The arrival of summer brings so many traditions: baseball, beach picnics…and the peal of wedding bells. Dimitri Tiomkin scored the onscreen union between Grace Kelly and Gary Cooper in High Noon, but he also wrote music for the extravagant, real-life wedding of the luminous Kelly to Prince Rainier of Monaco.
Feature Article
The story of “The Prince and the Princess Waltz” and other wedding music by Dimitri Tiomkin
by Warren M. Sherk
It was one of the most celebrated events of the 20th century, with more than 500 guests, official representatives from some twenty-five nations, and hundreds of reporters. Millions huddled around their radios and televisions, caught up in the fairy-tale wedding of the American actress Grace Kelly to Prince Rainier III. Kelly had first toured the palace of the Prince of Monaco—but did not actually meet him—in 1954, while filming To Catch a Thief, her third film for the director Alfred Hitchcock. Her first film for Hitchcock, Dial M for Murder, was scored by Dimitri Tiomkin. Tiomkin had also scored High Noon, the film that had catapulted both Kelly and Tiomkin to international stardom. As he recalled of Kelly in his autobiography, “I used to see her at the Motion Picture Center [where High Noon was produced], an incongruous figure amid the crazy confusion.” He added that the aristocratic and cultivated beauty could even eat a salami sandwich with elegance.
The story of the prince and the movie star began in May 1955, when Kelly attended the Cannes Film Festival in southern France. A photo shoot for the French magazine Paris Match was held at Rainier’s palace. Smitten with the picture-book-pretty actress, Rainier pursued her when he traveled to the United States that December for a medical appointment. An American-born priest serving in Monaco and friends of Kelly’s family arranged for Rainier to attend a Christmas Eve dinner at her parents’ home in Philadelphia. Within days the couple were engaged, and within a week Jack Kelly publicly announced his daughter’s plans to marry.
After Tiomkin learned of the engagement, he contacted Kelly and told her he wanted to compose a melody for the joyous occasion, dedicated to her. With her blessing, Tiomkin set to work, teaming with High Noon lyricist Ned Washington to craft a wedding waltz, which he sent to Kelly in March 1956. In response she wrote, “I think it is very exciting that you have written a song for us. I would be honored to have you dedicate it to me.” The music was thus dedicated to “Their Royal Highnesses, Prince Rainier and Princess Grace.” The publication of the music and lyrics in the New York Journal-American was billed as an exclusive, with the headline “You Can Dance to the Strains of Grace’s Wedding Waltz.” It appeared as part of a special April 15 Sunday section, which also featured on-the-spot coverage of the pre-wedding events by the popular columnist Dorothy Kilgallen. The following day, the Herald-Express also published the song, advising readers that they could “be among the first persons anywhere to read and play or sing it.” News reports noted that the song was to be recorded by a 24-piece ensemble led by dance-band director Russ Morgan for Decca Records. A demo was apparently cut on a Gold Star–labeled disc.
The wedding took place at the Romanesque Cathedral of St. Nicholas on April 19. Guests included Ava Gardner, David Niven, Cary Grant, and Conrad Hilton serving as President Eisenhower’s representative. Other than a trumpet fanfare announcing Rainier’s entrance, little has been written about the event’s musical program. All indications are that Tiomkin’s waltz was intended as a wedding gift to the royal couple, but there is no evidence that it was actually performed at the ceremony. The waltz was not the only musical gift the couple received. The night before the wedding, during the civil ceremony, jazz pianist Stan Kenton performed “Homage to a Princess,” which he apparently appropriated from music he had previously written. The performance, held at the Opera House, was commissioned by the London Festival Ballet and featured dancers from the company.
