Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Movie Music

Movie Music for Father’s Day on KWAX

Even if you’re not appreciated by your former employer, Father knows best; and my old man says I’m better off at KWAX!

This week on “Picture Perfect,” with Father’s Day right around the corner, we’ll celebrate by listening to music for movie dads.

Vito Corleone may not exactly have been a model father, but he did adhere to a certain code of ethics. Besides, what father doesn’t love “The Godfather” (1972)? “The Godfather” was recognized with 11 Academy Award nominations – of which it won three, including Best Picture. However, the awards were not without controversy.

Of course, Brando sent Sacheen Littlefeather to the ceremony to decline his Oscar, in protest over Hollywood’s portrayal of Native Americans in television and film. Then there was the matter of the score, by Nino Rota. Rota was nominated, but the nomination was withdrawn when it was discovered that he had used one of the themes in a 1958 film, “Fortunella,” which starred Giulietta Masina and Alberto Sordi. In the end, the Academy turned around and gave Rota the award anyway, two years later, for “The Godfather Part II.”

“Field of Dreams” (1989) is one of those rare movies that has the ability to reduce manly men – even those without daddy issues – to a pool of tears. Phil Alden Robinson’s superior adaptation of W.P. Kinsella’s novel, “Shoeless Joe,” is a male wish-fulfillment fantasy, in which a man finds redemption, and a new understanding of his father, in the enchanted cornfields of America’s heartland. And it’s all brought about courtesy of America’s pastime, baseball. The evocative score is by James Horner, who rides on the shoulders of Aaron Copland. The composer seems particularly smitten with Copland’s “Our Town.”

William Powell plays Clarence Day, the irascible paterfamilias of an upper-class family of redheads, in the comedy “Life with Father” (1947), for which Max Steiner wrote the music.

And Gregory Peck plays one of his most memorable roles as defense attorney – and model father – Atticus Finch, in “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962), based on Harper Lee’s beautiful “coming of age” novel. The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. Peck won the Academy Award for Best Actor a year later. The score is one of the best-loved of Elmer Bernstein.

You can try to rank the music, but Father’s Day generally yields a tie. (Yes, it’s a pun. Dads love puns.) Spare a thought for dear old Dad, this Friday evening, on “Picture Perfect,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

See below for streaming information for both of my recorded shows.

Keep in mind, 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 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/

June 16, 2023
Lost Worlds Movie Music on KWAX

It’s a shame you’ve got to stream all the way from the West Coast now to enjoy “Picture Perfect,” but there it is. Dropped from its natal station, the show can now be heard only in syndication (distributed exclusively by me). Stream it today on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon.

It seems only appropriate that the focus of such a fine show, so ignominiously dismissed, should be “Lost Worlds and Lands That Time Forgot.”

While the concept of the “Lost World” dates at least as far back as Plato’s Atlantis, it wasn’t until the Victorian Era that the idea really blossomed in the public consciousness. At the time, of course, lost civilizations were genuinely being discovered – which might help to explain, in part, the incredible of success of “King Solomon’s Mines.” The author, H. Rider Haggard, wrote the book on a bet that he could churn out an adventure story half as good as Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island,” which had been published two years earlier.

“King Solomon’s Mines” became the literary sensation of 1885. Its protagonist, Allen Quatermain, is a direct ancestor of Indiana Jones. The book inspired reams of sequels and at least five film adaptations.

The two best known of these starred Stewart Granger and Princeton-born Paul Robeson, respectively. Robeson, who played Umbopa, a king in disguise, received top billing in 1937. It’s music for THAT version that we’ll be sampling. There was no score for the 1950 Granger version, beyond some tribal drumming (although Miklós Rózsa did provide a cue for the film’s trailer). The score for the 1937 adaptation is by Mischa Spoliansky.

Haggard achieved another “Lost World” hit with “She,” first issued in book form two years later, in 1887 – another adventure about Europeans in Africa, who meet a seemingly immortal white queen, known as the all-powerful “She” or “She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed.”

“She” has been adapted to film six times. The 1965 version starred Ursula Andress, Peter Cushing, and Christopher Lee. The music is by Hammer Studios house composer, James Bernard. It’s nice to hear Bernard, who wrote mostly horror scores for the likes of Dracula and Frankenstein, provide something a little more nuanced for a change. She’s theme is so sensuous, it sounds as if it could have been cast off from Ravel’s “Daphnis and Chloe.”

