Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Elmer Bernstein

Elegies for the Old West: Revisionist Western Soundtracks

This week on “Picture Perfect,” it’s an elegy for the Old West.

By the 1960s, the cinematic western was rapidly becoming a victim of its own success. The western had been a popular genre since the silent era, with dozens, of variable quality, released every year. Seemingly the genre hit its peak in the 1950s. One might say, the western suffered the fate of the actual American West, with its mythic resonance choked into clichés by too many settlers.

Also, current events began to color filmmakers’ perceptions of the West, the turbulence surrounding the Vietnam War, the assassinations of both Kennedys and King, and increased suspicion of government making for violent, bloodier and more nihilistic visions of Manifest Destiny. The shift gave rise to the revisionist western, which embraced new realities of dirt, corruption, and moral ambiguity in the West. At the same time, there was a rise in more wistful, elegiac westerns, which seem to bid farewell to beloved western icons like Joel McRea, Kirk Douglas, and John Wayne.

Common characteristics include the obsolescence of the gunfighter; the free-ranging cowboy fenced off by barbed wire; the encroachment of corporations in the form of railroad and mining interests; horses replaced by automobiles; the six-shooter superseded by the Gatling gun – the land of limitless possibility and moral certitude, subdivided and spoiled by industrialization. Once-heroic figures ride slowly into the sunset, or are killed, their qualities unrecognized, perhaps even willfully rejected, by those who come after.

We’ll hear selections from four elegiac westerns, including “Cheyenne Autumn” (1964), with music by Alex North; “The Shootist” (1976), with music by Elmer Bernstein; “The Wild Bunch” (1969), with music by Jerry Fielding; and “Monte Walsh” (1970), with music by John Barry, whose birthday it is today.

Autumn comes to the Old West, 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 the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

PHOTO: John Wayne and Ron Howard take aim in “The Shootist”

November 3, 2023
Comedy Film Scores Picture Perfect

April fools! No, not the holiday (such that it is); I’m talking about the performers.

This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll have musical selections from big screen comedies. For whatever reason, it’s seldom that we get a chance to sample from comedy scores. The emphasis is usually on drama or action. The more I think about it, it seems very few scores for comedies tend to achieve classic status – proportionately speaking, of course.

Henry Mancini never seemed to have a problem with that, thanks in no small part to his long association with director Blake Edwards. We’ll hear music from my three favorite installments in “The Pink Panther” series – the original (1963), “A Shot in the Dark” (1964), and “The Pink Panther Strikes Again” (1976). That’s right, the one in which Chief Inspector Dreyfus goes stark raving mad and determines to destroy the world with a doomsday ray, as the franchise hilariously jumps the shark.

Imagine how difficult it must be to write music for comedy, without it coming across as sounding like cartoon music. Which isn’t always necessarily a bad thing. “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” (1985) marked the feature debut of director Tim Burton. It was Burton’s first teaming with composer Danny Elfman, who would become a regular collaborator. Elfman is obviously a big fan of Nino Rota.

If you ever wanted to see Alastair Sim in drag, then I’ve got the film for you. Sim, you’ll recall, played Ebenezer Scrooge in the classic 1951 film version of “A Christmas Carol.” A few years later, he appeared in “The Belles of St. Trinian’s” (1954) in two roles – as the headmistress of a girl’s school and her criminal brother. None other than Malcolm Arnold provided the music hall-style score.

“It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World” (1963) is a relic from the “more is more” school of comedy, with Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, Phil Silvers, Terry-Thomas, Jonathan Winters, Jimmy Durante, and a tired Spencer Tracy. Ernest Gold’s approach to the music is defined by a manic waltz.

Before John Williams became a household name, with music for blockbusters like “Jaws” and “Star Wars,” he was known as Johnny Williams, when writing for television shows like “Lost and Space” and “Gilligan’s Island,” and for a string of mostly forgettable movie comedies.