On March 30, 1956, the Tiomkin Music Co., a precursor to Tiomkin’s Volta Music, copyrighted the waltz under two titles: “The Grace Kelly Wedding Waltz” and “The Grace Kelly Wedding March.” It is unclear why Tiomkin chose to register the latter title, because the song is clearly written in triple meter (3/4), typical of a waltz. Perhaps, knowing that the most performed music at weddings seems to be marches, he believed that might help extend the life of the song. A few weeks later an additional verse was written and the song was copyrighted a second time, under the title “The Prince and the Princess Waltz.”
Holograph musical sketches of the music can be found in the Dimitri Tiomkin Collection at the University of Southern California (USC). There are two sets of Ned Washington’s lyrics in the collection, one for the “Grace Kelly Wedding Waltz” and the other for “The Prince and the Princess Waltz.” The “Grace Kelly” lyrics apparently were written first, because the “Prince” lyrics contain the notation “new lyrics.” They were published as one song with two verses in the Journal-American. Each verse matched its copyrighted title: “Dancing in dreams to the Grace Kelly Wedding Waltz” and “Dancing tonight to the Prince and the Princess Waltz,” respectively. The song did receive airplay, as indicated by the listing of “The Prince and the Princess Waltz” in the 1963 ASCAP index of performed compositions.
Weddings and marriages figure prominently in the plot lines for some two dozen films Tiomkin scored, from Angel Face (1953) to When Strangers Marry (1944). In the early 1960s, Tiomkin was asked to write wedding music for The Guns of Navarone, including a song, “Yassu,” with lyrics by Washington. Prior to penning the Grace Kelly waltz, Tiomkin wrote music for the onscreen wedding between Grace Kelly and Gary Cooper in High Noon. The couple’s vows are accompanied by a hymn-like instrumental chorale, and the signature melody “Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin'” is heard briefly as they are pronounced husband and wife. This dramatic music underscores the inner struggle of Cooper’s character, Marshal Will Kane, who is torn between his pacifist wife, played by Kelly, and the citizens of his town.
High Noon is considered the quintessential theme-song movie of the 1950s, and it launched a trend. Tiomkin and Washington used the same approach in The Four Poster, which was in production at the same time as High Noon. Both films even premiered in New York just three months apart in 1952. They collaborated on the song “If You’re in Love,” and Tiomkin worked the melody into the film’s soundtrack. The stars of the Four Poster, Rex Harrison and Lilli Palmer, who play newlyweds in the film, were married to each other in real life, as were Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy in the Broadway production. After the main title, the first music cue features an instrumental version of the theme song as the newlyweds make their way to their hotel. Although both films use their respective title themes throughout, the title “Do Not Forsake Me” does not appear on the High Noon cue sheet and is referred to only as “Main Title Ballad,” whereas “If You’re in Love” appears some sixteen times on the cue sheet for Four Poster.
After High Noon, Gary Cooper starred in Friendly Persuasion as Jess Birdwell, patriarch of a Pennsylvania Quaker family. In a scene with co-star Anthony Perkins, Cooper sings a song called “Marry Me, Marry Me” (“Up to the altar please carry me…And I’ll vow to be true to no one but you”), which Tiomkin wrote with lyricist Paul Francis Webster. The tune was later covered by Pat Boone. Flying Blind, Paramount’s 1941 tale of romance and high adventure, features a wedding and honeymoon sequence that takes place in Las Vegas. The cue sheet for this sequence lists Wagner’s “Wedding March,” which doesn’t credit Tiomkin’s clever use of music in the scene. The cue opens with music that sets the appropriate Vegas tone, followed by a tongue-in-cheek arrangement of Wagner. Tiomkin then incorporates various musical quotes, including an extended passage of his own “Cubanola,” into a seamless flow of musical ideas, ending with juxtaposed quotes from “La Cucaracha” and Wagner. The blend of picture and music is typical of montages in early 1940s films, where time is compressed and the storyline is advanced through images and music. In fact, the script called for a “silent section” opening with “brassy music” followed by a “wacky wedding march” and an onscreen rhumba orchestra. These scripted musical suggestions were expertly brought to life in a seamless two-minute sequence by Tiomkin.
