Welcome. Our goal is to promote all facets of the Tiomkin catalog, including performances of his work, soundtrack recordings, and scholarly articles, as well as general research and study.
This page will focus on items of current interest, including concert performances, newly recorded soundtracks or archival recordings, and other timely information.
Thanks to Olivia Tiomkin Douglas for her generous support of this venture.
Please visit often.
December 2009
Highlights of 2009, the Scout Report, and Web analytics
With the publication of the Dimitri Tiomkin Anthology by the Hal Leonard Corporation, Tiomkin’s music has become available to a wider audience in print form and reached a new generation of music lovers in 2009. In conjunction with the Anthology, more than a dozen Tiomkin songs have been reinterpreted in brand new recordings by vocalists Whitney Claire Kaufman and Darice Richman Cooper. Several selections for solo piano also have been recorded by Leah Parker. To hear mp3s of these performances, go here.
Hal Leonard also published a concert suite for It’s a Wonderful Life that will allow Tiomkin’s music to be heard in the concert hall for years to come. And, in the archives of the University of Southern California (USC) Cinematic Arts Library, work continues on digitizing a number of Tiomkin’s handwritten sketches and full scores.
On the Internet, the official Dimitri Tiomkin Web Site had the distinction of being included in the June Scout Report. This report, viewed and consulted by librarians, is published by the Internet Scout Project from the campus of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Using a world-class array of computer science and library resources, highly educated content specialists whittle through an immense amount of Internet data, calling attention to particularly worthy and informative sites. About www.dimitritiomkin.com, one reviewer wrote that “visitors can listen to excerpts from his film scores, learn about his various awards, and also read a biographical essay. The ‘Photo Gallery’ area is a real treat, and visitors can browse through photographs of Tiomkin, his wife, and some of the actors and directors he worked with over the years. The ‘Audio Clips’ section contains clips from some of his most memorable scores, and visitors can also listen to them as they wander around the site.”
Most commercial Web sites collect and analyze site-usage data in order to optimize and tailor their content to patrons and users. The Tiomkin site is not a commercial venture, but let’s look at the usage figures provided by Google Analytics. An average of 15,000 unique visitors come to this site each year; that number has doubled since 2005. For November 2009, the average number of pages viewed per visit was five; the average time spent on the site was 3:24; and 72 percent of visitors were new. In addition to organic traffic from search engines Google and Yahoo!, the top two referring sites are Screen Archives (www.screenarchives.com) and Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org). The top entry pages are the Home page, News, Biography, and Filmography. The Photo Gallery and Audio Clips, as mentioned in the Scout Report, are also popular. Around 75 percent of visits are from the United States—with the United Kingdom consistently finishing second—but the site draws visitors from sixty-nine other countries or territories. A snapshot for November shows the top ten countries as the United States, France, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Russia, Spain, Japan, Italy, and Poland. China, Sweden, and Australia have all made appearances in the top ten at some point.
Thanks to Olivia Tiomkin Douglas and Patrick Russ for their support, and to our Web team, Gabe Nordyke of Insights Design Studio and David Panzarella of SB InnerWeb Development.
Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin concert airs 31.12.2009
Don't miss a rare opportunity to hear the music of Dimitri Tiomkin as performed live in concert. Last month's Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin concert will be broadcast on Deutschlandradio Kultur on December 31, 2009, around 21:30 German time, just after the 21:30 news. Television entertainer Herbert Feuerstein moderated the concert. Click here to find out what time the broadcast can be heard where you live.
To listen, look under "Live-Stream" on the right-hand side and select one of four choices, Flash (Adobe Flash Player), WMP (Windows Media Player), OGG, or MP3 (for iTunes, or similar players).
November 2009
Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin to perform Tiomkin
Music from classic and modern Western films composed by Tiomkin and others will be performed by the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin at Haus des Rundfunks, in Berlin, Germany, on Friday, November 27, and Sunday, November 29, 2009. Families are welcome at the Sunday concert, scheduled for the afternoon. Frank Strobel conducts music from The Alamo, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and Rio Bravo, as well as the theme from Rawhide. Go to www.rsb-online.de for tickets and more information.
For Tiomkin, who lived in Berlin for two and a half years in the early 1920s, the city held special meaning. It was there that the future film composer made his debut as a piano soloist with the Berlin Philharmonic and completed his musical training with Ferruccio Busoni and Busoni’s disciples Egon Petri and Michael Zadora. Tiomkin’s performance of Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Philharmonic in 1923 only furthered his reputation. “I felt I was well launched as a concert pianist,” he wrote in his autobiography, “and other engagements followed.” When a new Hilton hotel was unveiled in the western zone of Berlin in the 1960s, the opening gala featured a performance of Tiomkin’s choral work “America's Prayer for Peace.”
Strobel is an itinerant conductor and the driving force behind European Filmphilharmonic, a film music concert company. In the past month alone, Strobel traveled to a number of countries conducting live performances of music to screenings of silent films, including Der Rosenkavalier in Paris and Norway and The Phantom of the Opera in Switzerland.
October 2009
It's a Wonderful Life concert suite published by Hal Leonard
A concert suite for It's a Wonderful Life—aimed at professional symphony orchestras—is available now from Hal Leonard. First in an intended series, the Dimitri Tiomkin score is modeled after the successful John Williams Signature Series, also published by Hal Leonard. The purchase package includes the full score for the conductor and orchestra parts for the players.
The original orchestrations by Paul Marquardt and Christopher Palmer, arranged by Patrick Russ and Paul Henning, create a versatile three-movement work lasting three to eight minutes, depending on the movements selected for performance. The three movements are Prologue (2:00), from the opening of the film; Theme (2:45), which has an optional vocal soloist with choir; and Christmas Eve Finale (3:00), which features the complete setting, with optional choir, of the traditional holiday tune “Auld Lang Syne,” heard at the film’s conclusion.
