Before American composers like Jerome Moross and Elmer Bernstein made the western distinctly their own, the task of scoring the genre fell largely to European émigrés. This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll take a look at some outside perspectives on how the West was won.
Literally the godson of Richard Strauss, Max Steiner came from Vienna, where he studied with Johannes Brahms and Robert Fuchs. In Hollywood, he wound up scoring such classics as “King Kong,” “Gone with the Wind” and “Casablanca.”
Among his over 300 film projects were a number of westerns. One of these was “They Died with Their Boots On” (1941), which starred Errol Flynn as George Armstrong Custer and Olivia de Havilland as Libby, the woman who becomes his wife. Steiner’s score features familiar folk material, some old-fashioned faux “Indian” music, and one of his characteristically lush love themes.
Born in Ukraine in 1894, Dimitri Tiomkin was a pupil of Alexander Glazunov. He came to revolutionize the sound of the American West, when he wrote the music for “High Noon,” the first of his “ballad” scores. Advance word, based on an early screening for the press, was that the picture would be a failure. However, Tiomkin had such faith in the theme song, sung in the film by Tex Ritter, that he hired Frankie Laine to record it, and the record became a world-wide hit. In fact, his score is largely credited with having saved the film.
Tiomkin was recognized with two Academy Awards: one for Best Original Song, and one for the score itself. It was the first time a composer won two Oscars for his work on the same movie. It also changed the way western scores were done. In the 1950s, Tiomkin became THE western composer of choice. He produced a number of subsequent ballad scores, including that for “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” (1957). Asked how it was that a composer from Ukraine could write so convincingly for the American West, Tiomkin quipped, “A steppe is a steppe is a steppe.”
Another unexpected source of classic western music, Franz Waxman was born in Upper Silesia. He arrived in the U.S. by way of Germany. Nonetheless, as part of the composer’s varied and prolific output, he did indeed score a number of films in the genre, including “The Furies” (1950), a peculiar noir-western hybrid. Walter Huston, in his final film, plays a cattle baron who remarries and throws his empire into jeopardy. Barbara Stanwyck is his strong-willed daughter.
Hungarian-born composer Miklós Rózsa scored many films with historical settings – “Quo Vadis,” “Ben-Hur,” and “King of Kings,” among them. However, to my knowledge, his only western was “Tribute to a Bad Man” (1956). James Cagney stars as a rancher who doles out some frontier justice.
Finally, we’ll hear music by Ennio Morricone, from arguably the most operatic of all spaghetti westerns, “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968). As a reaction to Tiomkin’s ballad scores and the neo-Coplandisms of Elmer Bernstein and the rest, Morricone brings his own quirky sensibility to bear on the classic western iconography. Get ready for indelible motifs for harmonica and banjo, but also an unexpectedly moving elegiac arioso, underscoring the close of the American West with the arrival of the railroad.
Doublecheck your train tables and wind your pocket watches. Old World composers go west this week on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!
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Tag: Westerns
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Old World Composers Go West on “Picture Perfect”
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Moross’s Wild West Film Music
“[A]s we hit the Plains I got so excited,” recollected composer and pianist Jerome Moross. It was 1936 and, at George Gershwin’s invitation, he was en route to Los Angeles to participate in the West Coast premiere of “Porgy Bess.” When he stepped off the bus in Albuquerque, it changed him forever. “…I got to the edge of town and then walked out onto the flat land with a marvelous feeling of being alone in the vastness, with the mountains cutting off the horizon. The whole thing was just too much for me… it was marvelous, and I just fell in love with it.”
He would recall this powerful communion with the American West decades later when he came to write his best-known music, the Academy Award-nominated score for “The Big Country” (1958). Indeed, the “western” sound would color many of his future film and concert works, with the energetic syncopations of his native New York City supporting an easy lyrical gift that could easily pass for genuine American folk music.
