Today is the birthday of Leopold Stokowski.
And since the comments section is bound to be filled with gasps of “LEOPOLD,” we may as well get this out of the way right now. (Then read on!)
The snapping of the baton is a little bit of an in-joke, since Stokowski made it a point to lead not with a stick, but rather using his expressive, mesmerizing hands.
Here he is in “Carnegie Hall” (1947), real junk food for the classical music lover. Forget about the plot, which is total hokum – a brash young American pianist turns the classical music world on its ear with the debut of his corny “jazz” concerto (with Harry James, no less, playing trumpet obbligato) – the main draw is a parade of real-life classical music superstars.
The director Edgar G. Ulmer, emerged from German Expressionist cinema (he claimed to have worked on “Metropolis” and “M”), to direct atmospheric Hollywood films like “The Black Cat” and “Detour.”
The experience obviously prepared him for this showcase of Stokowski, who in the film’s best sequence conducts a movement from Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5. The camera angles are striking, the lighting dramatic, and Stoky’s hair just keeps getting bigger… and bigger… and bigger.
Stokowski also shared screen time with Deanna Durbin in “One Hundred Men and a Girl” (1937). In case you’re curious, Charles Previn, credited as associate musical director, was the second-cousin of Andre Previn. Stokowski conducts the finale of the same Tchaikovsky symphony. Also, Deanna Durbin sings from “La Traviata.”
Naturally, there’s the obligatory shot of a bored husband (character actor Eugene Pallette) dozing in the audience, and a boy-next-store shouting from a balcony, just to keep it all comfortably “regular guy.”
But it goes without saying that the most enduring artifact of Hollywood’s romance with Stoky was the conductor’s work on Walt Disney’s “Fantasia” (1940), including this iconic handshake with Mickey Mouse:
Stokowski recorded the soundtrack in experimental stereo, captured by 33 microphones and three million feet of sound film, at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music in 1939. Stokowski served as the Philadelphia Orchestra’s music director from 1912 to 1938. Here he directs Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D minor,” from a Spanish print of the film:
Finally, Stokowski talks about his experiences in Hollywood, most specifically his work on “Fantasia,” in an interview given in the 1960s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCGdRntUJ0M
Notoriously, the accent is totally phony baloney. Stokowski’s grandfather was Polish, but he himself was a second-generation Londoner. But Stoky always did have a whiff of P.T. Barnum about him. He may have been a visionary, but, first and foremost, he knew how to captivate an audience.
I hope you’ll join me tonight for “The Lost Chord,” as I’ll be highlighting some of Stokowski’s early Wagner recordings with the Philadelphia Orchestra. The program, “Magic Fire,” will air at 10:00 EDT on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