Both Marquardt and Palmer knew and worked closely with Tiomkin. Palmer, also Tiomkin's biographer, orchestrated the composer’s adapted score for the 1971 film Tchaikovsky. Marquardt, one of the unsung heroes of film music orchestration, was a highly valued professional associate and friend during the height of Tiomkin's career. Soon after receiving two Academy Awards for his music score and song for High Noon in March 1953, Tiomkin wrote a heartfelt letter of thanks to the orchestrator: “The mastery of your technique, the scope of your knowledge, the power and imagination of your orchestration, are really the greatest we have in our field. I truly would never have had High Noon without you and I would really be in ‘high tseris’ without Marquardt help.” [Tsuris is Yiddish for “aggravating trouble.”] A concert suite from High Noon, forthcoming from Hal Leonard, will be next in the series.
A holiday classic, Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life has been treasured by three generations of filmgoers. With this release, a new generation can discover Tiomkin’s work as this suite proceeds to brighten Christmas concerts around the world.
The full set (HL4490939) is priced at US$395 and the score (HL4490940) is $US45. Please visit www.halleonard.com to order today from your favorite retailer.
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, D.C.
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, which screened earlier this year in Los Angeles and New York in recognition of the film's 70th anniversary, will be presented this month in Washington, D.C. by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in partnership with the Charles Guggenheim Center for the Documentary Film. Don't miss this rare opportunity to see the 35mm film projected at the William G. McGowan Theater on Thursday, October 15, at 7 pm. Mr Smith Goes to Washington premiered in the nation's capital on October 17, 1939, at Constitution Hall. Directed by Frank Capra, the film was scored by Dimitri Tiomkin. The McGowan Theater screening is free to the general public, with seating on a first-come, first served basis. The film will be introduced by Robert Osborne. Those planning to attend should use the Special Events entrance on Constitution Avenue. For more information, visit www.archives.gov or call (202) 357-5000. To read more about the film, see our May 2009 news.
September 2009
Dallas Symphony salutes Texas and Tiomkin
Concert suites from Giant and The Alamo, along with the popular theme from television’s Rawhide, will be performed as part of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s “Tribute to Texas” on Friday and Saturday, October 2 and 3, 2009, at Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas. Giant was filmed on location in Marfa, southeast of El Paso. For The Alamo, the Spanish mission was re-created on a set built near Brackettville, more than a hundred miles west of San Antonio. Conductor Richard Kaufman (pictured) selected the music and will lead the concert.
Featured in the suite from Giant is the film’s main title, “This Then Is Texas.” Tiomkin’s anthem, with lyrics by Paul Francis Webster, has an interesting sidebar story of its own: Back in the 1970s, it could have become the official song of the Lone Star State.
The story played out as follows. In March 1971, Rep. R. B. McAlister (D-Tex.) contacted Walter A. Evans at Warner Bros. Music—Warner was Giant’s production/releasing company—expressing an interest in replacing the current state song, “Texas, Our Texas,” with Tiomkin’s composition. McAlister was a member of the House of Representatives from 1969 until his death in 1976 and also enjoyed a lengthy career in radio broadcasting. Despite being stricken by polio, the Texas native started working as a reporter in 1928 and went on to become an announcer, program director, and eventually station manager and owner. A devout Baptist, McAlister was known to radio audiences as “Mac” and coined the saying “Remember, fears, not years, make men old.”
Tiomkin approved of McAlister’s proposal and began corresponding directly with Evans in support of the idea. Despite his best efforts, however, “Texas, Our Texas” remained the state song. Written in 1924 by William J. Marsh with words by Marsh and Gladys Yoakum Wright, “Texas, Our Texas” was originally adopted as the state song back in 1929. At the time other popular tunes such as “The Yellow Rose of Texas” and “Dixie” also were considered before the legislature authorized a statewide contest, from which Marsh’s composition emerged the winner.
“Tribute to Texas” will be followed by an intermission. In the evening’s second portion, singer LeAnn Rimes will perform her greatest hits with the orchestra. For tickets, call the DSO office at (214) 692-0203, or go to dallassymphony.com.
Sources
August 2009
Rhythms and redemption in Tiomkin’s score for Jeopardy
(Fourth in an occasional series on Tiomkin’s lesser-known film scores)
by Warren M. Sherk
As the United States worked to regain its footing following World War II, Hollywood continued to crank out popular melodramas into the 1950s, many of which focused on threats to the security of the American family. A good number of these films are admittedly forgettable; however, some do stand the test of time. Jeopardy, released in 1953, is one example.
The film’s direction (by John Sturges), screenplay (by Mel Dinelli), and cast—with Barbara Stanwyck in the lead role—are first rate. In August, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) screened Jeopardy as part of a Barbara Stanwyck 100th birthday celebration. (TCM is spotlighting films scored by Bernard Herrmann in September. Perhaps the cable network will consider Tiomkin for its future programming.) Based on the short story “A Question of Time,” originally written for radio by Maurice Zimring, the plot of Jeopardy revolves around an American family on vacation in Mexico and their encounter with an escaped convict and psychopath, played with relish by Ralph Meeker. Meeker was a rising star on Broadway thanks to his lead role in the stage production of Picnic.
One month after the film’s February release, Tiomkin took home two Academy Awards for his work on High Noon. By this point in his career, he understood the medium of film and had mastered the technique of using music to strengthen narrative and trigger emotions. His score for Jeopardy functions on multiple levels. At various points Tiomkin’s score not only communicates to the viewer a sense of place but also denotes the passage of time, enhances drama, and sets the pace of individual scenes to help bring the film together as a whole. In addition, he establishes a singular theme, “Together,” that plays a crucial role in one character’s redemption.
