the film also had to be about music.
But I suppose I should just be grateful at this point for anything that brings a wider awareness of the art. Happy birthday, David Helfgott, and congratulations on your magnificent comeback.
Helfgott plays “Flight of the Bumblebee” at the Academy Awards
Rush in “Shine” (Helfgott on the soundtrack)
Gielgud, as corny as I remember
Fly on the wall perspective of Helfgott performing the first movement of “Rach 3.”
A complete live recording
Trailer for Hicks’ “Highly Strung”
Trailer for “Glass,” a portrait of Philip Glass
Helfgott documentary “Hello, I Am David”
Helfgott and Rush on the 20th anniversary of “Shine”
