This week on “Picture Perfect,” in this season of wall-to-wall Biblical epics, I thought we’d enjoy a bit of counterprogramming in the form of music from films about faith, conscience, and the church.
Otto Preminger’s “The Cardinal” was released in 1963. Based on the novel by Henry Morton Robinson, the story follows a fictional Boston Irish Catholic priest from his ordination in 1917 to his appointment as cardinal on the eve of World War II. Tom Tryon played the lead. Tryon would later become a best-selling author himself (as Thomas Tryon), with books like “The Other” and “Harvest Home.”
An interesting factoid: The Vatican’s liaison officer for the production was Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI.
As always, Moross’ score is irrepressibly lyrical, even buoyant. The man never seemed to run out of good tunes.
We’ll also have music from “The Shoes of the Fisherman,” from 1968, another film based on a best-selling novel, this time by Morris L. West.
Anthony Quinn plays Kiril Pavlovich Lakota, an archbishop who serves 20 years in a Siberian labor camp. He is released and sent to Rome where is promoted to the cardinalate. When the Pope dies, suddenly, Lakota, a dark horse candidate, is elected as a replacement. The story balances Lakota’s internal struggles and personal torments with mounting global turmoil.
The music is by Alex North, who sets the melancholy lyricism of Russian folksong against the steely grandeur of his music for the Vatican.
The remainder of the program will be devoted to movies about missionaries. Georges Delerue provided a noble, austere score for the 1991 Bruce Beresford film “Black Robe,” based on a novel by the Irish Canadian writer Brian Moore, in which a Jesuit priest treks through 1500 miles of Canadian wilderness on a mission to convert the native tribes of the Huron and the Algonquin.
Ennio Morricone’s moving music for Roland Joffé’s 1986 film “The Mission,” which features Jeremy Irons as a Jesuit priest and Robert DeNiro as a reformed slave hunter in the South American jungle, has received a great deal of exposure over the years, both through its use in television commercials and by figure skaters, who made “Gabriel’s Oboe” a recognizable hit. It has become one of Morricone’s best-loved scores.
I hope you’ll join me for “Holy Men and Missions” this week, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!
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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 – 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
Tag: Alex North
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Destination Movie Magic? Due North
Where has the magic of the movies gone? Are there any composers or filmmakers working today that would be capable of creating anything as beguiling as the love theme from “Spartacus?”
Its creator, musical mage Alex North, was born in Chester, Pennsylvania (just outside of Philadelphia), on this date in 1910. His journey took him from a working-class background, to the Curtis Institute of Music, the Juilliard School, and the Moscow Conservatory. He also studied with Aaron Copland and Ernst Toch.
He became involved with the Federal Theatre Project. He worked in ballet, especially with Martha Graham and Anna Sokolow. He accompanied the latter to Mexico, where he had an opportunity to study with Silvestre Revueltas. Perhaps not coincidentally, his three North American teachers, Copland, Toch, and Revueltas, had all worked in film.
North wrote his first film score as far back as the 1930s, around the time he met up with director Elia Kazan. North was drafted during the war, and put his talent to use writing music for the Office of War Information documentaries.
With the cessation of hostilities, he returned to the theater. He also composed some concert pieces. It was his incidental music for plays such as “A Streetcar Named Desire” that earned him an invitation to Hollywood, where he wrote the score for Kazan’s classic film adaptation. It would be the first time jazz would be fully integrated into the drama, forming the basis for the film’s underscore, as opposed to being simply diegetic, or “source music,” played by a band or on a turntable in the background of a given scene. Its success opened the door to a new film score sensibility, paving the way for composers like Elmer Bernstein, Henry Mancini, and North’s beloved Duke Ellington.
In all, North wrote 50 film scores, racking up 15 Academy Award nominations, yet never taking home the prize. In 1986, he received lifetime achievement recognition from the Academy, the first composer to be so honored.