Tiomkin wrote 37 minutes of underscore, strategically placed throughout the film’s taut 69 minutes. For the first 15 minutes there is little to suggest the peril implied by the film’s title. The main title features a driving motor rhythm of sixteenth notes in the strings and signals excitement and adventure rather than danger. As the story unfolds, rhythms, harmonies, and instrumentation typically found in Mexican music help establish the film’s Baja California setting, particularly in two music cues, “Tia Juana Theme” and “The Map.” The latter ends as the family—Helen (Stanwyck), her husband, Doug (Barry Sullivan), and their young son, Bobby (the endearing Lee Aaker)—come across a police roadblock. The scene that follows, which foreshadows that a fugitive is on the loose, is not scored. In fact, throughout the film, scenes that might typically be scored are deliberately not. Instead, music cues begin after a dramatic scene ends, serving to propel the story forward and set up the next dramatic scene.
The passage of time during the long driving sequences is captured by new musical phrases that begin when the camera cuts to the car. These phrases are accompanied by harmonic modulations, or tonal shifts. The first hint of danger comes when the family arrive at their destination, a deserted beach. Bobby sees a Danger sign on the dilapidated pier but cannot read it, as it is in Spanish. Here a lengthy cue opens with idyllic music—pure Americana scored primarily for flutes, piano, and strings—as the boy makes his way across the pier. Doug and Helen share a tender moment on the beach, and we hear for the first time the “Together” theme that Tiomkin weaves in and out of the remaining score.
Bobby’s foot becomes caught, and Doug and Helen spot the Danger sign. The music turns darker, including a musical nod to the broken piling that will soon entrap Doug. As Doug tries to help his son the music builds, growing more furious and dissonant with brass flutters and trumpet outbursts. The boy is retrieved safely, and the danger appears to have passed—for now. There is no music, only words of comfort and encouragement as Doug coaches his son across the planks of the unstable pier. A plank breaks, and the music enters boldly as Doug crashes to the sand below. Then a heavy piling lands on Doug’s leg, trapping him in the shallow water. Unable to free him, Helen desperately sets off in the car to find help in a race against time and the rising tide. For the next 40 minutes or so, Tiomkin deftly captures the movement and terror of the incoming tide by subtly synchronizing his underscore with swells in the music each time a wave crashes higher and higher over the helpless Doug.
It is interesting to note the number of emotional shifts the music supplies in the one minute 40-second cue “Helen Departs.” The underscore enters with a dramatic driving rhythm, signaling the urgency of the situation as Helen and Bobby run to the car. Helen waves to Doug as she drives away, and we hear a few bars of the romantic “Together” theme. There is a musical flourish that accompanies Bobby as he runs back to join his father, but when Helen waves to Bobby the romantic theme returns. With Helen gone, the music takes on a dirgelike character to reflect Doug’s despair. As Helen drives frantically, “Cuerda” opens with rollicking music to accompany the speeding, swerving car, with sixteenth notes in the strings reminiscent of the main title. The “Together” theme has now been cast in a heroic vein with rising horns.
As Doug realizes Helen may not return in time, he endeavors to prepare his son. In a poignant three-minute scene in which Bobby makes coffee over the campfire, the music begins with contrapuntal strings and wispy harp glissandos. It is movingly scored, rife with symbolic meaning. The viewer understands the gravity of the situation but knows the child cannot. Throughout the scene no fewer than five waves pummel Doug, each rise announced by the underscore.
Each failed attempt to find help is heartbreakingly filmed and scored. No music accompanies Doug’s frantic effort to flag down a passing boat, but once the boat disappears, the music enters with somber instrumental solos to enhance his mounting loneliness and despair. After Helen encounters Meeker’s convict, Lawson, she returns with him to the beach. Lawson assists in freeing Doug, and the “Together” theme turns heroic as the convict finds redemption. During Helen and Bobby’s struggle to help the exhausted Doug, they pause and the music holds for several beats. With a final tug, Helen pulls her husband out of the water and the music turns both triumphant and cathartic, signifying the end of his ordeal.
Most reviewers, from local newspapers to trade publications to national magazines, commented favorably on Tiomkin’s score. Newsweek wrote that the score “admirably counterpoints the mood of frustration and fear.” The Los Angeles Examiner, which admired the film’s deceptively simple story, small cast, and intelligent production, noted the haunting, lonely music that subtly accented the tense mood.
Jeopardy was the first of four collaborations between Sturges and Tiomkin. Later in the decade, Tiomkin would score Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, The Old Man and the Sea, and Last Train from Gun Hill.
Sources
July 2009
Dimitri Tiomkin Anthology published by Hal Leonard
Order your copy today from Hal Leonard. Hear samples of the music. Purchasers of the Anthology are entitled to download high-quality mp3 recordings of several of the songs included in the Anthology.
June 2009
Tiomkin songs take center stage in new recordings of selections from Anthology
In conjunction with the publication of the Dimitri Tiomkin Anthology by Hal Leonard Corporation, more than a dozen Tiomkin songs have been reinterpreted in brand new recordings by vocalists Whitney Claire Kaufman and Darice Richman Cooper. In addition, pianist Leah Parker has recorded a number of selections for solo piano. The recording sessions commenced in October 2007, with Olivia Tiomkin Douglas in attendance.
