CARE about Music & Film

2010-08-12T10:43:00.000-07:00

Gem

Locale: Panquitch, high plains, one-horse town

in southern Utah.

POV: The Gem, movie-theater,

closed.

Above the marquee

A sign: recent,

neo-psychedelic, illuminated once.

The trim: spare, probably original,

a pathetic attempt at Alhambrian,

a failure at disguising the

bare-essential shoe-box design.

Doors: closed for good now,

though empty frames for posters and lobbies

still stare blank-eyed

into the VistaVision of a classic western sunset.

People watch movies on small screens now,

as RKO and MGM are filtered out of the air

through channels with other initials,

and from which it is easier to walk away.

The time: late October, almost Halloween.
Pan across Main Street to where:
a boy
constructs a spider web of rope
on his front porch
and tiny affable ghosts flutter
in the branches of a scrawny tree
in his front yard,
puppetmoths erratically animated
by the chilly evening winds
rummaging over the plains
from Bryce and the mountains.

His naive solitary quest for fantasy
in a bleak wintry world
tells me he would have loved
The Gem in its prime,
would probably have been seduced by (or in) it.
Now he weaves his own arachnid dreams,
delicate but strong as rope,
and probably more binding,
while the Gem watches with sightless eyes,
casting myriad musical reverberations
into the vast skies over Panquitch,
transiently Technicolored,
wider
even than
CinemaScope.

Ross Care

Tony PERKINS Just SINGS

2010-08-07T09:10:00.000-07:00

Most people know Tony Perkins, the actor. For better and/or worse, the actor who played Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO.

But during the 1050s Perkins, like several other young actors of the period, also had a career as a singer (and aspiring teen age heartthrob).

Though he did not make musical films he appeared on Broadway in Frank Loesser's musical GREENWILLOW.

He did perform a few songs in his dramatic films, including the title song in
GREEN MANSIONS.

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I did a music column for SCARLET STREET, The Magazine of Mystery and Horror, for several years. Here is a RECORD RACK I wrote on Tony Perkins' secondary career as a singer and recording artist. He recorded mostly for RCA Victor but had one early LP on Epic. The photo on the first page is from this Epic album.

Please CLICK on page graphics to ENLARGE and ZOOM in for easier READING.

Thanks. 

Mickey & Catnip

2010-08-05T04:33:00.000-07:00

California cat Mickey (aka Miklos) ignoring sage advice.

Bamboo

2010-07-08T02:39:00.001-07:00

Bamboo, originally uploaded by BudCat14.

From my photo album MOODS at FLICKr.

Neon Mondrian

2010-07-08T02:37:00.001-07:00

Neon Mondrian, originally uploaded by BudCat14.

From my album MOODS at FLICKr.

Flickr

2010-07-08T02:36:00.001-07:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

CINEMAS of the World: Stony Brook Drive-In

2010-07-02T09:45:00.000-07:00

CINEMAS of the World: Stony Brook Drive-In

2010-06-27T15:48:00.000-07:00

Old Lincoln Highway,

east of York, Pennsylvania

(closed/demolished circa 2004)

For more photos see my FLICKr album:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/39527581@N07/sets/72157624231889083/

DEEP IN MY HEART: MGM's ROMBERG Story

2010-06-16T23:25:00.000-07:00

Composer: SIGMUND ROMBERG (Songs), Various Lyricists

Rhino MGM Download; TT: 24 tracks (stereo)

Performed: MGM Soloists, Studio Orchestra & Chorus , Conductor/Music Supervisor: Adolph Deutsch Arrangers: Alexander Courage, Hugo Friedhofer, Robert Tucker (vocals).

Deep In My Heart (1954) is one of the last big all-star musicals from MGM, and also the last of their (in)famous musical biographies, in this case one freely adapted from the life of Sigmund Romberg (and a biography of the same title).

Like its predecessors (Words And Music/Rodgers and Hart, Till the Clouds Roll By/Jerome Kern, etc.) it also showcases a broad cross section of the composer’s hits and rarities performed by most of the stars still lingering in the MGM heavens.

The real Romberg was born in Europe and became one of the most successful American operetta composers of the early 20th century. He moved uneasily into musical comedy in the ‘30s and ‘40s, though many of his operetta favorites (such as “Lover, Come Back to Me”) had a contemporary edge which allowed them to remain popular standards into the Big Band era. Like many film composer émigrés, Romberg was able to fuse Old World lyricism and schmaltz with American popular appeal. He also had a long-standing connection with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Several of his operettas (The New Moon, Maytime) provided hit vehicles for Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy in the ‘30s, and in the ‘50s MGM remade his most famous work, The Student Prince, in CinemaScope.

Also like many film composers, Romberg had a secondary career as a recording artist. Thus RCA Victor released their own “Deep In My Heart” album with Romberg’s own recordings at the time of the MGM release.

Deep In My Heart, produced by MGM’s renaissance music man, Rodger Edens, stars Jose Ferrer (who looks nothing like the portly composer) as Romberg, and ex-Wagnerian soprano, Helen Traubel, as his platonic but supportative lady friend, Anna Mueller. There is also the obligatory transfusion of romantic interest, but anything resembling a plot is subsidiary to the on-going musical numbers that provide the substance of both film and this new “download only” Rhino soundtrack.

MGM Records originally released Deep In My Heart as a deluxe boxed LP (MGM E3153), a packaging format later followed by their Ben Hur and Mutiny on the Bounty releases. But like most of the MGM musical STs of the era, numbers were cut and edited to fit the track timing demands of the period. This new Rhino edition provides all the musical numbers in complete versions, plus a few incidental cues and out takes, and all in true stereo.

The angular Ferrer comes off as just rather odd as Romberg, especially in a virtuoso, if bizarre number in which he performs a one-man version of one of his shows (“Jazzadadadoo Medley”) to impress (?) his society sweetheart (Doe Avedon).

However, the still golden-voiced Traubel is appealing and versatile, able to turn “Softly As In A Morning Sunrise” - is there any other kind? – into a moving art song at one moment, then launch into an obscure bit of ersatz ragtime called “Leg of Mutton” with equal conviction.

But all this still leaves lots of room for a roll call of Romberg show excerpts performed by the likes of Howard Keel, Jane Powell, Ann Miller, Vic Damone, Rosemary Clooney, William Olvis, and Tony Martin, right down to Gene Kelly and his brother, Fred.

Miller has one of her best production numbers with the frantic “It,” a lesser-known Romberg excursion into the Jazz Age. (Note the costumes recycled from Singing in the Rain).