There were times, during the course of his career, when his music took on an independent life, distinct from the films for which it was written. He scored major hits with “Unchained Melody” (originally written for the film “Unchained” and recorded some 500 times) and the love theme from “Spartacus.” The original soundtrack to “A Streetcar Named Desire” also sold extremely well.
His acclaimed contribution to “Spartacus” didn’t keep the film’s director, Stanley Kubrick, from rejecting North’s score for “2001: A Space Odyssey” – without bothering to tell him. North found out only after the lights went down at the film’s premiere. Director John Huston was more appreciative. Later in his career, North became Huston’s composer of choice, for films like “The Misfits,” “Under the Volcano,” “Prizzi’s Honor,” and “The Dead.”
It’s especially poignant, in 2025, to view North’s acceptance speech for his honorary Oscar. (You’ll find a link to the clip below.) At around the 4:50 mark, he says: “I would like to make a humble plea to all of us involved in the movies, and that is to encourage and convey hope, humor, compassion, and adventure, and love… as opposed to despair, synthetic theatrics, and blatant, bloody violence. And sex, sex, sex, by all means, indeed… but with a bit of mystery, a touch of charm and elegance, and lots of imagination.”
Amen to that. It’s a shame that it’s a plea that’s been almost wholly ignored. We would be in a better place today, psychologically, as morale colors everything, were we not buffeted by an aggressively crass and downbeat popular culture. Had filmmakers only heeded his advice.
Happy birthday, Alex North.
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The Righteous Brothers sing “Unchained Melody”In the movie “Ghost”
Love theme from “Spartacus”
Cover by Yusef Lateef
“A Streetcar Named Desire”
Rejected score for “2001: A Space Odyssey”
Honorary Academy Award, presented by Quincy Jones, with an intro by Robin Williams
John Williams talks North, reedited to include extended musical examples
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Vatican Movie Music Pope-pourri on Picture Perfect
This week on “Picture Perfect,” with conclaves and popes very much in the news lately, it’s an hour of music from movies set in the Vatican.
It would appear that Alex North (born just south of Philadelphia, in Chester, Pa.) was Hollywood’s “go to” composer for papal scores. In “The Shoes of the Fisherman” (1968), Anthony Quinn plays Kiril Pavlovich Lakota, an archbishop who serves 20 years in a Siberian labor camp. He is released and sent to Rome where is promoted to the cardinalate. When the Pope dies, suddenly, Lakota, a dark horse candidate, is elected as his replacement. The story balances Lakota’s internal struggles and personal torments with mounting global turmoil. North juxtaposes the melancholy lyricism of Russian folksong with the steely grandeur of his music for the Vatican.
“The Agony and the Ecstasy” (1965), about the war of wills between Michelangelo (played by Charlton Heston) and the warrior-pope Julius II (played by Rex Harrison) over the painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, suggested a completely different approach. North’s other Vatican score is rich in allusions to authentic music of the era – and of the Church – which is most impressive when we think that the Early Music Movement was, at the time, in its very infancy, and the music of the pre-Baroque would not have been particularly well known.
Otto Preminger’s “The Cardinal” (1963) follows a fictional Boston Irish Catholic priest from his ordination in 1917 to his appointment as cardinal on the eve of World War II. Tom Tryon played the lead. Tryon later became a best-selling author (as THOMAS Tryon), with books such as “The Other” and “Harvest Home.” An interesting factoid: the Vatican’s liaison officer for the production was none other than Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI.
The composer this time was Jerome Moross. The producers of the recording we’ll be sampling incorporate the sound of the actual bell of St. Paul’s Cathedral into the opening of the suite.
Christopher Reeve may have been trying just a bit too hard to shake his “Superman” image when he signed on to “Monsignor” (1982). Reeve stars as a Roman Catholic priest whose ascent through the ranks at the Vatican parallels his underhanded dealings with a mafia don and an affair with a woman in the postulant stage of becoming a nun (none other than Geneviève Bujold).