Whitney Kaufman’s sessions took place at Entourage Studios in North Hollywood in October 2008. In the business for twenty-plus years, Entourage is the choice of many production companies. Films and television shows from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to That Thing You Do! have recorded there. Kaufman recorded a number of songs, including “The First Christmas,” “It's a Wonderful Life,” “Land of the Pharaohs,” and “The Prince and Princess Wedding Waltz (Grace Kelly Wedding Waltz).” An experienced performer in live theater, Kaufman brings her singing and acting technique to two of Tiomkin’s stage songs, the “Rockette Song” from The Big Revue and “Sweet Surrender” from the musical of the same name. These gems will certainly spotlight Tiomkin’s less well known song oeuvre. Providing piano accompaniment at the Entourage session was Alan Steinberger, a studio musician well versed in a variety of mediums, including film, television, video games, commercials, and albums. He was notably featured on Alex Wurman’s score for March of the Penguins. A highly versatile performer, Steinberger brings together classical, jazz, and other genres.
Darice Richman Cooper lent her vocal talent to some of the best-known Tiomkin songs, including “Wild Is the Wind.” Her recording sessions were held at world-famous Capitol Studios, housed in the iconic Capitol Records tower in Hollywood, California. Tiomkin himself recorded songs at Capitol, including the song from The Adventures of Hajji Baba with Nat “King” Cole. Richman Cooper recorded in Capitol Studio A in October 2007 and July 2008.
The vocalist performs the French-language love theme “Quand Je Reve” (When I Dream), from The Big Sky (1952). The plaintive song’s simple harmonies evoke the film’s Western frontier theme. Accompanying Richman Cooper was the inimitable pianist John Eidsvoog. Though known primarily by L.A. industry veterans for the premier film-score music copying service he operates with his wife, Julie, Eidsvoog is also a gifted pianist. He mastered in jazz composition at the New England Conservatory, and his piano stylings often boast jazz characteristics and voicings.
Like Whitney Kaufman, pianist Leah Parker’s solo sessions were at Entourage Studios in March 2009. Parker’s renditions are taken verbatim from the music as published in the Anthology and arranged by Tiomkin himself. The acoustics at Entourage, with its high vaulted ceilings, are perfectly suited to chamber music, and the studio’s in-house Yamaha grand piano records magnificently in the space. Playing with remarkable precision, the gifted young pianist recorded each piece in only a few takes.
The three solos recorded by Parker were selected to showcase the range of Tiomkin’s talent. The “Adieux” from Lost Horizon (1937) is classically structured in nineteenth-century harmony. The “Nostalgia” from Angel Face (1953) highlights Tiomkin’s modernistic leanings, with chromatic harmony more reminiscent of Gabriel Fauré or other, modern (at that time) composers. By the time of “The Fall of Love” from The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), the music is rendered in his signature style. One of Tiomkin’s earliest solo piano works, the virtuosic “Quasi Jazz,” was also recently recorded by Parker.
The sound mastering for the nearly forty minutes of music was carried out by engineer John Polito at Audio Mechanics. Orchestrator Patrick Russ, who edited the Anthology with Paul Henning and Warren Sherk, oversaw the recording sessions. Olivia Tiomkin Douglas hopes that hearing these songs recast in new interpretations will inspire other singers and performers to record songs from the Dimitri Tiomkin Anthology. To that end, “The First Christmas” is seeing an increase in performances and “The Prince and Princess Wedding Waltz,” written by Tiomkin for Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier of Monaco, could easily become a standard vocal or instrumental at weddings.
“Experiencing Dimitri’s music in new settings has been an exciting and rewarding process,” says Russ. “We hope to continue bringing gems that haven’t been heard in many years the attention they deserve.” Decide for yourself: listen to an excerpt from Whitney Kaufman’s fine rendition of “Land of the Pharaohs" or from any of the other eleven tracks. Purchase the Anthology print volume and you will receive a password to download exclusive recordings of new renditions of twelve selections from the Anthology.
Performer biographies
Whitney Claire Kaufman has been heard as both a singer and voice-over performer in various television productions, notably The Secret of NIMH 2 and the MGM animated series All Dogs Go to Heaven. An honors graduate of Chapman University with a degree in theater performance, she has appeared in numerous stage productions in Southern California. In March 2007 she joined the North American tour of the musical Mamma Mia! as a member of the ensemble, understudying the part of Sophie in San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other cities. 2009 has been a busy year for this rising star. In March Kaufman traveled to Kuala Lumpur for an appearance with the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra in a program of Academy Award-winning songs. In April she sang the national anthem prior to a Southern California Australian Football League charity match in Santa Monica to raise funds for victims of the Australian wildfires. This July, she performs with Orange County’s Pacific Symphony in “Disney in Concert—Magical Music from the Movies.”
Darice Richman Cooper is a singer and actress. As a character actress, her most notable appearance was in the film Primary Colors (1998) starring John Travolta. As a singer, she has recorded a number of Christmas albums, made television appearances with the Jimmy Joyce Singers, and sung background vocals on the Grammy-nominated album Frank Sinatra Trilogy: Past, Present & Future. Her vocals can be heard on such cast and studio recordings as Goys and Dolls; Say Oy Vey, a parody of the musical Cabaret; and the novelty album Kosher Christmas Carols. Richman Cooper is a respected political activist and fundraiser for various political and social causes. She is active with the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, the Society of Singers, and the Young Musicians Foundation, for which she serves on the Business Advisory Council. She is a Life Member of Professional Musicians Local 47 in Los Angeles. Her husband is entertainment attorney and erstwhile musician Jay Cooper.