Dancers Cyd Charisse and James Mitchell perform a sensual “One Alone” from the popular Desert Song. While Charisse is voice-doubled by Carole Richards (who dubs Newman’s “Resurrection Song” in The Robe), no vocals are necessary to get the erotic charge emphatically across in this opulently staged and lushly arranged/orchestrated production number.

Cyd Charisee in The Desert Song sequence.

But then a spacious stereo mix and composer Adolph Deutsch’s conducting beautifully enhance all the lush orchestrations by Alexander Courage and Hugo Friedhofer. While I miss the detailed, informative liner notes that came with the Rhino CD releases, downloading seems like a convenient and effective process and I hope more new MGM releases will be forthcoming.

And who knows, perhaps the entire catalog of MGM musicals (including such less familiar titles as Deep In My Heart) may eventually be available in this format as well.

Into the future and perhaps bring on Jupiter's Darling!

Ross Care

Jack Giant Killer Whoops It Up

2010-06-10T02:37:00.000-07:00

This may be carrying trivia too far, but why not?

I recently unearthed my old VHS tape of JACK THE GIANT KILLER, THE MUSICAL (from the very early days of the Disney Channel back in Lancaster, Pa.) The original GIANT KILLER (1962) is a variation on the popular Ray Harryhausen stop-motion Dynamation films of the era. Stars Kerwin Mathews, Torin Thatcher, and director Nathan Juran also add to the 7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD (1958) ambiance. Jim Danforth helped with stop motion efx in JACK.

Hung Up: Torin Thatcher and Kerwin Mathews in the original film. The handsome, soft-spoken Mathews was introduced in Columbia's FIVE AGAINST THE HOUSE, a noir classic currently released on DVD.

Leonard Maltin's 2001 Movie & Video Guide comments: "Marvelous Fantascope special efx make this costume adventure yarn (in the SINBAD tradition) great fun.

"BEWARE reissue which was dubbed into an ersatz musical!"

The "ersatz" musical make-over is credited as
“Music Processes Produced by Edwin Picker and Moose Charlap”

Charlap is also credited with the (new) original score and partial lyrics.

Picker is also credited as Editor, and Sandy Stewart as co-lyricist.

The original (original 1962) score was by Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter whose really excellent work on VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA was finally released in a previously unheard soundtrack CD version by Film Score Monthly a few years ago.

The Mirror Cracks as Judi Meredith turns from scarlet temptress back into nice peasant girl.

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Whoop Up!

Charlap is probably best-known for another cult (and not so ersatz) musical, the notorious WHOOP-UP, the score of which includes “Love Eyes” with the great lyric (by Norman Gimbel):

“Love Eyes (I mean you)
You and them Levis,
You’ve been eyein’ me since you walked in.
Your glances speed my heart and heat my skin.”

Not to mention:
“My lipstick’s wet
And waitin’ for your smear....”

Aside from the definitive Connie Francis delivery of this hot number, the Polydor CD re-issue of the original MGM Records Original Cast album (circa 1988) has nine other bonus tracks. These include Charlap and Gimbel’s virtuoso performance of “Men,” the style of which seems have inspired most of Robert Preston’s numbers in THE MUSIC MAN. Curious.

Charlap also contributed a few songs to the Mary Martin PETER PAN.

There’s probably a lot more to say about WHOOP UP and JACK THE GIANT KILLER, but never mind.

Ross Care 

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LINK:

HOME

Whoop-Up

Music:	Moose Charlap
Lyrics:	Norman Gimbel
Book:	Dan Cushman, Cy Feuer, Ernest H. Martin

Premiere: Monday, December 22, 1958
Shubert Theatre, (New York) Performances: 56

Original Broadway Cast (CD)

Recording year:	1958
Language:	English
Label:	Polydor 837196
Length:	74:51
Tracks:	28

Conductor: Stanley Lebowsky

show Singer List
show Song List

Unsinkable Maybe, But Not Quite Titanic

2010-06-09T01:03:00.000-07:00

Rhino MGM Musical Scores:
THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN: Songs: Meredith Willson
Arrangements/Orchestrations: Leo Arnaud, with Alexander Courage, Leo Shuken, Jack Hayes
CD released Nov. 21, 2000

Rhino Handmade R 2 72465, 28 tracks (stereo) Excellent production, so so songs.
Producer: George Feltenstein, Performed: MGM Soloists, Studio Orchestra & Chorus, Conductor: Robert Armbruster

The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) is based on the musical by Meredith Willson. The Broadway version was the follow-up to Willson’s The Music Man, and, though it had a respectable run, was considered something of a letdown after the phenomenal 1957 success of Willson’s first show.

Nonetheless Molly Brown became one of the last of the big MGM musicals, directed by veteran Charles Walters and arranged by several surviving members of the studio’s celebrated musical unit.

The lengthy film is also a product of the shift in Broadway musical adaptations that came with the end of the studio era and the emergence of what I call the “behemoth” Broadway movie musical, a genre launched by such films as West Side Story (1961) in which every grace note and fermata of the original score was transferred to film, overloading the movie versions to epic, but often tedious proportions.

Amazingly, MGM did not follow this trend with Molly Brown. As they did with On the Town, Brigadoon, and other adaptations, the studio blithely tossed out much of the Broadway score and produced a movie that actually moves. (The spectacular location shooting is the way Seven Brides for Seven Brothers should have been filmed!)

The fact-inspired script is based on the life of Molly Brown, a poor Colorado backwoods girl who got rich and fought her way into wealthy (and snobbish) Denver society. (Her story is also hinted at in James Cameron’s Titanic, the “unsinkable” Molly becoming the determined heroine of one of the doomed ship’s lifeboats).

Debbie Reynolds aggressively tears into the role of Molly, replacing Broadway’s more elfin Tammy Grimes. Harve Presnell was maintained from the Broadway original. Many of Willson’s songs were also dropped, with “I Ain’t Down Yet,” and “Belly Up To The Bar, Boys” and "I'll Never Say No To You" the main survivors. Reynolds gives her all to these numbers, but also has the annoying habit of half-speaking the opening phrases, which somewhat negates the melodic impact of the two best tunes in the score.

Big Voice, Big Man

Not so with Presnell, a power baritone who can still be heard on the CD reissue of Orff’s Carmina Burana with the Philadelphia Orchestra (and who was recently seen in Fargo). MGM obviously considered Presnell a successor to Nelson Eddy and Howard Keel in the studio’s roster of leading music men. And indeed he could have been if the classic movie musical had not been on the way out about the time of Molly Brown. (Presnell’s next film co-starred Herman’s Hermits and Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs!)

