Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Film Score

Villa-Lobos in Hollywood’s “Green Mansions”

When Heitor Villa-Lobos was contracted by M-G-M to write music for a big screen adaptation of W.H. Hudson’s novel “Green Mansions” (1959), expectations ran high on both sides. The Brazilian master began immediately, diving into the project with characteristic gusto. After all, he had been writing music inspired by the rain forest for his entire career.

Unfortunately, he had very little affinity for the practicality of the filmmaking process, turning in musical impressions of scenes from the book. The studio was befuddled. Since Villa-Lobos was unable to adapt to the customary way of doing things, he was replaced by MGM house composer Branislau Kaper, who used the Villa-Lobos material as a springboard for his own dramatic conception. The result is part Villa-Lobos, part Kaper, and all MGM gloss.

Villa-Lobos was a little embittered by his Hollywood experience. He promptly assembled a multi-movement symphonic poem, “Forest of the Amazon” (1958), some 75 minutes in length, which employed his rejected sketches. He made a recording of 45 minutes of the music in 1959, for which the soprano Bidu Sayao came out of retirement.

This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll have selections from both versions of “Green Mansions,” as well as from the Mayan adventure “Kings of the Sun” (1963), composed by Elmer Bernstein, and “The Night of the Mayas” (1939), by Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas.

I hope you’ll join me for cinematic evocations of the indigenous peoples of Latin America, tomorrow evening at 6 ET, with a repeat Saturday morning at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.

PHOTO: The project that left Villa-Lobos feeling green around the gills

August 27, 2015
Brian Easdale The Red Shoes Composer Birthday

The articles get more and more difficult to write, so the submissions get later and later. Is it any wonder that the Monday posts get flimsier and flimsier?

Today is the birthday of Brian Easdale (1909-1995), probably best known for his score to “The Red Shoes.” Here’s the ballet music, conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham, no less.

PHOTO: Easdale (center), with Beecham, looking thoroughly engaged

August 10, 2015
Alfred Newman’s Tyrone Power Swashbucklers

This week on “Picture Perfect,” experience the Power of Alfred Newman – Tyrone Power, that is. It’s all music from Power swashbucklers made for 20th Century Fox, where Newman served as music director for 20 years.

“Captain from Castile” (1947) was one of Power’s most opulent vehicles. Samuel Shellabarger wrote the novel. Power plays Pedro de Vargas, who escapes persecution at the hands of the Inquisition and joins Hernán Cortéz in the conquest of Mexico. Also starring Jean Peters and Cesar Romero, as Cortéz, the film capitalizes on the happenstance of a real-life erupting volcano.

The climactic march, known as “Conquest,” went on to become one of Newman’s greatest hits. It’s entered the marching band repertoire, and has been recorded many times.

“The Black Swan” (1942) costarred Maureen O’Hara and Laird Cregar, as Henry Morgan. Also, if you ever wanted to see George Sanders in a red beard, then this is the movie for you. This time the source material is a novel by Rafael Sabatini, who also created “Captain Blood,” “The Sea Hawk,” and “Scaramouche.”

Of course, it was “The Mark of Zorro” (1940) that solidified Power’s reputation as 20th Century Fox’s resident swashbuckler. In its own way, the remake manages to match the delights of the Douglas Fairbanks 1920 original, which was one of the silent era’s most thrilling adventures.

Finally, it’s back to Shellabarger for “Prince of Foxes” (1949). This time, the setting is the Italian Renaissance. Orson Welles is Cesare Borgia, with an oddly cast Everett Sloane playing an assassin. Sloane was a veteran of Welles’ Mercury Theatre. You may remember him as Mr. Bernstein from “Citizen Kane,” or perhaps from the famous funhouse finale from “The Lady from Shanghai.”

It’s interesting that all of the films represented this week were inspired by books. (Zorro was introduced in “The Curse of Capistrano” by Johnston McCully.) It was another day, as they say.

I hope you’ll join me for music by Alfred Newman written for the swashbucklers of Tyrone Power this week, on “Picture Perfect” – music for the movies – this Friday evening at 6 ET, with a repeat Saturday morning at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.

July 23, 2015
Korngold Errol Flynn Hollywood Birthday

May 29 marks the birthday of one of my favorite composers, Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957). Thanks to a steady diet of Errol Flynn films, Korngold will forever be a part of the soundtrack to my life.

Korngold went from being one of Europe’s great musical prodigies, his works admired by Mahler, Strauss and Puccini – and championed by Schnabel, Weingartner and Klemperer – to becoming one of Hollywood’s transformative film composers. He is a link from Old World opulence to New World fantasy, his music gracing a number of Warner Brothers’ classic historical adventures.

The best ones starred Flynn, and we’ll hear music from “The Sea Hawk” (1940) and “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (1938), as well as the mostly forgotten “Another Dawn” (1937). Flynn stars alongside Kay Francis and Ian Hunter (who would go on to play Richard the Lionheart in “Robin Hood”) in this love triangle involving pilots in a British desert colony.

The film may be an obscurity to all save classic movie buffs, but Korngold thought enough of his music that he salvaged the main title as the opening theme to his Violin Concerto, premiered by Heifetz in 1947.

It was an invitation from theatrical impresario Max Reinhardt that brought Korngold to Hollywood in the first place, for a cinematic adaptation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1935). The film stars James Cagney, Dick Powell and Olivia de Havilland, in her big screen debut, with Mickey Rooney an irrepressible Puck.

For the project, Korngold adapted the famous incidental music of Felix Mendelssohn, interweaving material from Mendelssohn’s symphonies and orchestrating some of the “Songs without Words.” Even so, the music bears the composer’s unmistakable stamp, as you’ll hear in the opening number, lifted from the “Scottish Symphony,” which is marked by plenty of Korngoldian swagger.

It’s all-Korngold this week, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies. Enjoy it this evening at 6 ET; make your heart crow with a repeat, tomorrow morning at 6; or listen to it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.

Happy birthday, EWK!

May 29, 2015
Happy Birthday Miklós Rózsa Film Score Legend

BTW – and not incidentally – today is the birthday of the great Miklós Rózsa (1907-1995). Here he is, conducting a suite from arguably his greatest film score:

Rózsa receives his third Academy Award, from the hand of Gene Kelly (BONUS: André Previn wins for his work on “Porgy and Bess”):

PHOTO: “Singin’ in the Rain,” and reining in the charioteers: Miklós Rózsa (left), with Gene Kelly

April 18, 2015

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