Likewise, composer John Williams received his only nomination from the Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Original Score. Tune in for this rare opportunity to hear music from Williams’ first project after his Academy Award-winning contribution to “E.T.”
It’s a Pope-pourri of scores from movies set in the Vatican this week, on “Picture Perfect,” 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 – 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!
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Alex North Remembered Williams Interview
I posted earlier about film composer Alex North (“A Streetcar Named Desire,” “Death of a Salesman,” “Spartacus,” “Cleopatra,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”) on his birthday. Now here’s a two-part interview about North with John Williams!
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Alex North The Uncrowned King of Film Scores
Alex North was born in Chester, Pennsylvania (just outside of Philadelphia), on this date in 1910. His journey took him from a working-class background, to the Curtis Institute of Music, the Juilliard School, and the Moscow Conservatory. He also studied with Aaron Copland and Ernst Toch.
He became involved with the Federal Theatre Project. He worked in ballet, especially with Martha Graham and Anna Sokolow. He accompanied the latter to Mexico, where he had an opportunity to study with Silvestre Revueltas. Perhaps not coincidentally, his three North American teachers, Copland, Toch, and Revueltas, had all worked in film.
North wrote his first film score as far back as the 1930s, around the time he met up with director Elia Kazan. North was drafted during the war, and put his talent to use writing music for the Office of War Information documentaries.
With the cessation of hostilities, he returned to the theater. He also composed some concert pieces. It was his incidental music for plays like “A Streetcar Named Desire” that earned him an invitation to Hollywood, where he wrote the score for Kazan’s classic film adaptation. It would be the first time jazz would be fully integrated into the drama, forming the basis for the film’s underscore, as opposed to being simply diegetic, or “source music,” played by a band or on a turntable in the background of a given scene. Its success opened the door to a new film score sensibility, paving the way for composers like Elmer Bernstein, Henry Mancini, and North’s beloved Duke Ellington.
In all, North wrote 50 film scores, racking up 15 Academy Award nominations, yet never taking home the prize. In 1986, he received lifetime achievement recognition from the Academy, the first composer to be so honored.
There were times, during the course of his career, when his music took on an independent life, distinct from the films for which it was written. He scored major hits with “Unchained Melody” (originally written for the film “Unchained” and recorded some 500 times) and the love theme from “Spartacus.” The original soundtrack to “A Streetcar Named Desire” also sold extremely well.
His acclaimed contribution to “Spartacus” didn’t keep the film’s director, Stanley Kubrick, from rejecting North’s score for “2001: A Space Odyssey” – without bothering to tell him. North found out only after the lights went down at the film’s premiere. Director John Huston was more appreciative. Later in his career, North became Huston’s composer of choice, for films like “The Misfits,” “Under the Volcano,” “Prizzi’s Honor,” and “The Dead.”
It’s especially poignant, in 2023, to view North’s acceptance speech for his honorary Oscar. (You’ll find a link to the clip below.) At around the 4:50 mark, he says: “I would like to make a humble plea to all of us involved in the movies, and that is to encourage and convey hope, humor, compassion, and adventure, and love… as opposed to despair, synthetic theatrics, and blatant, bloody violence. And sex, sex, sex, by all means, indeed… but with a bit of mystery, a touch of charm and elegance, and lots of imagination.”
Amen to that. It’s a shame that it’s a plea that’s been almost wholly ignored. We would be in a better place today, psychologically, as morale colors everything, were we not buffeted by an aggressively crass and downbeat popular culture. Had filmmakers only heeded his advice.
Happy birthday, Alex North.
The Righteous Brothers sing “Unchained Melody”
In the movie “Ghost”
Love theme from “Spartacus”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChYyW_IhINo
Cover by Yusef Lateef
“A Streetcar Named Desire”
Rejected score for “2001: A Space Odyssey”
Honorary Academy Award, presented by Quincy Jones, with an intro by Robin Williams
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