Harve in 1969 at the premiere of the film of Paint Your Wagon.

At any rate, Presnell is given the movie debut of a lifetime as the camera loving examines every virile, tight jean-clad inch of him in his opening number, “Colorado My Home”. After seeing this introduction it is perhaps not surprising to learn that director Walters was, for the period, a relatively out-of-the-closet gay man. (See William J. Mann's Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood).

And for a graphic example of how Hollywood could pound anyone into peak shape compare the sexy cinematic Harve to the photos of a rather dumpy Presnell in the Capitol original cast album that was one of a few OCs that also included a copy of the original theatrical program.

Molly Brown original Shubert Theatre Broadway program.
The show starred the delightful Tammy Grimes and Presnell.

Willson wrote one new tune for the film, “He’s My Friend,” which, along with “Belly Up,” provide the film’s major production numbers, and some of the last great MGM dance sequences, some of which feature Broadway dancer Grover Dale in one of his few film appearances. Rhino includes all the energetic dance music, as well as the film’s many underscore cues, some adapted from the Broadway score.

Rhino’s 2000 restoration is a pleasant souvenir of one of the last of the big MGM Silver Age musicals, and the profuse underscoring is an especially appealing reminder of the studio’s brilliant arrangements and orchestral sound.

Ross Care

Raksin/Friedhofer CD ST Double Bill

2010-06-08T23:56:00.000-07:00

THE REVOLT OF MAMIE STOVER (1956)

"If you want to see Mamie tonight..."
           Jane Russell as the volatile Ms. Stover.

David Raksin HILDA CRANE / Hugo Friedhofer THE REVOLT OF MAMIE STOVER

Orchestrations: CRANE, Edward Powell, STOVER: Earle Hagen – Intrada Special Collection Volume 31, TT: 72.22, 30 tracks (stereo) Highest Rating

Producer: Nick Redman Performed: 20th Century-Fox Orchestra Conductor: CRANE: Alfred Newman, STOVER: Lionel Newman

Here Intrada brings us a double-feature premiere of two lesser-known scores from the middle period (1956) 20th Century-Fox CinemaScope era.

Hilda Crane is melodrama about a young divorced woman (Jean Simmons) whose return to her college hometown sets local tongues wagging. The Revolt of Mamie Stover is about an even more liberated heroine who is kicked out of San Francisco on the eve of World War II and, in the wake of Pearl Harbor, makes her fortune in a Honolulu bordello (toned down to a “dance hall” for the film version of the original novel).

Both scores (like many of the era) might be described as populuxe, a term recently coined for the new brand of lush post-war style designed for the newly affluent, eagerly consumerist America of the 1950s. David Raksin is probably best known for his 1940s work at Fox, including his celebrated Laura. After a curiously perky (for a melodrama) Main Title his score for Hilda Crane is a kind of subtle rhapsody for strings and soloists (including reeds, violin/cello, and a silky alto sax). The style is hauntingly melodic, but in an elusive way, and there are no “big” (or obvious) tunes, but lots of beautifully crafted lines and modulations.

Many cues are concentrated and you wish some had more time to develop, but all in all Crane is a score that grows more appealing with each hearing. It’s also a prime example of that seamless fusion of concert and pop modes that only Hollywood and its composers could bring off so effortlessly.

In 2005 I saw a pristine CinemaScope print of The Revolt of Mamie Stover at the American Cinematheque in Hollywood where I enjoyed Hugo Friedhofer’s score in its original theatrical stereophonic mode (and a personal appearance by star Jane Russell herself).

Friedhofer’s pop-oriented but varied Stover is a fine contrast to Raksin’s more refined Crane. It opens with a bluesy Main Title, the melody of which is developed throughout the film. There’s also a lilting, waltz-like love theme that is sometimes linked to a brief yearning motif in strings for when things get serious.

In keeping with the period and setting much of the score emphasizes an authentic ‘40s big band/jazz sound, and several dance hall numbers are included. “If You Wan’na See Mamie Tonight” (by Hollywood hit makers Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster) is a slyly humorous tune performed in a semi-camp tango mode by a male chorus. (“Fellows who try to resist ought to hire a psy-chi-a-trist.”) It’s also heard in a dynamically authentic period swing arrangement.

“Keep Your Eyes on the Hands” (by Mary Tobin and Tony Todaro) is performed (in mono) by Jane Russell, a talented and under-rated vocalist who also recorded both numbers on a Capitol single at the time of the film’s release. Another rather camp moment is a tiki lounge version of the old Fox number, “Sing Me A Song of the Islands”. (This score has everything!)

However, Friedhofer’s casually sexy orchestral cues are the main attraction, very coolly performed by the celebrated Fox strings backing up an assortment of slick jazz soloists, just as Raksin’s Hilda Crane soloists weave in and out of a more posh carpet of velvety strings and harp. Both scores represent that unique populuxe sound that nobody did better than Hollywood in the 1950s, and nobody in Hollywood did better than Fox (and MGM). Both are unusual and welcome re-issues, but to me any new Friedhofer release is always special.

Vinyl, Vinyl

2010-05-05T14:34:00.000-07:00

Overflowing Record Rack, Ventura, California

Top: Kenyon Hopkins' LILITH soundtrack, original Colpix Records stereo LP.

On Floor: Original green label RCA original cast mono LP of Harold Rome's musical WISH YOU WERE HERE.

California SPRING

2010-04-10T09:28:00.000-07:00

Lupines on forest floor, Figueroa Mountain, April, 2010. Photo: Ross Care

GENE KELLY Retrospective, American Cinematheque, Santa Monica

2010-03-29T15:40:00.000-07:00

March 25/March 28, 2010,
AERO Theatre,

Santa Monica, CA.
Above Photo by Ross Care

So great to see those tiles on a real marquee again...

Patricia Ward Kelly, Kelly's third wife and widow, introduced several of the screenings.

I saw: THE PIRATE (1948) & BRIGADOON (1954), Thursday evening;

ON THE TOWN (1949) & ANCHORS AWEIGH (1945), Sunday evening.

Samuel Barber, 100th Birthday

2010-03-09T23:10:00.000-08:00

http://www.schirmer.com/default.aspx?TabId=2419&State_2872=2&ComposerId_2872=72

Today, March 9, 2010, would have been the 100th birthday of the great American composer, Samuel Barber.

Walt Disney Concert Hall, Disney Symphonic Legacy Concert

2010-03-03T06:57:00.000-08:00

Photographs by Ross Care

Program for the October 20, 2009 Disney Symphonic Legacy concert,

Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles

Notes by Ross Care

Please CLICK on program graphics: PAGES will ENLARGE.