Leah Parker earned a master of arts in music in piano performance and ethnomusicology from the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC), specializing in keyboard works by composers throughout history that were written for or against the wars of their eras, such as Amy Beach's Balkan Variations (1903), on the 1902 bombings in the Macedonia region. She currently serves as music director at Mount Madonna middle and high schools in Watsonville, California, both performing arts schools for music and theater arts. She gives private piano instruction to students of all ages and skill levels, teaching styles ranging from classical to the blues. Parker also performs with her group Duets on Broadway, in smaller chamber ensembles, and as a soloist. The Southern California native has been playing piano since the age of four and began accompanying singers and others when she was in elementary school. She is currently accompanist to the Cabrillo College chorus. When Parker is not performing or composing, she enjoys riding and caring for her horses.
May 2009
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to screen at Motion Picture Academy
In honor of the 70th anniversary of what is widely considered Hollywood’s greatest year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) is screening all ten of the best picture nominees of 1939 through August 3. On July 20, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington unspools at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
Directed by Frank Capra, the film stars James Stewart as Senator Jefferson Smith and features a score by Dimitri Tiomkin. At the time, Capra and Tiomkin had been friends for a half dozen years and already had collaborated on 1937’s Lost Horizon. In preparing Tiomkin to score Mr. Smith, Capra told the composer to forget Borodin and Mussorgsky and think instead of John Philip Sousa, Stephen Foster, and American folk songs.
Tiomkin promptly began researching pre-jazz American music dating back to colonial days. According to Tiomkin’s autobiography, Capra introduced the composer to a songbook titled What America Sings. Tiomkin is probably referring to two seminal songbooks, The Songs We Sing (1936) and The Songs America Sings (1939), both compiled by Hendrik Willem van Loon and Grace Castagnetta. Loon was a Dutch American author best known for his book The Story of Mankind, and once was a journalist for the Russian bureau of the Associated Press.
In the course of his research, Tiomkin discovered The American Songbag, a 1927 compilation by the American poet Carl Sandburg. This early collection of American folk music included 280 songs, many of which had never before appeared in print. Tiomkin wasted no time immersing himself in early American music, from New England hymns, fiddler tunes, the working songs of cowboys and Southern mountaineers, to Revolutionary War ballads, Negro spirituals, and minstrel songs.
Armed with his newfound musical palette, Tiomkin set to work crafting the Americana pastiche sought by Capra. Tiomkin would later express his gratitude to the director for helping him move to this next level of his musical education. A handful of aptly named music cues make up the bulk of the underscore: “In Memory of Old Times,” “Writing of the Bill,” “Children’s Crusade.” In one poignant scene set at the Lincoln Memorial, Tiomkin based his music on an American slave song.
In addition to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Tiomkin scored nine other films nominated for best picture from 1937 to 1961.
Tickets for unreserved seating for the screening of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington can be purchased for US$5. The first and last films in the Hollywood’s Greatest Year series, Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, are sold out. The New York City screening of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, hosted by Robert Osborne, will take place August 10 at the Academy Theater at Lighthouse International. For more information, log on to www.oscars.org or contact AMPAS at (310) 247-3600.
Sources
April 2009
Dillinger: Bullets and Boogie-Woogie
(Third in an occasional series on Tiomkin’s lesser-known film scores)
by Warren M. Sherk
John Dillinger, the legendary 1930s-era bank robber, will leave his bullet-ridden mark on screens this summer in director Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, starring Johnny Depp. But the gangster with the movie-star looks made his first onscreen appearance in the 1940s in the film Dillinger, with a score by Dimitri Tiomkin and a backstory involving censorship, controversy, and more.
In the summer of 1944, Monogram Pictures, a studio specializing in low-budget features, announced its slate for the coming season. Among the offerings was John Dillinger, Killer, conceived not as an outright biopic but as a fictionalized melodrama focusing on the crime spree of the former FBI public enemy No. 1. It was produced by King Bros. Productions, a company formed in 1942 by Frank, Herman, and Maurice King, who had previously hired Tiomkin to score their 1943 feature Unknown Guest. The brothers were Hollywood outsiders who parlayed selling jukeboxes and arcade machines in East Los Angeles into making and selling moving pictures in Hollywood as competitive and tenacious independents on the Monogram lot.
That a film spotlighting the violent acts of a notorious criminal could make it to the screen in 1945—just eleven years after Dillinger was famously gunned down in a Chicago alley—is perhaps a testament to the King brothers’ audacity…or chutzpah. After Dillinger’s death, Will Hays, Hollywood’s censorship czar and overseer of the Motion Picture Production Code, declared that no picture based on the gangster’s life or exploits was to be produced, distributed, or exhibited by any member company. However, the King Bros. film—now titled simply Dillinger—managed to gain approval for release, largely in part by promoting the moral that crime does not pay. (According to contemporary accounts, the script had been watered down to appease the censors.)
Naturally, the film was not without controversy. The War Department—for whom Tiomkin was deeply involved in scoring documentaries—did not support screening the film for foreign audiences. Upon its U.S. release in March 1945, it was promptly banned by the police censor board in Chicago. Respected filmmakers lowered the boom, with producer Samuel Goldwyn publicly decrying the glorification of a ruthless outlaw, and director Frank Borzage rallying against the glamorized gangster and unwholesome films in general. Letters of protest to both the Production Code and the studio followed.
Despite this, Dillinger was a box-office hit with war-weary audiences seeking escapist fare, and put the King brothers on the filmmaking map. In May 1945, it received an award from Showmen’s Trade Review for film exploitation campaign of the month; one of the film’s tag lines was “His story is written in bullets, blood and blondes!” Colliers magazine called Dillinger “the most sensational low-budget picture of all time.” In May 1947, the film finally played in Chicago at the Biograph, the very theater outside of which Dillinger was shot and killed by FBI agents. That same year, screenings took place in Thailand, France, and Spain. When the film was rereleased in the United States in 1948, it was booked into more than 100 theaters.