Tiomkin often used Wagner’s music in scoring his celluloid weddings. In I Live My Life (1935), the last cue before the end title incorporates the obligatory “Wedding March” from Lohengrinfor the surprise wedding of Joan Crawford and Brian Aherne. In Champion(1949), Tiomkin arranged the same march to fit the 54-second wedding scene. And in Twin Beds (1942), George Brent and Joan Bennett walk down the aisle to Wagner. But in It’s a Wonderful Life (1947), James Stewart and Donna Reed are wed to the strains of Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” as arranged by Tiomkin. The wedding scene between Marlon Brando and Teresa Wright plays a critical role in Fred Zinnemann’s post-war drama, The Men (1950). Tiomkin composed more than five minutes of original music to cover the wedding prelude montage, the chapel scene, and the newlyweds. The two-minute wedding prelude evokes a feeling of hope as paraplegic “Bud” Wilocek, played by Brando, prepares for the big day as he works out, engages in physical therapy, and practices “standing.” Soaring strings and warm horn passages accompany the happy couple. In the church scene, Tiomkin used source music—an original organ solo—to comment on the narrative. The chapel organ plays a hymn-like piece at a slow tempo, and on each beat the harmony changes. At this point, the music is purely functional. When the minister asks if anyone knows a reason why the couple should not marry, there is a cut to a close-up of Brando’s physician right after the words “Let him speak now.” The organ reaches the end of a phrase and holds a chord for four beats. As the music stops progressing and is “held,” we wonder whether the doctor will speak. (In an earlier scene, the doctor explains that victims of paralysis may be unable to father children.) This understated interaction between film and music is typical of the challenges facing film composers and justifies the use of original music, rather than pre-existing music, that can be manipulated to serve the film’s needs. As the bride and groom attempt to join hands, Brando falters, and the organ is interrupted by dramatic underscore: a timpani roll followed by haunting strings. The unease continues as the newlyweds become aware of the reality of their situation during their first night together. Tiomkin was billed as a “modern” composer early in his career, and the music for these scenes reflects his tremendous versatility as he moves stylistically from “Bach” in the organ solo to “Bartok” in the underscore for the newlyweds. Five years later, in his acceptance speech at the Academy Award ceremony, Tiomkin paid homage to his musical influences by thanking classical composers.
The Tiomkin collection at USC contains two other wedding-related pieces of music, although details are sketchy on both. A conductor/vocal part for a “Wedding Dance” with South Seas words could be from Burt Lancaster and Joan Rice’s Chinese-style wedding in His Majesty O’Keefe, which was filmed in the South Pacific, or The Moon and Sixpence, which is set in Tahiti. There are also holograph music sketches, not specifically attributed to Tiomkin, for “Let’s Spend a Honeymoon in Paris.”
April 2006 will mark the 50th anniversary of the marriage of Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier. While most wedding music is classical in origin, some popular songs such as the Carpenters’ “We’ve Only Just Begun” have become standards. Tiomkin’s wedding waltz never received its due, no doubt in part because of its occasion-specific lyrics: “All the world will be dancing, dancing in dreams, to the Grace Kelly wedding waltz.” Tiomkin and Washington may have realized this, hence the more generic lyrics for “The Prince and the Princess Waltz” which was published by Volta Music in 1958. Now that Volta has entered into a joint agreement with Hal Leonard Music Publishing, perhaps more piano arrangements of such music will be published, perfect for memorializing that walk down the aisle.
© 2005 Volta Music
Sources
- The Dimitri Tiomkin Collection at the University of Southern California (thanks to Ned Comstock)
- The Paramount Script Collection at the Margaret Herrick Library
- The American Film Institute catalogs
- Grace: The Secret Lives of a Princess by James Spada (Doubleday, 1987)
- Please Don’t Hate Me by Dimitri Tiomkin and Prosper Buranelli (Doubleday, 1959)