Frank Gehry's Lillian Disney Memorial Fountain,

Level Three Terrace

CALIFORNIA as Science Fiction 2

2010-02-28T23:24:00.000-08:00

Self Portrait in Disney Hall wall,
Los Angeles, February 21, 2010.

After hearing Ginastera, Ravel, and Stravinsky.

CINEMAS of the World: The Royal, Philadelphia, PA., USA

2010-02-23T17:17:00.000-08:00

I remember when I used to come into Philly in the '70s I would park my car somewhere down and beyond South St., one of the few areas where you could park overnight in center city.

Thus I used to walk by the Royal Theatre on South Street quite often, on the way downtown in the evening and then staggering back the morning (or afternoon) after.

But always, always noting the black plastic letters gradually disappearing from the "Last of the Mobile Hot Shots" title. This late period (1970) Tennessee Williams film was apparently (and appropriately) the Royal's last film attraction.

Apparently the theater was never sold or rented and letters and words gradually slipped away until only a slight poignant suggestion of the title, only comprehensible to avid movie buffs, was left clinging to the neglected but still impressive marquee.

It seemed incredibly symbolic and touching to me at the time. (And still does).

Also especially meaningful because I had seen the original Tennessee Williams play, "The Seven Descents of Myrtle" with Estelle Parsons and Harry Guardino, during its March 1968 Philadelphia try-out. It played a few blocks over from the Royal at the Walnut Street Theatre.

The Royal also reminded me of Tennessee's audacious short story, "The Mysteries of the Joy Rio".

I never imagined I would ever see that poignant image again. But here it is from the collections of Temple University.

More about the Royal: http://digital.library.temple.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/p15037coll3&CISOPTR=342&CISOBOX=1&REC=14

Cinemas of the World: LOEW's REGENT Theatre, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA

2010-02-18T10:03:00.000-08:00

Loew’s REGENT Theatre, at 410 Market Street, was the Harrisburg chapter of the national Loew’s chain of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer “flagship” theaters.

These photographs show Loew's after it closed around 1960. Both shots look down Market St. towards Market Square.

In the above the large building is Pomeroy's department store. Beyond Pomeroy's is Doutrich's, a clothing store (vertical sign), Bowman's, another department store, and beyond Bowman's (not visible) Woolworth's five-and-dime. The Colonial Theatre (also not visible here) was at 3rd and Market Streets.

The large photo below shows Loew's from the same POV but closer. The theater was housed in a row of old buildings which included a bar, a dry cleaner, a novelty/gag shop (which kids of the era loved), and a photography/art store. There was a parking lot which is partially seen to the far right in the above photo. The Harrisburg train station was (and is) across and set back from this Market St. block.

In its prime Loew's Regent was the first-run Harrisburg theater for most of MGM’s prolific output of period epics, musicals (such as "Brigadoon") , and melodramas, as well the studio’s series of often well-produced B-movie and noir programmers (such as "Rogue Cop").

But Loew's also showed the occasional oddball independent picture. I saw both Lippert’s unforgettable “Rocketship X-M’’ as well as “Bwana Devil,” the infamous first 3-D feature, at the Regent.

Otto Preminger's controversial "The Man With the Golden Arm." "An Adult Picture" as the newspaper ad warned, also played there in February, 1956.

Loew's opened in 1920. But, a victim of the 1950s trust busting that forever altered the production/distribution/exhibition system of studio era Hollywood, the Regent was razed in 1961.

More about Loew's REGENT Theatre: http://cinematreasures.org/theater/31814/

Cinemas of the World: The Penway, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA

2010-02-15T10:19:00.000-08:00

The Penway Theatre, 18th and State Streets, Harrisburg, PA.

Circa 1946/1947.

Photo by Ross J. Care

++++++++++++++

The Penway was on the corner of 18th & State Streets in Harrisburg, Pa. State Street was the "grand boulevard" of the capitol city and ran from the impressive State Street Memorial Bridge at the capitol buildings complex to the edge of Reservoir Park.

My family lived on Liberty Street, one block down from the theater. It was the first neighborhood I lived in and the first movie theater I attended.

A later screening of ON THE TOWN at the Penway was the start of my lifelong interest in writing about film and vintage movie theaters. My mother, Edithe, and I are seen at the end of the line waiting to see another MGM musical. (Note that, among an all-star cast, Lucille Bremer is given co-star billing).

More about the Penway:
http://cinematreasures.org/theater/31805/

I wrote about the Penway and the other Harrisburg theaters I grew up loving (and losing) in my first article for the Library of Congress. The above photograph, circa 1946/1947, by my father, is reproduced on the first page of this article. The article also includes what photos I could find of other downtown and neighborhood Harrisburg theaters and movie stills and graphics from the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound collections of the Library of Congress.

PERFORMING ARTS ANNUAL, 1986, Iris Newsom, editor, The Library of Congress, Washington, DC, 1986. ISBN: 0-8444-0533-7

The RIO: Cinemas of the World But No Longer in This World

2010-02-09T21:42:00.000-08:00

The Rio Theater,

323 Walnut St., Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA

The Rio began life in 1908 as the Majestic, a venue for vaudeville, traveling shows, and occasional legitimate theater. It also served as a concert hall.

Barely surviving during the Depression the Majestic interspersed films with live entertainment until 1938 when it converted to first-run motion pictures. As the Rio it booked quality films until (circa) the late 1940s when it gradually declined into a mecca for double-feature B pictures, serials, and westerns (as illustrated in the photo.

The Rio was razed in 1955 and Harrisburg's Strawberry Square now occupies most of the block across from Capitol Park where this beautiful and historic structure once stood.

You can read more about the Rio at this excellent website:

http://cinematreasures.org/theater/31738/

CINEMAS of the World: Drive-In Ads, Harrisburg, PA.

2010-02-08T21:35:00.000-08:00

An ad for two drive-ins in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Circa 1954. Even drive-ins had converted to wide-screen CinemaScope by the mid-1950s.
But you didn't get "The Wonder of Stereophonic Sound" as promised in the RIVER OF NO RETURN ad. (But there still were Cartoon Carnivals).