The film portrays Dillinger through his association with a small mob of gangsters led by the veteran actor Edmund Lowe, and his relationship with his moll, Helen, played by Anne Jeffreys—interspersed, of course, with the requisite bank robberies, killings, chase sequences, and shootouts. Though not successful as a psychological character study, the film nevertheless has its own merits given the constraints placed on it by the Code. The violence has a chilling immediacy, even though it is largely implied or occurs offscreen and Dillinger’s ultimate fate reinforces the justice-is-served message.
Dillinger’s low budget called for the hiring of new and rising talent, many of whom benefited from the film’s success. Lawrence Tierney, in his first leading role, was cast as Dillinger. Novice music editor Edward Haire later went on to a successful career in television. Philip Yordan received an Academy Award nomination for his original screenplay and a Time magazine profile after the film's release. (Tiomkin scored ten films scripted by Yordan, from Unknown Guest to Circus World.) Director Max Nosseck was a relative newcomer to English language films. (Dillinger appears to be his third.) Nosseck’s career began in the 1930s in Germany, and most of his films are in German or Yiddish.
Tiomkin was brought on at the end of August 1944, and filming commenced in October. Dillinger was made fast and cheap, in three weeks with a budget of $180,000, giving the film a gritty realism that set it apart from the typical glossy studio fare of the time. New York Mirror critic Frank Quinn found it curious that audiences were so taken with the brutal exploits of a ruthless criminal: “Monogram will earn more than Dillinger could steal.” He was not off the mark: the film’s $2,000,000 domestic gross far outstripped the Dillinger gang’s estimated haul of $300,000.
The small budget didn’t prevent Tiomkin from providing a lengthy, robust score that fills three quarters of the production’s running time. Flawlessly orchestrated by Joseph Nussbaum, P. A. Marquardt, and Herb Taylor, the ensemble is made to sound larger than it probably was. Whether intentional or not, Tiomkin scored the film as if it were a Republic Pictures serial, in which the music often provides as much, or more, drama than the onscreen action does. The Republic serials were, as author Reg Jones points out, low-budget, action-packed adventures with spectacular, sit-up-and-take-note music. In Dillinger, the galloping rhythms for the crime montage and pursuit sequences are balanced by a tender romantic theme. The opening credits are accompanied by rain, thunder, and lightning sound effects, and the tense main title music indicates the drama and action to follow.
Tiomkin draws on his experience with early jazz for two memorable scenes in a speakeasy. When Dillinger cannot pay for his date’s drink, the waiter calls him a “two-bit chis’ler.” A boogie-woogie performed onscreen by a pianist-actor becomes more prominent as the scene unfolds. Later, Dillinger returns to the speakeasy with Helen after a bank heist. We hear the same boogie-woogie, played by the same onscreen pianist, as Dillinger invites the waiter to join them and then orders Helen outside. Dillinger shatters his beer mug on the table and brandishes the jagged edge of the glass. The film cuts to the pianist, who jacks up the tempo of the boogie, commenting on the scene’s imminent climax: the offscreen demise of the waiter. Dillinger leaves the table as the hand of the dying victim pulls the tablecloth down while the piano player plays on.
For “Helen’s Mistake,” Tiomkin’s miniature piano concerto underscores a scene in which Dillinger knocks off a fellow gang member who tries to steal his girl. The critic for the Hollywood Reporter observed that “Dimitri Tiomkin’s score, with its piano dissonants [sic] contributes enormously to the suspense and dramatic evolution.”
Walter Scharf said that a composer is fortunate if he or she has just one scene in which the music can speak directly to the audience (David Raksin’s music for the apartment scene in Laura, for example). For Tiomkin, that scene might be “Stir Crazy” (chapter 18 on the Dillinger DVD). The cue, titled “Attack of Nerves,” is a three-minute musical portrait of the mobster’s thoughts as he sits alone in his hotel room, having been in hiding for six months. A plaintive woodwind solo brings out the introspective feel of the scene, reflected in actor Tierney’s movements and facial expressions and in Tiomkin’s music. Several instrumental solos follow, projecting loneliness and isolation. The musical phrasing—the length of each phrase—matches the onscreen action perfectly. When Dillinger sits on the bed and takes out a pack of cigarettes only to find it empty, the woodwind phrase, led by the descending piccolo line, is perfectly matched to his movements. After the camera closes in on the ticking alarm clock, the woodwind phrase mirrors the motion of Dillinger’s head.
From beginning to end, Tiomkin’s score for this scene makes musical sense as a whole while subtly striking each onscreen movement and action: the slamming of a bureau drawer, the dripping of a leaky faucet, the close-up of a “Wanted Dead or Alive” poster. Dillinger dons a necktie and hat, preparing to leave. The music builds dramatically. As he moves toward the door (and, unbeknownst to him, his death), a foreboding quasi death march ends with a stinger as he rips the “Wanted” poster from the wall and exits. (Interestingly, in the preceding scene, a children’s choir sings “Silent Night.” It’s not clear if the voices are those of the Robert Mitchell Choirboys.)
In the climactic finale, Helen betrays Dillinger by luring him to the movies and, afterward, into a fatal ambush. The pair watch a Mickey Mouse cartoon in the Biograph theater. This was a “steal” in itself: King Bros. paid only a dollar to Disney to license the cartoon’s music, “Galloping Romance” by Frank Churchill.
For the film’s March 1945 premiere at the majestic Orpheum theater in downtown Los Angeles, Tex Ritter headlined an all-Western stage revue before the screenings. (Ritter would later record Tiomkin’s trademark theme song, “Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin’.”) Dillinger’s take at the box office helped establish the King brothers in Hollywood, and the company continued bankrolling properties that contributed to their longevity over the years. Monogram planned a sequel, Dillinger’s Moll; however, by August 1945 a backlash against gangster films and a crackdown by the Production Code put a temporary halt to the genre.
