Life isn’t so bad when there’s ice cream.
Perhaps that was what was going through Aaron Copland’s head, decades after getting jerked around by Hollywood. After all, if you want to work in the film industry, you’ve got to expect that once in a while somebody’s going to mess with your things – even if you’re a Pulitzer Prize winner, lauded as the “Dean of American composers.”
Copland was not very happy when his music for “The Heiress” was chopped to ribbons, dialed down and rescored without his approval. William Wyler (“Wuthering Heights,” “Friendly Persuasion,” “The Big Country,” “Ben-Hur”) was a brilliant director, but he had a tin ear. His films consistently sported the best scores of their era, and yet he mostly underappreciated, if not outright disliked, the music.
“The Heiress” was made fresh off Wyler’s runaway success with “The Best Years of Our Lives.” The film, based on Henry James’ “Washington Square,” was nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning four, including Oscars for Olivia De Havilland and for Copland’s score, which is so strong it manages to maintain its integrity despite all of the studio tinkering.
Wyler insisted Copland work the song “Plaisir d’Amour” into the fabric of his music, which he artfully did in three cues. But that wasn’t good enough. Without Copland’s knowledge, the main title was replaced with a garish arrangement of “Plaisir,” which was also looped in for some of the love music. André Previn, in 1949 already one of Hollywood’s bright young talents, likened the return of Copland’s original thoughts following these interpolations to “suddenly finding a diamond in a can of Heinz beans.”
When Copland’s contribution was recognized by the Academy, it was the only instance up to that time of a score being honored after being shorn of its main title, the part of a score that generally makes the biggest impression. Copland never bothered to collect his award. “The Heiress” would be the last time he would work in Hollywood.
He did compose one more film score, however, for the 1961 independent film, “Something Wild,” which contains some of his most insistently non-commercial music. Occasionally brutal and often thrilling, its character is worlds away from the pastoral tranquility of “Appalachian Spring.” It’s a brilliant piece of work, yet it did not receive a commercial release until 2003.
This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll sample music from “The Heiress” and “Something Wild,” as well as from the controversial pro-Soviet film “The North Star.” We’ll even hear a little bit from the 1939 World’s Fair documentary “The City.”
Get your Labor Day weekend off to a good start with a cold cone of Aaron Copland classics, this Friday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