CALIFORNIA as Science Fiction 1

2010-01-28T20:22:00.000-08:00

Queen Mary, Long Beach -
Photo COPYRIGHT 2010 by Ross Care

RIP James Mitchell 1920-2010

2010-01-26T12:25:00.000-08:00

"All My Children" may have paid the bills but dancer/actor James Mitchell should be most remembered for his on-screen dancing: for his sensitive dancing/acting as Curly in the spectacular dream ballet from OKLAHOMA, and for his erotically charged duo with Cyd Charisse in the MGM Sigmund Romberg bio film DEEP IN MY HEART, to the song "One Alone" from Romberg's THE DESERT SONG.

He also played a mute slave devoted to Edmund Purdom in MGM's THE PRODIGAL.

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-james-mitchell25-2010jan25,0,6228341.story

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kqs-by5hi2E

Frolic in the New Year

2010-01-01T20:35:00.000-08:00

Frolic Room, Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, CA.

Happy New Year, 2010

Humpty Dumpty Rides Again

2009-12-30T11:07:00.000-08:00

From the Pasadena Tournament of Roses parade a few years ago.

CHRISTMAS in High Fidelity

2009-12-25T16:20:00.000-08:00

CHRISTMAS should always be in High Fidelity.... (but on my copy Under Western Skies is not in Living Stereo.

RIP Arnold Stang 1918-2009

2009-12-24T09:27:00.000-08:00

Arnold Stang (1918-2009) -

Uniquely distinctive actor and voice of radio, screen, and television.

He early radio work included the wonderful Saturday morning children's show Let's Pretend. He said radio was his favorite medium because "listeners could contribute so much from their own imagination."

On TV he was the voice to Top Cat (according to the LA Times). But someone commented that he was actually the voice of Top Cat's sidekick.

One of his best-known film roles is opposite Frank Sinatra in Preminger's THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM.

Bronislau KAPER: GREEN MANSIONS

2009-12-21T23:10:00.000-08:00

GREEN MANSIONS: Composers: Bronislau Kaper, Special Music Created by Heitor Villa-Lobos Orchestrations: Robert Franklyn, Sidney Cutner, Leo Arnaud– Film Score Monthly vol 8, no 3, TT: 79.53, 21 tracks (stereo)

Producer: Lukas Kendall Performed: MGM Studio Orchestra Conductor: Charles Wolcott

Verdict: Lush symphonic fantasy.

by Ross Care

Green Mansions is a 1959 MGM CinemaScope film based on the 1904 novel by British writer, W. H. Hudson. The classic fantasy concerns Rima (Audrey Hepburn), a mysterious “bird-girl” living in the unexplored depths of the Amazon forest (the “green mansions” of the title), and her ill-fated romance with Abel (Tony Perkins), a South American political refugee. These two leads are certainly photogenic, and the film has its moments, but some elusive literary properties just do not translate to a visual medium. Though director Mel Ferrer removed most of its overtly fantastic elements, Green Mansions remained one of them and was a commercial and artistic disappointment at the time of its release.

Today the film is best remembered for a lavish symphonic score with a controversial compositional history. Brazilian classical composer, Heitor Villa-Lobos, was originally signed to do the music but, due to a series of circumstances well documented in the liner notes, MGM’s Bronislau Kaper, himself a classically trained musician well-versed in concert techniques, was also brought in. Kaper both adapted and augmented the Villa-Lobos music and created a title song that is judiciously used in the underscoring.

Villa-Lobos rearranged his music as Forest of the Amazon; his last great concert work for orchestra with soprano and chorus, and recorded it for United Artists Records. (It was recently redone with Renee Fleming as soloist).

This, however, is the first recording of the original film soundtrack. A 5.24 “Main Title/Chase/River Boat” sets the tone and modus operandi of the entire score. An exotically mysterious Villa-Lobos opening (including dramatic statements of his “Rima” motif) is intercut with a brief phrase of Kaper’s title song that will also serve as the film’s love theme. Kaper’s wild “Chase” seems influenced by the “Dance of the Earth” from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, as do other minor bits of his work.

The restrained title song is more in the mode of a folk song than Kaper’s other great pop standards (“Invitation,” “On Green Dolphin Street,” “Hi Lili, Hi Lo”). Tony Perkins, who had a moderately successful (but today mostly forgotten) secondary career as a singer and recording artist in the ‘50s, performs it in a substantial sequence in the film, but his version is not included here. Orchestrally the song’s refrain (“Tell me, Rima, where are the meadows of June?”) is heard at various points in the score, notably the opening, of “It’s Gold” and “Is It You?”

Villa-Lobos created the ethereal Rima theme, magically orchestrated in “At the Pool/First Visit” (the latter, however, submerged under real birdcalls in the film). The 79.53 score is allowed much time to develop, and builds to a series of profoundly moving final cues in which poignant new Villa-Lobos themes underscore revelations of Rima’s past and her tragic demise.

Green Mansions is (aside from its tumultuous, somewhat schizoid “End Title”) no conventional Hollywood offering of the period. It’s a sumptuous, expansively symphonic score that captures the magic and menace of an otherworldly, ultimately lost Eden with a power and mystery sorely missing from the often unpleasantly literal film itself.

The sound is remixed in stereo from original 3-track recordings and beautifully showcases the impressionistic, opulently Ravel-ian orchestrations.

Charles Wolcott, a Disney studio veteran who became a part of the MGM musical staff, conducts, and also had the delicate executive job of liaison between. Villa-Lobos and Kaper while the score was being finalized.

Bill Whitaker and Jeff Bond’s notes discuss the film’s history and the score’s involved Kaper/Villa-Lobos issues, as well as providing a cue-by-cue description of the mostly seamless meshing of the two composers’ contributions. Kudos to FSM for making this magnificent score finally available in such a complete and definitive version.

RIP: Jennifer Jones 1919-2009

2009-12-18T20:44:00.000-08:00

Music from

the classic films of

JENNIFER JONES

SNOW in Southern CALIFORNIA

2009-12-10T22:57:00.000-08:00

After the Monday, December 7, 2009 winter storm that passed over southern California. A fresh mountain snowfall provides a background to persisting autumn color. This view from route 150 between Santa Paula and Ojai, Tuesday morning. Click on photo for big screen CinemaScope view.

Photo COPYRIGHT 2009 by Ross Care

Leigh HARLINE: 7 FACES OF DR. LAO Revisited

2009-12-01T10:29:00.000-08:00

Left Composer Leigh HARLINE

Orchestrations: Leigh Harline, Gus Levene – Film Score Monthly vol. 9, #11, TT: 59.55, 33 tracks (stereo) 1-24 score, 25-33 bonus

Produced: Lukas Kendall, George Feltenstein
Performed: MGM Studio Orchestra, Conductor: Leigh Harline

Verdict: Phantasmagorial fantasy score!

by Ross Care

7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964) is among the last of the famous late period George Pal sci fi/fantasy features which commenced in 1950 with the classic Destination Moon. Lao is based on the 1935 novel, “The Circus of Dr. Lao” by Charles G. Finney. As the CD notes explain “the film tells the story of a mysterious visitor from the Far East (Tony Randall) who arrives at an undernourished town in the Old West and sets up a magical circus of bizarre attractions.”