This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll saddle up for selections from four of Moross’ big screen westerns. The success of “The Big Country” put Moross much in demand as Hollywood’s troubadour of the great outdoors. The trail was still fresh when he was enlisted for “The Proud Rebel” (1958). The film starred Alan Ladd, as a Civil War veteran with a troubled past, and the late Olivia De Havilland, as the ranch owner who takes responsibility for him. Tensions mount as a corrupt landowner and his sons attempt to drive the woman off her ranch.
While “The Proud Rebel” tapped into predictable western archetypes, “The Valley of Gwangi” (1969) exploded all expectations. A cross-genre western that might best be described as “Annie Get Your Gun” meets “King Kong,” the film’s premise hinges on the discovery by an enterprising band of cowboys of an Allosaurus in a lost valley in Mexico, which of course they press into service at their Wild West show. What could possibly go wrong? In a time before starships and superheroes dominated the cinematic landscape, “Gwangi” must have been very heady stuff for six-year old boys everywhere.
The project was conceived decades earlier by Willis O’Brien, the special effects legend who created Kong. But it was left to his protégé, the great Ray Harryhausen, to bring the film to fruition. The result, while never scaling the operatic heights of “Kong,” is a fascinating mélange, a movie that is part cowboy, part creature-runs-amok.
For those of a certain age, one of Moross’ most recognizable melodies must surely be the theme to the television series “Wagon Train.” Unfortunately, that music was soon discovered to bear a striking resemblance to a secondary theme in “The Jayhawkers” (1959). Fortunately for Moross, competing studios were willing to look the other way. “The Jayhawkers,” which starred Jeff Chandler and Fess Parker, is set in the days of Bleeding Kansas.
We are borne west on music of great vitality. Breathe the open air with Jerome Moross, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Friday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
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Western Heroes The Evolution of the Genre
The American western must be the most adaptable of cinematic genres. As times have changed, so has the western, to reflect the world around it – which seems funny, in a way, since the figures at its core are so resolute.
This week on “Picture Perfect,” we reflect on the evolution of the western hero with music from four films.
“Shane” (1953) depicts a classic western archetype, the reluctant gunfighter, a drifter with a past, who pauses on his way to nowhere to defend a family of homesteaders against injustice at the hands of a greedy cattle baron. Mysterious, laconic, but with an unshakeable moral compass, Shane can be counted on always to do the right thing, resorting to violence only when he’s out of options. Alan Ladd’s mythic turn is supported by one of Victor Young’s best-loved scores.
Dimitri Tiomkin was once asked how a composer of Ukrainian origin could write such convincing western music. He responded, in accented English, “A steppe is a steppe is a steppe.”
Tiomkin would become the composer of choice for the American western throughout the 1950s, due to his distinctive handling of “High Noon” (1952). The success of its title song, “The Ballad of High Noon” (otherwise known as “Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin’”) – with its melody integrated into the orchestral score – provided a western blueprint for well over a decade. Tiomkin was honored with two Academy Awards, for Best Song and Best Scoring of a Dramatic Motion Picture.
In “High Noon,” we are presented with a very different hero from that of the “Shane” archetype, a hero allowed to show uncertainty. Gary Cooper’s Marshal Will Kane seeks help for the final showdown, but winds up having to stand alone. As Mark Twain observed, “Courage is not the absence of fear. It’s acting in spite of that fear.”
Clint Eastwood’s The Man With No Name, the anti-hero of Sergio Leone’s “Dollars Trilogy” of spaghetti westerns, is very much a product of the 1960s – cynical and self-serving, with his own moral code, lots of grays clouding up the black and white. The character was introduced in 1964’s “A Fistful of Dollars” (1964), a western remake of Akira Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo,” with a wandering gun-for-hire standing in for Kurosawa’s ronin, or masterless samurai.
The Man With No Name assumes a mercenary pose, his allegiance shifting with the most profitable wind. However, he is revealed to have his own sense of justice, unorthodox as it may be.
Ennio Morricone brought a fresh sound to this new kind of hero and earned international attention, which would intensify a few years later with his iconic score for “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”
By the late ‘70s, the western as a genre appeared to be in its death-throes. But never underestimate the durability of a good myth. Even as galloping horses and dusty plains grew increasingly scarce on movie screens, the tropes and iconography of the western endured, transferred to the final frontier of space.