“A Guide for the Married Man” (1967) starred Walter Matthau and Robert Morse. Interestingly, the film was directed by Gene Kelly, and a number of cast members from “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World” have cameos. (It seems you couldn’t make a film of this kind without Terry-Thomas.) Looking back on the score is fascinating, in that there are already hints of the Williams we know in the thick of very period-specific music.

Elmer Bernstein, who wrote music for such classics as “The Ten Commandments,” “The Magnificent Seven” and “To Kill a Mockingbird,” received a second wind in the late ‘70s, when he was offered the chance to score “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” produced by Ivan Reitman and directed by John Landis. This led to opportunities to work on “The Blues Brothers” and “Ghostbusters,” among others. We’ll conclude with some of Bernstein’s music for the Reitman service comedy, “Stripes,” which teamed Bill Murray and Harold Ramis. The key to Bernstein’s big success as a comedy composer during the era is that, musically, he mostly played it straight.

We’ll be unscrewing the tops on all the salt shakers and swapping out the hard-boiled eggs, as we spring into April with a smile on our face, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org!

Does your dog bite?

April 1, 2023
National Geographic’s Epic Soundtracks

Years in advance of modern cable, at the very dawn of color television, the National Geographic Society aired its first “special” on September 10, 1965. The program, titled “Americans on Everest,” featured stunning footage taken from the summit of the world’s tallest peak. These specials really were special, with breathtaking images and real-life adventures unlike anything previously experienced in American living rooms.

Three months later, viewers were introduced to the familiar “National Geographic Theme,” which was composed by Elmer Bernstein for the third of the broadcast specials, “Voyage of the Brigantine Yankee.” When one realizes that Bernstein also wrote the score for “The Magnificent Seven,” it becomes one of those “Of course!” moments. Both themes remain among the most recognized by American audiences.

National Geographic went on to work with a number of the top film composers of the day. This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll travel the world with four of them.

Bernstein, who was also responsible for the music for “The Ten Commandments,” “The Great Escape,” and “To Kill a Mockingbird,” returned in 1967 to write the music for a follow-up to “Voyage of the Brigantine Yankee,” called “Yankee Sails Across Europe.”

Ernest Gold, composer of “Exodus,” was engaged in 1972 to write the score for “The Last Vikings,” a documentary about the inhabitants of the rugged northern coast of Norway, who at the time still practiced some of the traditions followed centuries before by their Norse forebears. Gold’s score is a good example of what a talented composer can accomplish through an economy of means – in this case, a wind ensemble, harp, cello and percussion.

Leonard Rosenman, a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg, Roger Sessions, and Luigi Dallapiccola – a most unlikely pedigree on which to build a career in Hollywood – wrote classic scores for “East of Eden,” “Rebel Without a Cause,” and “Fantastic Voyage.” He also composed the music for one of the best known of the National Geographic specials, “Dr. Leakey and the Dawn of Man,” in 1966.

Finally, Jerome Moross wrote a charming and buoyant Americana score for “Grizzly!,” which aired in 1967. Moross, of course, was the composer of one of the all-time great western scores, for “The Big Country.”

Of course we’ll also get more than our share of that iconic National Geographic theme. All of this music was issued on limited edition compact discs from the Intrada label.

I hope you’ll join me for music from outstanding television documentaries produced by National Geographic, on “Picture Perfect,” this Saturday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

November 26, 2022
Elmer Bernstein A Centennial Celebration

His was an enviable career that spanned some 50 years. He composed music for over 150 movies and nearly 80 television projects, many of them still much-beloved, including “The Ten Commandments” (1956), “The Magnificent Seven” (1960), “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962), “The Great Escape” (1963), and the iconic theme for the National Geographic television specials.

Elmer Bernstein would have been 100 years-old today.

Bernstein was composer-of-choice for John Wayne’s later films, including “The Comancheros” (1961), “The Sons of Katie Elder” (1965), “True Grit” (1969), and “The Shootist” (1976).