How the good doctor and his creatures influence the hearts and minds of the various citizens and how he eventually saves the town from itself is the core of the film’s offbeat plot line.

Leigh Harline had worked with Pal providing the background score for the spectacular Cinerama production, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, in 1962, though Bob (a.k.a Robert) Merrill, a Tin Pan Alley and later Broadway (Take Me Along, New Girl in Town) songwriter, provided the songs and main theme.

Fortunately Harline had Dr. Lao all to himself and the resulting score proved a climax to Harline’s long Hollywood career that commenced at the Disney Studio in the 1930s. (His amazing Pinocchio score won two Oscars). Leaving Disney’s Harline moved through the various dream factories of the studio era (including RKO and Fox) as composer and music director to conclude with several scores for MGM in the early ‘60s.

Harline’s Dr. Lao score is a melodic amalgam of American western and far eastern (Asian) themes and sonics, plus various motifs and cues for the fantastic creatures in Lao’s show. The main theme (“Main Title”) is a warmly lively tune that represents the doctor himself, and is reprised in various guises throughout the score.

A gently archaic sequence depicts Merlin the Magician (“The Magic Act”), and an exotic theme in soprano sax vividly conjures up the grotesque snake-haired “Medusa”. The score’s best track is “Pan’s Dance,” a magical backup for the choreographed sequence in which Pan, the God of Joy (and Sex), vividly awakens the erotic fantasies of the town’s attractive but emotionally repressed schoolmarm (Barbara Eden).

This virtual suite of character motifs is intercut with Harline’s original dramatic underscore (“Dr. Lao-Hero,” “Death of the Press”) and an assortment of circus source music cues (“Hurry, Hurry, Hurry,” etc.) All display Harline’s prolific melodic gifts as well as his keen ear for the appropriately atmospheric orchestral sound. (The climactic Loch Ness Monster sequence is underscored with an amazing multi-track of studio-manipulated bagpipes and percussion).

In keeping with the magical, almost claustrophobic intimacy of Lau's circus environment Harline scores for a relatively small instrumental ensemble. Both the many solo lines and the briefer big moments are beautifully captured in Michael McDonald's stereo remix and Doug Schwartz's digital mastering.

The remix also spotlights the incredible Hollywood musicianship of the late studio era. There is especially effective writing for solo and dual harps ("Ah, Love") throughout the orchestration.

Due to its integration into theme park scores Harline’s melody for what has become the Disney anthem, “When You Wish Upon A Star” (from Pinocchio), is heard by millions of people on a daily basis, though most would be hard pressed to name the composer.

Pinocchio (1940) and Lau bookend Leigh Harline's prolific and previously rather unsung Hollywood career. But thanks to CD Harline’s excellent post-Disney work is finally getting a hearing, including releases of such Fox scores as House of Bamboo, The Enemy Below on Intrada, Broken Lance from FSM.

7 Faces of Dr. Lao is given a premiere release and a definitive revival in this terrific FSM stereo restoration. 18-page booklet includes color photos from the film and notes by Jeff Bond, Lukas Kendall, and yours truly.

Nine bonus tracks are featured, including brilliant piano versions of “Pan’s Dance," the last one featuring a virtuoso performance from an uncredited voice apparently counting out the bars for the actors as they filmed the scene!

+++++++++++++

Many of Harline’s early (and uncredited) scores for Disney shorts may also be heard on the recent Disney Treasures Silly Symphonies DVD sets.

No credits other than Disney's are seen on these shorts. Harline's scores include Music Land, The Goddess of Spring, and The Old Mill, among many others.

MGM Musical: ATHENA

2009-11-26T11:34:00.000-08:00

MGM Musical Score:ATHENA: Songs: Hugh Martin, Ralph Blane, Underscoring: Georgie Stoll, Robert Van Epps, Andre Previn, Jacob Gade Arrangements/Orchestrations: Georgie Stoll, Robert Van Epps Al Sendrey, Conrad Salinger, Wally Heglin

Rhino Handmade RHM 27768, 33 tracks (stereo)
Producer: George Feltenstein, Performed: MGM Soloists, Studio Orchestra & Chorus, Conductor: Georgie Stoll

Verdict: Heavenly

by Ross Care

Athena, a 1954 musical about an eccentric family of California health enthusiasts, is primarily distinguished by its score of songs by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane. The song writing team first gained fame with their collegiate Broadway musical, Best Foot Forward. They were soon signed by MGM who produced the film version of Best Foot, and where they contributed several original songs to the eclectic score of one of the studio’s biggest hits of the mid-1940s, Meet Me In St. Louis. After St. Louis the team went their various ways but reunited to produce Athena, their most extensive score.

Hyped as “The musical with young ideas,” Athena showcases the talents of MGM’s young ‘50s stars, Jane Powell, crooner Vic Damone, Debbie Reynolds, and Edmund Purdom, the latter a new British leading man best (or worst known) for lip-synching the voice of Mario Lanza in MGM’s nonetheless touching CinemaScope remake of The Student Prince.

Athena itself is a modestly entertaining affair with a witty, satiric screenplay shot in classic ‘50s Technicolor with an appealing cast. The score itself was first released in a truncated version on Mercury, (Damone’s home label), the soon-out-of-print 10-inch LP becoming a sought after collector’s item. The 2001 Rhino Handmade release is the first complete release of this appealing score and with 33 tracks (including songs, outtakes, demos, and underscoring) the CD is one of Rhino’s most elaborate productions.

The score opens with a lyrical main title for chorus and orchestra, the ethereal melody of which is beautifully developed in ensuing underscore cues. The songs range from energetic up-tempo numbers, the operetta-like waltz, “Vocalize,” and the jazzy duet, “Imagine,” to one of the most under-rated ballads in the vast MGM catalog, the haunting “Love Can Change the Stars,” sung by Powell. Damone performs another moody ballad, “Venezia,” and the film’s opening, “The Girl Next Door,” a slight variation on the durable standard from Meet Me In St. Louis.

Damone also handles an outtake, “Faster Than Sound,” an elaborate up-tempo tune cut from the film but which ended up in Martin’s High Spirits, the Broadway musical based on Noel Coward’s Blythe Spirit.