Rudyard Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King,” published in 1888, was clearly influenced by the writings of Haggard. In this case, two British adventurers in India strike out for a remote corner of Afghanistan to set themselves up as kings. The story was made into one of the great adventure films of the 1970s, directed by John Huston, and starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine. That Christopher Plummer appears as Kipling himself is only icing on the cake. Maurice Jarre wrote the rousing score.

Finally, James Hilton’s “Lost Horizon,” published in 1933, imagines Shangri-La, a Utopian society nestled in a sheltered valley somewhere in the mountains of Tibet. A British diplomat is one of a handful of passengers who survives a plane crash to be taken into the lamasery.

“Lost Horizon” was made into a film twice. The less said about the 1973 version, a musical with songs by Burt Bacharach, the better. Frank Capra directed the classic 1937 version, which starred Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt, and outstanding character actors of the day – actors like Edward Everett Horton, Thomas Mitchell, Sam Jaffe, and H.B. Warner.

The score, Dimitri Tiomkin’s first major contribution, was also one of his most ambitious. Seldom was it so obvious that he had studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory under Alexander Glazunov.

I say unto to you what my former employers said unto to me: Get lost! I hope you’ll join me for music for lost civilizations this week, on “Picture Perfect” – music for the movies – this Friday evening, now on KWAX!

See below for streaming information.

Keep in mind, 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 shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

PHOTO: Connery (right) with the man who would be Caine

June 9, 2023
Max Steiner & Dimitri Tiomkin Birthday Film Scores

May 10th is bursting with birthday energy! Turn down the lights for a celebration of those two silverbacks of the silver screen, Max Steiner and Dimitri Tiomkin.

Steiner (1888-1971), the literal godson of Richard Strauss, was instrumental in transplanting the sound of fin de siècle Vienna to the realm of cinematic dreams. He composed over 300 film scores for RKO and Warner Brothers, earning 24 Academy Award nominations and winning three – for “The Informer,” “Now, Voyager” and “Since You Went Away” – though he is unquestionably better remembered today for his work on “King Kong,” “Gone with the Wind” and “Casablanca.”

Tiomkin (1894-1979), a pupil of Alexander Glazunov, was born in Ukraine. He settled in the United States, where he composed music for films in all genres, though in the 1950s he enjoyed particular success writing for Westerns, including the Academy Award-winning “High Noon.” When asked why this would be the case, that a composer born halfway around the world would have such a command of this distinctly American idiom, Tiomkin replied, “A steppe is a steppe is a steppe.”

Tiomkin was honored with four Academy Awards – three for Best Original Score (for “High Noon,” “The High and the Mighty” and “The Old Man and the Sea”) and one for Best Original Song (“The Ballad of High Noon”).

Here’s a transcript of his acceptance speech, delivered after being handed the Oscar for “The High and the Mighty” in 1955:

“Lady and gentlemen, because I working in this town for twenty-five years, I like to make some kind of appreciation to very important factor what make me successful to lots of my colleagues in this town. I’d like to thank Johannes Brahms, Johann Strauss, Richard Strauss, Beethoven, Mozart, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov. Thank you.”

You can watch it here:

Though Steiner and Tiomkin were both very well-connected in the wider musical world, comparatively speaking, neither left very much in the way of classical concert music. In 2019, Intrada Records put out a diverting 2-CD set of Tiomkin’s brightly-scored ballet music, dances composed in Paris for his wife, Albertina Rasch, in 1927-1932, prior to his work in film. It would be wonderful for afternoon drive-time – if only I had a live air shift! You can sample some of it by following the link. Already detectable is Tiomkin’s trademark snarling brass, in a number titled “Mars” (the second track in this YouTube playlist):

In 2020, Oxford University Press published a book by Steven C. Smith, “Music by Max Steiner: The Epic Life of Hollywood’s Most Influential Composer.” Read my impressions of this authoritative biography, unbelievably the first full-length treatment of Steiner’s life and achievements, here. Then get yourself a copy!

Also in 2020, while I was twiddling my thumbs, waiting to get back to work, I put together a Steiner-Tiomkin crossword puzzle. The clues not only allude to specifics of their respective lives and careers, but they should also be of ample interest, I hope, to classic movie buffs. So even if you’re convinced you don’t know a lot about music, do check it out if, like me, you happen to watch a lot of movies from the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s.

