Classic Ross Amico

Tag: To Kill a Mockingbird

Father’s Day Movie Music Entitled Birds

Sure, sure, sure. This weekend is Father’s Day. But I did movies about fathers last year.

This year, I’m broadening the focus to “entitled birds.” It allows me to program music from “To Kill a Mockingbird,” with Gregory Peck playing one of the great fathers on film, but also to diversify.

The hour will open with a suite from “The Maltese Falcon” (1941). Humphrey Bogart plays private dick Sam Spade, in John Huston’s adaptation of the Dashiell Hammett novel (not incidentally, full of avian symbols and similes). Mary Astor is the dangerous dame, and the first-rate cast supporting includes Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet, and Elisha Cook, Jr.

The music is by Adolph Deutsch, who in the 1950s became associated with musicals (he won Oscars for his work on “Oklahoma,” “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” and “Annie Get Your Gun,” and was nominated for “The Band Wagon” and “Showboat”), but in the 1940s, he was as noir as that closet song-and-dance man, George Raft, some of whose crime films he scored.
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Then it’s on to the most overt Father’s Day association of the hour and the aforementioned “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962), based on Harper Lee’s beautiful coming-of-age novel. Gregory Peck plays one of his most memorable roles – defense attorney and model father Atticus Finch (his surname yet another bird). The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. Peck won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1962. Elmer Bernstein received his only Oscar for his work on “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” of all things. “Mockingbird” remains one of his most memorable and moving scores.

“Jonathan Livingston Seagull” (1973) flies alone on the program as the only film in which the title refers to an actual bird, though the context is a fabulous one, based on Richard Bach’s bestselling parable. James Franciscus supplies a superimposed human voice. The score is by songwriter Neil Diamond, ably assisted by composer Lee Holdridge (who turned 80 on March 3). We’ll hear Holdridge’s music from the film’s “The Other World” sequence.

Finally, Errol Flynn plays Geoffrey Thorpe, captain of the “Albatross” (yet another bird), who defends England on the eve of the Spanish Armada in “The Sea Hawk” (1940). The music, perhaps the greatest pirate score ever written, is by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. If I had kids, I would be perfectly content on Father’s Day if they left me alone to watch “The Sea Hawk.” As my grandfather used to say, “You can help me by standing over there.”

I hope you’ll join me for “Entitled Birds,” on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, 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 – ALL NEW! – 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/

June 14, 2024
Lawyers in Film Music & Atticus Finch

Atticus Finch may have been a model father, but he was also one of cinema’s most memorable attorneys. This week on “Picture Perfect,” a generous suite from Elmer Bernstein’s score for “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962) will cap an hour of music from movies about lawyers, judges, and courtrooms.

Ernest Gold, a composer best known for his Academy Award-winning work on “Exodus,” wrote the music for several courtroom dramas. We’ll begin with the theme to “The Young Philadelphians” (1959), a film starring Paul Newman as an ambitious young lawyer whose rise is complicated by various ethical and emotion hurdles.

That will be followed, without break, by the theme to “Inherit the Wind” (1960), the big screen adaptation of a play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, inspired by the events of the Scopes Monkey Trial. The film features Spencer Tracy and Fredric March, as fictionalized versions of Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, respectively, Gene Kelly as an H.L. Mencken-like newspaper reporter, and Dick York, of “Bewitched” fame, as the small-town school teacher who introduces his students to the concept of evolution.

Louis Calhern was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his turn as Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in “The Magnificent Yankee” (1950). Calhern had created the role of Holmes in the original Broadway production.” Emmet Lavery’s script was adapted from the historical novel, “Mr. Justice Holmes,” by Francis Biddle. The score is by Philadelphia-born David Raksin, best known for his music for “Laura.”

As a collaborator of Virgil Thomson, Orson Welles, Marc Blitzstein, and David O. Selznick, among others, and as founding director of the drama department at Juilliard, John Houseman could already look back on a lifetime’s worth of achievements, when he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, at the age of 71, for his performance in “The Paper Chase” (1973). Houseman plays the formidable Professor Kingsfield, Timothy Bottoms a first-year student in one of his classes at Harvard Law, and Lindsay Wagner, Bottoms’ love interest – who happens to be Kingsfield’s daughter. The music is by John Williams, written two years before “Jaws” and four years before “Star Wars.” Williams has a more varied resume than many would suspect.

Finally, just in time for Father’s Day, Gregory Peck assumes one of his most memorable roles, as defense attorney Atticus Finch, in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” based on Harper Lee’s beautiful coming-of-age novel. The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. Peck won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1962. Elmer Bernstein wrote the music, one of his most moving scores.

We’ll be laying down the law (with a nod to Dad for Father’s Day) this week, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

June 19, 2021
Movie Dads Father’s Day Special on WWFM

This week on “Picture Perfect,” we anticipate Father’s Day with an hour of music celebrating movie dads.

Vito Corleone may not exactly have been a model father, though he did adhere to a particular 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 called “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 films that has the ability to reduce manly men – even those without father 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 at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

June 19, 2020
Entitled Birds Fly High with Classic Film Scores

This week on “Picture Perfect,” it’s an hour of entitled birds, with music from “The Maltese Falcon” (1941) by Adolph Deutsch, “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962) by Elmer Bernstein, “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” (1973) by Lee Holdridge, and “The Sea Hawk” (1940) by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

With my computer gone fowl, it’s the flightiest show I could have hatched. Atticus Finch meets “The Albatross,” this Friday evening at 6 EDT, with a repeat Saturday morning at 6, on WWFM – The Classical Network; or listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.

June 17, 2016
Gregory Peck Centennial on TCM

Today is the 100th birthday of Gregory Peck, and Turner Classic Movies: TCM is showing a full day of his films, including “To Kill a Mockingbird” (at 10 p.m. EDT).

Happy birthday, Atticus!

Full schedule here:

http://www.tcm.com/schedule/?ecid=subnavfulltcmschedule

April 5, 2016

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