Other bonus tracks include seven demos sung by Blane with Martin at the piano, a virtual mini-album that demonstrates the team’s considerable performing talents. (Visually the team can also be seen performing a “soundie” on the recent 2-disc DVD of Meet Me In St. Louis).

Though Athena was not shot in CinemaScope the score was nonetheless recorded in authentic stereo, the sound brilliantly showcasing the jazz soloists in numbers like “Imagine” and the lush MGM orchestral sound in the rest of the songs and underscore.

Athena is one of Rhino Handmade’s finest releases and provides a welcome and complete restoration of one of the most appealing and under-rated classic MGM musical scores.

Bravo!

Hugo FRIEDHOFER: BOY ON A DOLPHIN

2009-11-03T08:30:00.000-08:00

Intrada Special Collection, Volume 78, released 2008. TT: 54.18, 19 tracks (stereo) Producers: Nick Redman & Douglass Fake; Performed: 20th Century-Fox Studio Orchestra and Chorus, Conductor: Lionel Newman; Orchestrations: Edward Powell

Verdict: Mediterranean magic!

by Ross Care

BOY ON A DOLPHIN (1957) is one of those great 20th Century-Fox “dramalogues” of the 1950s, i.e., escapist narrative films emphasizing international locations lushly shot in Fox’s new wide screen/stereophonic sound process, CinemaScope. DOLPHIN showcases Greece and deals with the search for a priceless antiquity, the shipwrecked golden statue of the title that is accidentally discovered by Phaedra, a buxom Greek sponge diver (Sophia Loren), in the waters around the island of Hydra. A dedicated archeologist (Alan Ladd) and an illegal collector (Clifton Webb) both vie for the statue and who gets it provides the intrigue in director Jean Negulesco’s entertaining and strikingly photographed film.

Hugo Friedhofer’s score is a fusion of a title song, exotic folk influences, and the composer’s own brand of gorgeous orchestral impressionism. In his notes to the original (mono only) Decca LP Friedhofer comments: “Southern Europe, and particularly the Mediterranean area, is hardly an arctic wilderness. If I have been as successful with the delineation of the aural image, as (cinematographer Milton Krasner) has been with the visual, anyone so inclined can call it ‘’lush,’ if they want to. As a matter of fact I hope they will.”

And lush it is, in the best sense of the word. The film opens with a brief visual/musical tour of the Greek islands underscored solely with a droning folk-like cue that emphasizes a huge woodwind section. The ensuing credits feature an intimate title song (later also heard in a kicky “lounge” version: “The Café”). Though not mentioned in the liner notes, according to the film’s credits this is based on a Greek song, "Tinafto," with music by Takis Morakis and Greek words by J. Fermanoglou. (Roughly translated the title means “what is this they call love?”) Friedhofer is credited with adapting the music and Paul Francis Webster with providing new lyrics. (Strangely enough, the film version was also recorded by Tony Perkins on one of his RCA LPs during his brief 1950s stint as a pop vocalist).

Whatever its origins the melody is a haunting one and is freely developed in the underscoring. At the conclusion of the credits (track 1) Friedhofer’s brief vacillating “sea” motif is first heard as Loren rises from the watery depths to emerge (like an earthy Venus) with one of the most striking wet looks prior to Jacqueline Bisset in THE DEEP! For the mainland sequences there is a recurring theme in 7/8, a distinctive Greek/Bulgarian folk meter also used by Bartok (“Instructions”), and other ethnic-derived cues (“Street Music”). The “Acropolis” and Meteora monastery (“On The Road”) episodes feature two of the most epic cues, the latter with an orchestral build of almost Bond-ian brass.

But Friedhofer’s most charismatic cues are for the several underwater sequences, liquid symphonic impressionism embellished with rippling harps and woodwinds and a seductive siren-song vocalise. (“Phaedra Finds the Boy” with its beautiful coda-conclusion, the 6.20 “Nocturnal Sea”). As rendered by the superb 20th Century-Fox orchestra under Lionel Newman (in beautifully spacious stereo) and overlaid with the ethereally pure soprano of Marni Nixon these are simply some of the most magical cues ever created for a mainstream Hollywood film of any era.

Booklet includes lively, informative notes by Julie Kirgo and (as noted) a reprint of Friedhofer’s original LP comments.

Elmer BERNSTEIN: SUMMER and SMOKE

2009-11-03T00:55:00.000-08:00

Orchestrations: Leo Shuken, Jack Hayes – BMG reissue of RCA VICTOR LP, 12 tracks (stereo) Producer: Dick Peirce, Performed: Paramount Studio Orchestra , Conductor: Elmer Bernstein

Verdict: Sensitive, sensual Bernstein

by Ross Care

As a film composer the prolific Elmer Bernstein went through more “periods” than Picasso. He may be best known for his jazz and western scores, so it’s sometimes overlooked that during the 1950s and ‘60s Bernstein scored some of the most prestigious projects in Hollywood.

Among these were scores for a number of literary and Broadway adaptations, including the 1961 film of Tennessee Williams’ Broadway drama, SUMMER AND SMOKE. The American playwright’s works inspired a number of film scores during this era, notably Alex North’s landmark A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE in 1951.

While in a different musical mode Bernstein’s SUMMER AND SMOKE emphatically ranks with North’s STREETCAR as a definitive musical evocation of the unique Williams mythos. SUMMER is Williams’ only period play, set in a small delta town in (circa) WWI era Mississippi, and deals with the conflicted relationship between Alma, a repressed minister’s daughter, and Johnny, the bad boy next door. Thus Bernstein is dealing with both the period background and the sacred/profane conflict that is the core of script and screenplay.

The period (and emotional) setting precludes the use of jazz techniques, resulting in (aside from solo guitar interludes) a purely orchestral mode, primarily for strings, varied woodwinds, and harp. The period mode does not, however, limit Bernstein, and the modern sensibility of the play is suggested in the score’s sometimes Bartokian embellishments (“Summer Thoughts”), and the quirky treatment of traditional waltz rhythms. (“Two Lonely Women,” “Alma’s Dilemma”)

The spiritual/sensual dichotomy is immediately announced (as in Bernstein’s DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS) in the Main Title’s severe chordal introduction to the swirlingly romantic main theme, the latter also providing material for much of the score. On a broader scale the same idea is contrasted by the Alma/John orchestral cues vs. the subtly erotic guitar tracks for John’s dalliance with a seductive Latina (“Rosa,” “Rosa’s Dance”).