© 2009 Volta Music
Sources
March 2009
Tiomkin featured in book on Russians in Hollywood
In his book “Russians in Hollywood, Hollywood’s Russians: Biography of an Image,” Harlow Robinson chronicles the story of Russian émigrés in Hollywood as well as the influence of Russian artists on American cinema, and examines the depiction of Russians in Hollywood films. Tiomkin is among those featured, along with directors Lewis Milestone and Rouben Mamoulian, actors Alla Nazimova, Akim Tamiroff (pictured with Tiomkin, right), and Maria Ouspenskaya, and other composers and musicians such as Vernon Duke, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, and Constantin, Mischa, and Vladimir Bakaleinikoff. The material on Tiomkin is drawn primarily from his autobiography, “Please Don’t Hate Me,” and from Christopher Palmer’s biography, “Dimitri Tiomkin: A Portrait.” Robinson is a professor of modern languages and history at Northeastern University and also authored a biography on Prokofiev. “Russians in Hollywood, Hollywood’s Russians,” published by Northeastern University Press in 2007, can be purchased at amazon.com.
February 2009
USC Cinematic Arts Library digitizes Tiomkin scores
The University of Southern California Cinematic Arts Library has embarked on an ambitious project to digitize the handwritten sketches and full scores of Dimitri Tiomkin, according to Sandra Garcia-Myers, the library’s assistant director. The film scores of Elmer Bernstein are also being digitized. Garcia-Myers recently gave a presentation on the project during a three-day symposium titled “Musicological Film Studies: Sources, Bibliography, and Editions,” held in partnership with the library and the Pacific-Southwest chapter of the American Musicological Society.
During her PowerPoint presentation, Garcia-Myers provided an overview of USC’s Tiomkin collection holdings that included several scanned images. “Not only is the library pleased that the digital scans will help preserve Tiomkin’s invaluable contribution to American film scoring, but it also will be easier to share the archival aspect of his music with future generations,” she says.
To date, twenty-eight complete Tiomkin scores have been digitized using state-of-the-art scanning equipment and a computer workstation generously provided by Olivia Tiomkin Douglas. At present, the digitized scores are not available over the Internet due to copyright restrictions and other issues. Garcia-Myers later fielded questions from the audience with the help of library director Steve Hanson and assistant John Brockman. In attendance were distinguished musicologists and scholars from Canada, England, Germany, Italy, and Mexico, as well as those from universities across the United States.
The session took place on Thursday, February 26, in the Intellectual Commons on the second floor of USC’s Doheny Library. Material from the Tiomkin collection was on display downstairs in the David L. Wolper Center as part of the exhibit “Duke: The Life and Legend of John Wayne.” On view were Tiomkin’s sketch for the main title of The Alamo and a photograph of the composer with John Wayne and his wife, Pilar, along with artifacts and memorabilia from the actor’s Batjac Productions. On Friday, the library hosted a wonderful reception in the Library Courtyard for symposium participants.
January 2009
The Robert Mitchell Choirboys
by Warren M. Sherk
Having previously written about Tiomkin’s collaboration with African American choral directors Hall Johnson and Jester Hairston, this month we take a closer look at Tiomkin’s lengthy association with the choral director Robert Mitchell. (Coincidentally, both the Robert Mitchell choir and the Jester Hairston choir appeared in the World Brotherhood through the Arts concert on the same night in 1955.) From 1938 to 1955, whenever Tiomkin needed a youthful sound for a song of any type—classical, sacred, patriotic, folk, traditional—he called on a stable of singers trained by Mitchell.
Mitchell’s first boys choir was organized at St. Brendan’s Catholic Church, in the Windsor Square neighborhood of Los Angeles’s mid-Wilshire district, where Tiomkin lived. Mitchell selected eleven boys, ages 12 to 16, from the parish’s parochial school and rehearsed them for a month prior to their debut at the church’s 1934 Christmas Eve service. To raise money for the church, Mitchell produced and directed a string of concerts at the Ebell Club of Los Angeles featuring the choir. At its peak size in the late 1930s, with thirty-three members, the choir performed at a variety of church and civic events. Many of the unique three-part arrangements were written by Mitchell.
Tiomkin first hired Mitchell and the St. Brendan’s Boys Choir during the scoring of The Great Waltz in August and September of 1938. This biographical musical depicting the life of Johann Strauss II includes a lengthy six-minute vocal performance of the Strauss waltz “Tales from the Vienna Woods,” arranged by Tiomkin. The boys can be heard among the 100 mixed voices. According to Mitchell, Tiomkin was also interested in recording a Strauss waltz using Latin words taken from a hymn. Two years later, in August 1940, Tiomkin hired Mitchell for the Frank Capra film Meet John Doe. In the film, the choir can be heard singing a Christmas carol.
Due to the success of these and other high-profile films, public awareness of the St. Brendan’s Boys Choir grew rapidly. A 1940 Warner Bros. Melody Masters Series short film by film editor Irving Applebaum, Forty Boys and a Song, documents the group training and performing. The ten-minute film was nominated for an Academy Award in 1941 in the Short Subject category for one-reelers. By this time a sign announcing the Robert Mitchell Choir School had been erected at St. Brendan’s, a nod to Mitchell’s influential role. At the boys’ 1942 commencement and graduation party, composer Meredith Willson and former child actor Jackie Cooper were presenters, with Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman as guests.
In August 1942, Tiomkin called on Mitchell’s group for a climactic musical number for San Pietro, a war documentary produced, directed, and narrated by John Huston. The choir, whose voices can be heard on track 19 of the Film Music Society CD The World War II Documentary Music of Dimitri Tiomkin, received main title billing.