To fill out the puzzle, follow the link and select “solve online” at the bottom of the page. You’ll then be able to type directly into the squares. Once you feel you’ve exhausted the puzzle, you’ll find the solutions by clicking on “Answer Key PDF.”

https://www.armoredpenguin.com/crossword/Data/2020.05/1007/10071219.977.html?fbclid=IwAR1pIAkaVZccK4LXQ5yTMtwJ7kzNlQeOPjgyn3Fkx4X4NcAvd1Cxp52iahw

Happy birthday to Max Steiner and Dimitri Tiomkin, two composers who enriched generations of movie lovers by keeping it “reel!”

Steiner’s “Now, Voyager”

Tiomkin’s “Land of the Pharaohs”

A great, two-part interview with Steiner:

Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQuNnzH6_g8
Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmJLTn_6UOY

The official Dimitri Tiomkin website:

Welcome to DimitriTiomkin.com

PHOTOS (counter-clockwise from top): Screen credits for their work on “Lost Horizon” (1937); Steiner conducting; Frank Capra (in coat) with Steiner and Tiomkin on the podium; Tiomkin composing

May 10, 2023
Chaplin’s Musical Genius Revealed

I missed Charlie Chaplin’s birthday by ten days, but I only just stumbled across this footage of Chaplin conducting (at the link below).

While Chaplin was musically illiterate (by which I mean, he couldn’t read sheet music), he taught himself to play piano, violin and cello as a child, which served him well in his early days in the music hall. Later, he composed, or rather worked very closely with trained musicians, to produce the original scores for all of his features and some of his shorter films.

David Raksin, best remembered for his score to “Laura” (1944), assisted Chaplin on the silent classic “Modern Times” (1936). Raksin later revealed that it was he who had essentially scored the film, with Chaplin whistling all the tunes and asking him to make them fit the action.

However, he stressed the process was more complicated than it might at first seem. Chaplin was very much involved with every aspect of his films, and oversaw the development of the music as closely as he did any of the other elements. As a result, such a collaboration could take months, and there wasn’t a note in his scores that he didn’t approve.

Emotions could run high. Raksin recalled he was actually fired once, after only a week and a half, though quickly rehired. When music director Alfred Newman stormed out of one of the recording sessions, Raksin again defied Chaplin, refusing to take up the baton, which only led to further acrimony. The rift was eventually mended and decades later Raksin recollected his work on “Modern Times” as some of the happiest days of his life.

Chaplin’s scores yielded three popular hits: “Smile” from “Modern Times,” a hit for Nat King Cole in 1954; “Terry’s Theme” from “Limelight,” popularized by Jimmy Young as “Eternally” in 1952; and “This Is My Song” from “A Countess in Hong Kong,” recorded by Petula Clark in 1967.

Through a fluke – the belated release of “Limelight” in the United States, on a single screen in Los Angeles, twenty years after it was filmed, coinciding with the disqualification of music from “The Godfather,” after it was learned that Nino Rota had recycled a theme from one of his earlier scores (for the Italian film “Fortunella” in 1958) – Chaplin walked away with his only competitive Oscar, as a composer (!), one month before his 84th birthday.

Previously, he received two honorary Academy Awards, in 1929 and 1972.

April 26, 2023
Armchair Travel Through Film Scores

This week on “Picture Perfect,” settle in for a little armchair traveling as, musically, we follow the English abroad.

We’ll hear selections from “Enchanted April” (Richard Rodney Bennett), “A Passage to India” (Maurice Jarre), “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” (Thomas Newman), and “Around the World in 80 Days” (Victor Young).

Bennett, quite the accomplished concert composer (and occasional torch song singer), supplies a sensitive score for the 1991 Merchant/Ivory adaptation of Elizabeth von Arnim’s novel about four English ladies who spend an idyllic month at an Italian villa.

Jarre received his third Academy Award for his music to David Lean’s final film, a 1984 adaptation of E.M. Forster’s novel of repression and racial tension in colonial India.

Newman incorporates traditional Indian elements into his score for “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” the 2012 surprise hit about English pensioners reinventing themselves in retirement in Jaipur.

And Young won his only Oscar (alas, posthumously bestowed) for “Around the World in 80 Days,” the star-studded, light-as-a-feather, though admittedly charming mega-winner at the 1956 Academy Awards. It takes longer to watch the movie than it does to read Jules Verne’s novel – though it does provide a rare opportunity to see Ronald Colman in color.

No need to pack your valise for Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

PHOTO: There’s no balloon in Verne’s original, but as long as there’s champagne, who cares?

April 15, 2023

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