In addition, he was one of the first film composers to incorporate jazz elements into his work for dramatic purposes, in movies like “The Man with the Golden Arm” (1955), “Sweet Smell of Success” (1957), and “Walk on the Wild Side” (1962).

Coming out of the Swinging Sixties, a time when the industry clearly favored a more popular sound over purely orchestral music (that is, until John Williams changed everything), Bernstein kept right on working. Thanks to a generation of younger filmmakers who had grown up on his classics, he never lacked for choice. Suddenly, he found himself much in demand as a comedy composer, providing the underscores for “Animal House” (1978), “The Blues Brothers” (1980), “Airplane!” (1980), “Stripes” (1981), and “Ghostbusters” (1984).

For Martin Scorsese, he composed music for “The Age of Innocence” (1993), “Bringing Out the Dead” (1999), and “The Gangs of New York” (2002) – although his score for the latter was ultimately rejected due to extensive tampering in post-production. He also adapted Bernard Herrmann’s music for Scorsese’s remake of “Cape Fear” (1991) and wrote the music for the Scorsese-produced “The Grifters” (1990).

In all, Bernstein was nominated for 14 Academy Awards, but claimed the Oscar only once, fairly early on, for his work on “Thoroughly Modern Millie” (1967), of all things. His final nomination was for his very last score, for “Far from Heaven” (2002). Elmer Bernstein died on August 18, 2004 at the age of 82.

No relation to Leonard Bernstein (or “Bern-STINE”), Elmer pronounced his name “Bern-STEEN.” The two were sometimes further differentiated as “East Coast Bernstein” and “West Coast Bernstein.”

In the year 2000, Elmer Bernstein composed a guitar concerto and expressed regret that he hadn’t contributed more to the concert hall. At least it was good one. David Hurwitz of classicstoday.com described it as “incontestably the finest piece ever composed for this combination” (i.e. guitar and orchestra), going so far as to hold it up to Joaquin Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez.” I don’t know if I’d take it that far, but it is pretty damn good.

Movement 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mrSyhK6174

Movement 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f072Efxnw24

Movement 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBi-BHZPkq4

Keep an eye out for my webcast for this past weekend’s “Picture Perfect,” devoted to Bernstein. I’m told the audio will be up this afternoon. Once it’s posted, you can click on “listen” at the link.

https://www.wwfm.org/show/picture-perfect-with-ross-amico/2022-03-31/picture-perfect-apr-2-elmer-bernstein-at-100

Some of Bernstein’s music for “The Ten Commandments” will also be featured on this weekend’s show, which will be devoted to scores composed for Biblical epics, this Saturday evening at 7:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

In the meantime, enjoy “Elmer Bernstein: This Is Your Life,” with appearances by John Williams, John Landis, Eli Wallach, and others, offering congratulations to the composer at the age of 80.

Happy birthday, Elmer Bernstein. Thank you for your magnificent body of work!

April 4, 2022
Elmer Bernstein A Centennial Celebration

April 4 would have been the 100th birthday of Elmer Bernstein. Over a career that spanned some 50 years, Bernstein scored dozens of film and television projects, many of them now classics.

This week on “Picture Perfect,” sample his versatility with selections from just a few of them, including “The Magnificent Seven” (1960), “The Age of Innocence” (1993), “Stripes” (1981), and “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962).

In all, Bernstein was nominated for 14 Academy Awards, but claimed the Oscar only once, fairly early on, for his work on “Thoroughly Modern Millie” (1967), of all things. His final nomination was for his very last score, for “Far from Heaven” (2002). Bernstein died on August 18, 2004 at the age of 82.

Elmer will have you glued to the radio, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

PLEASE NOTE: If you were hoping to hear some of Bernstein’s music for “The Ten Commandments” (1956), tune in next week, as we anticipate Passover with selections from Biblical epics from the Old Testament!

April 2, 2022

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