One month after recording wrapped on San Pietro, in Farragut, Idaho, the U.S. Navy welcomed its first recruits to what would become the second largest U.S. naval training station in the world. Among the California recruits was Robert Mitchell, who went on to serve as director of the U.S. Naval Choir at Farragut. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, the St. Brendan’s Boys Choir had been tapped to perform onscreen in Going My Way. In the memorable musical number “Swinging on a Star,” the boys, dressed as neighborhood kids, appear alongside the film’s star, Bing Crosby. Mitchell attended the rehearsal and filming. The 1944 film went on to win seven Academy Awards, including best song.
In 1944 Bertha Keller Mann bought the Hollywood Conservatory of Music and Arts, founded in 1925, and changed the name to the Hollywood Professional School to reflect the course of study that, ironically, eventually ceased including music or art. After Mitchell’s return to Los Angeles following the war, the members of his choir attended the Hollywood Professional School. This private school was designed for children in show business, allowing them to attend classes solely in the morning—made possible by omitting physical education and lunch—so they could work in the afternoon. In addition to their morning studies and working with Mitchell in the afternoon, the boys continued to sing Mass at St. Brendan’s.
The group soon resumed its film work. Tiomkin recorded the “El Bolero” number in Duel in the Sun with the choir in November 1946. Upon the film’s initial release, Mitchell and the choir attended a screening at the Egyptian Theater. Mitchell recalls an awkward moment, not long after, when a St. Brendan’s priest called on the congregation during Mass to promise not to see the risqué Western film. By and large, however, the church did not interfere with the choir’s work, although a film’s subject matter may have come under consideration and there were a few parents who forbade their children from seeing movies. Even though the group had its origins at St. Brendan’s, Mitchell always recruited the best talent regardless of religious background. (He draws an analogy to the Notre Dame football team.) As the group grew to be more closely identified with its founder and director, it became known as the Robert Mitchell Boy (or Boys) Choir, though Mitchell himself prefers the Robert Mitchell Choirboys.
By 1954 Mitchell had established his own school, employing one full-time accredited teacher. The boys received four hours of academic instruction and three hours of musical instruction daily. Mitchell modeled the academic training on his own experience as a student at the Pasadena School of Tutoring. There, headmaster George Arthur Mortimer accepted students of any age and work was adapted to individual needs. At Mitchell’s school, even after the teacher’s salary and other expenses were deducted from the choir’s earnings, each boy netted around $550 per year. Ironically, the rise in union scale wages throughout the 1940s and into the 1950s resulted in a gradual decline in the choir’s size from thirty-three to eight members. (Mitchell recalls that this was dependent on recording and traveling factors only; usually the group consisted of around thirty boys.) By the mid-1950s, when film and radio producers began to request as few as six boys, Mitchell set a minimum call of eight; six, he felt, was too few to create the proper blend of voices.
Two mid-1950s Tiomkin films featuring the choir are Strange Lady in Town (1955) and Giant (1956). For Strange Lady the boys sang two Spanish-language songs, “La Golondrina” and “Las Chiapanecas.” Giant was the first film they worked on to use separate sound controls to record each of the three choir parts. Prior to this, the group had been recorded on a single track and the three-part harmony was balanced as part of the performance. To that end, Mitchell preferred to place the boys singing the melody in the middle of the group, with the second (harmony) part on the right, and the low (bass) part on the left. The recording engineers on Giant explained to Mitchell, as they set up to record the “Star Spangled Banner,” that they controlled the parts. Feeling mischievous, Mitchell quietly instructed the harmony part of the choir to sing louder than the melody part to show that he, the conductor, “controlled” the balance—his way of proving artistry over technology.
Tiomkin, always on the lookout for ways to expand the sonic palette available to him in Hollywood, chose the Mitchell choir for its unusual combination of musicianship, artistry, and versatility. Another Hollywood boy choir, the St. Luke’s Choristers of Long Beach, was popular in the 1940s; however, they excluded popular music from their repertoire and were forbidden by their church to appear in some pictures, including gangster films, which were seen as glorifying violence. In contrast, the Mitchell boys were taught pop and swing music. The tonal quality and range of boy choirs was conducive to film sound recording, particularly in the days before stereo, with the added benefit that onscreen appearances were sure to appeal to audiences.
A Los Angeles native, Robert Mitchell (b. 1912) studied piano and pipe organ in L.A. and New York. As a youth in the 1920s, he provided musical accompaniment for films. With the advent of sound films, he turned his attention to church organ and choir training. For the latter, he drew on his experience as a teenage choirboy at St. Matthias Episcopal Church in Los Angeles. There, Mitchell learned how to sing the high soprano part, how to manage a choir, and how to select repertoire. In spite of his active role directing the boys in as many as 100 motion picture performances, Mitchell primarily made his living as a radio organist.
Updated February 2009
Sources
Robert Mitchell, 1912-2009
Sadly, we have learned that Bob Mitchell has passed away in Los Angeles. He was interviewed earlier this year for our feature article (above) examining his work on numerous Tiomkin films. Since that article was posted, we have discovered—thanks to Ned Comstock—a vocal manuscript for "El Balero" [sic] from Duel in the Sun, dated April 16, 1946, in the Dimitri Tiomkin Collection at the USC Cinematic Arts Library. Mitchell arranged the three-part chorus and verse.
In addition to his legacy as a theater organist, choral director, and arranger, Mitchell was the first organist for the Los Angeles Dodgers when Dodger Stadium opened in 1962. See the Los Angeles Times blog, "The Daily Mirror," for more and for information on services.
Posted July 7, 2009