Following the success of “Star Wars,” in 1977, with its cantinas and space cowboys, shoot-‘em-ups and showdowns were, increasingly, set in distant galaxies, though, regrettably, often without much of the former “western” moral gravitas.
“Outland” (1981) is a gritty update of “High Noon,” transferred to a mining colony on one of the moons of Jupiter. This time Sean Connery plays the marshal, like Gary Cooper’s Will Kane, determined to do the right thing, even as he is left to stand alone against hired gunman. The score is by Jerry Goldsmith, who, earlier in his career, had written music for a fair number of true westerns, on both big screen and small.
I hope you’ll join me for four faces of the western hero, on “Picture Perfect” – music for the movies – this Friday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.
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Evolving Western Heroes in Film Music
The American western must be the most adaptable of cinematic genres. As times have changed, so has the western, to reflect the world around it – which seems funny, in a way, since the figures at its core are so resolute.
This week on “Picture Perfect,” we reflect on the evolution of the western hero with music from four films.
“Shane” (1953) depicts a classic western archetype, the reluctant gunfighter, a drifter with a past, who pauses on his way to nowhere to defend a family of homesteaders against injustice at the hands of a greedy cattle baron. Mysterious, laconic, but with an unshakeable moral compass, Shane can be counted on always to do the right thing, resorting to violence only when he’s out of options. Alan Ladd’s mythic turn is supported by one of Victor Young’s best-loved scores.
Dimitri Tiomkin was once asked how a composer of Ukrainian origin could write such convincing western music. He responded, in accented English, “A steppe is a steppe is a steppe.”
Tiomkin would become the composer of choice for the American western throughout the 1950s, due to his distinctive handling of “High Noon” (1952). The success of its title song, “The Ballad of High Noon” (otherwise known as “Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin’”) – with its melody integrated into the orchestral score – provided a western blueprint for well over a decade. Tiomkin was honored with two Academy Awards, for Best Song and Best Scoring of a Dramatic Motion Picture.
In “High Noon,” we are presented with a very different hero from that of the “Shane” archetype, a hero allowed to show uncertainty. Gary Cooper’s Marshal Will Kane seeks help for the final showdown, but winds up having to stand alone. As Mark Twain observed, “Courage is not the absence of fear. It’s acting in spite of that fear.”
Clint Eastwood’s The Man With No Name, the anti-hero of Sergio Leone’s “Dollars Trilogy” of spaghetti westerns, is very much a product of the 1960s – cynical and self-serving, with his own moral code, lots of grays clouding up the black and white. The character was introduced in 1964’s “A Fistful of Dollars” (1964), a western remake of Akira Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo,” with a wandering gun-for-hire standing in for Kurosawa’s ronin, or masterless samurai.
The Man With No Name assumes a mercenary pose, his allegiance shifting with the most profitable wind. However, he is revealed to have his own sense of justice, unorthodox as it may be.
Ennio Morricone brought a fresh sound to this new kind of hero and earned international attention, which would intensify a few years later with his iconic score for “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”
By the late ‘70s, the western as a genre appeared to be in its death-throes. But never underestimate the durability of a good myth. Even as galloping horses and dusty plains grew increasingly scarce on movie screens, the tropes and iconography of the western endured, transferred to the final frontier of space.
Following the success of “Star Wars,” in 1977, with its cantinas and space cowboys, shoot-‘em-ups and showdowns were, increasingly, set in distant galaxies, though regrettably, often without much of the former “western” moral gravitas.
“Outland” (1981) is a gritty update of “High Noon,” transferred to a mining colony on one of the moons of Jupiter. This time Sean Connery plays the marshal, like Gary Cooper’s Will Kane, determined to do the right thing, even as he is left to stand alone against hired gunman. The score is by Jerry Goldsmith, who, earlier in his career, had written music for a fair number of true westerns, on both big screen and small.
I hope you’ll join me for four faces of the western hero, this week, on “Picture Perfect,” this Friday evening at 6, with a repeat Saturday morning at 6; or that you’ll enjoy it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.
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