Conquest is so not in right now. Nonetheless, this week on “Picture Perfect,” in advance of Columbus Day, the focus will be on explorers and exploration.
Fredric March plays the title role in “Christopher Columbus” (1949), inspired by the novel of Rafael Sabatini, author of “Scaramouche” and “The Sea Hawk.” The film was released by Gainsborough Pictures, the British studio that produced Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Lady Vanishes” and “The Wicked Lady,” a wildly popular, saucy period melodrama that starred Margaret Lockwood and James Mason.
Stewart Granger had originally been announced for the lead. Mason had also been considered. Replicas of the Nina and the Santa Maria were built especially for the film, and location shooting took place in Barbados. The Santa Maria was lost for two nights following a squall in the West Indies. Then it caught fire and had to be rebuilt. As far as March was concerned, all the effort was for naught. Reportedly, he was not very happy with the finished film.
The music for “Christopher Columbus” was by Arthur Bliss, who in 1950 would receive his knighthood and, in 1953, his appointment as Master of the Queen’s Music.
If you think March was a strange choice, just imagine Gary Cooper in “The Adventures of Marco Polo” (1938). Cooper assumes the role of the famed Venetian merchant who travels the Silk Road to China. Despite the ludicrous casting, the film yet manages to entertain, with Basil Rathbone, fine as always, as the villain.
The music is by Hugo Friedhofer. Friedhofer was such a successful orchestrator, he remained largely in the shadows of the film score luminaries he assisted. He lent his distinctive touch to many now-classic scores by Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. “The Adventures of Marco Polo” was Freidhofer’s first big chance to step up and show what he could do as a composer. He would have to wait until 1942 for another. Four years later, he would win a much-deserved Academy Award for his score to “The Best Years of Our Lives.”
The westward journey of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark has been a source of perpetual fascination for Americans. In 1997, Ken Burns directed a PBS documentary “Lewis and Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery.” National Geographic climbed on board a few years later with “Lewis and Clark: Great Journey West” (2002). The 42-minute featurette was released in IMAX theaters, with narration by Jeff Bridges and music by Sam Cardon.
Finally, Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote his most famous film score for the Ealing Studios docudrama “Scott of the Antarctic” (1948). John Mills plays explorer Robert Falcon Scott on his determined push to the reach the South Pole.
Vaughan Williams’ work on the score became the basis for his Symphony No. 7, which bears the subtitle “Sinfonia Antartica.” (Note that the composer drops the first “c” from the title of his symphony, preferring the Italian and dooming the work to being constantly misspelled.) We’ll hear selections from an extended suite from “Scott of the Antarctic,” from the first of three CDs issued on the Chandos label that, collectively, offer an overview of Vaughan Williams’ work for the cinema.
Corn and tomatoes from the New World! Spaghetti and fireworks from the Orient! Snow cones and frostbite from the Antarctic! Discover music from movies about explorers and exploration this week, on “Picture Perfect,” this Friday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