The 1999 BMG release is an exact reissue of the original RCA Victor LP. It features much, though not all of the music in the film, but is a beautifully recorded Living Stereo representation of the score as a whole. (One of the most attractive cues is a full version of the lilting, yet bittersweet “Glorious Hill Waltz” which is only heard as background source music in the film).

The subtle delicacy and detail of the orchestrations were made for CD, though my copy is plagued by an annoying hum on some of the quieter passages.

In the original LP notes Bernstein himself describes his score: “… we hear the music of loneliness, the sounds of our secret thoughts, whispers of our hidden desires and unspoken hopes, in a musical mystique suggesting at times foreverness and eternity.”

I personally consider this Bernstein’s masterpiece, and the film, directed by Peter Glenville who directed the London stage production, is certainly one of the composer's best.

Ross Care

Elmer Bernstein: SOME CAME RUNNING

2009-10-14T13:30:00.000-07:00

SOME CAME RUNNING: Composer: Elmer Bernstein

Film Score Monthly vol. 10, #1, TT: 78.48, (score: 52.40, bonus tracks: 26.01) 43 tracks; (stereo , some bonus tracks in mono)

Producer: Lukas Kendall Production Executive: George Feltenstein Performed: MGM Studio Orchestra Conductor: Elmer Bernstein, Orchestrations: Leo Shuken & Jack Hayes

Verdict: One of the Bernstein's Best

by Ross Care

Following on the epic heels of Raintree County is this definitive FSM score reconstruction from another MGM blockbuster based on another big American novel. Some Came Running was author James Jones’ follow-up to his best-selling first novel which was turned in one of the major films of the 1950s, From Here to Eternity.

MGM purchased the rights to Jones’ second novel before it was even published and, though I’ve never been able to wade through the massively intimidating tome, the general consensus seems to be that the film is a vast improvement. As opposed to Eternity (which features a minimal score by Columbia’s George Duning and a couple of Army songs) for Some Came Running MGM hired free-lancer Elmer Bernstein who created one of his seminal scores of the decade for director Vincente Minnelli’s 1958 film version.

The plot revolves around Dave Hirsh (Frank Sinatra), discharged G.I, aspiring writer, and “volatile non-conformist” (as the original Capitol LP liner notes describe him) who returns from W.W.II to shake-up everyone in his stogy mid-western hometown. Bernstein’s score is bookended by several tumultuous orchestral cues, the “Prelude” (Main Title), and three climactic tracks, “Pursuit, Parts 1 and 2, and “Denouement,” which make up the film’s finale, an almost psychedelic chase through a garishly-lit street carnival. The string-driven music is both ominous and dynamic and is accented by raucously trilling woodwinds, virtuoso brass passages, and Bernstein’s characteristic use of percussive Bartok-ian piano.

“Denouement” brings all the elements (including a nod to Stravinsky) to the boiling point in a furious toccata that climaxes one of the best fusions of music and visuals in ‘50s CinemaScope cinema. These three remarkable cues are edited into one track, “Pursuit,” on Bernstein’s Capitol rerecording of the score. There are cuts in the LP version but hearing all three fused as one relentless sequence is also amazing.

Original Capitol LP jacket (British pressing?)

In a contrasting nature are themes for the two polar-opposite women in Hirsh’s story. Gwen (Martha Hyer), the cool blond schoolteacher who at first expresses interest only in Hirsh’s literary talents, is represented by a lyrically intense melody suggestive of banked fires (“Gwen’s Theme/Metamorphosis”). The childlike Ginny (Shirley MacLaine), the dim but good-hearted floozy Dave unwittingly brings with him from Chicago, is portrayed by a naively wistful jazz theme (“Fifty Dollars”).

The Gwen/Ginny themes are a musical objective/correlative of the virgin/whore theme beloved of macho writers such as Jones (and so many others), but Bernstein (and Minnelli/MacLaine) do a spin on this cliché by transforming the character of the self-sacrificing Ginny and her jazz into some of the most poignant moments and music in the film (“Ginny,” “The Noblest Act’). It’s the “whore with heart of gold,” of course, but Bernstein’s music, including poignant orchestral transformations of Ginny’s jazz theme, makes it real and touching. Her theme also returns in an ominous guise in “Denouement,” and in an elegiac statement in the penultimate “Shock;” the two feminine themes fuse in the final “Catharsis.”

Some Came Running deals frankly with issues of sex, class, and morality in small town America, and is also a brilliant example of the “new Hollywood” score of the declining studio era. Along with the “big” tracks Bernstein’s innovative orchestral underscoring sometimes invokes an intimate “less is more” sound, as in the passage of intense chamber strings midway through “Dave’s Double Life” and the solo violin in one of Gwen’s variations. Dave’s own music is a wired theme no doubt inspired by Alex North’s jazz combo sound for Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Special note: the varied jazz sequences, many submerged as background source music in the film, are here revealed to be among Bernstein’s coolest!

With this wealth of melodic material one wonders why MGM felt the need to insert the Van Heusen/Cahn song, “To Love and Be Loved,” into the film, other than the fact that the writers were often associated with Sinatra. It’s used a bit in the underscore but does not really intrude. Fellow Rat Packer/Capitol-crooner-turned-dramatic star, Dean Martin, also co-stars.

Bonus cues include a deleted prologue with a lost orchestral cue, “Crocked,” and an assortment of source vocals, including one in which a blotto Ginny/MacLaine drunkenly sings along.

Eight cues of manic Bernstein carnival music, one based on the ironically patriotic “View from Parkman” cue, are also included, providing (if more is needed) additional proof of the composer’s incredible range and versatility in this, one of his most vivid and archetypal scores.

Oliver Wallace, Sammy Fain: PETER PAN Soundtrack

2009-10-12T17:22:00.000-07:00

Disney's PETER PAN

Also first seen at the Senate Theater, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1953.

Online Walt Disney Records Soundtrack Review LINK:

http://www.runmovies.eu/index.php?option=com_muscol&view=album&id=344&Itemid=96

CINEMAS of the World

2009-10-07T18:43:00.000-07:00

The Senate Theater, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA.

Now demolished.

During the studio era the Senate showed the releases of Universal International, RKO, and other smaller studios. It was the smallest of the downtown theaters, located on Market Square in Pennsylvania's capitol city.

This is a photo of the mysterious ELECTRIC EYE which automatically opened the beautiful mirrored doors through which one passed into a small vestibule with posters of coming attractions and thence to a modest lobby at the rear of the theater.

Appropriately, due to the futuristic ELECTRIC EYE, this was where I first saw

THIS ISLAND EARTH.

Stein, Mancini, Salter et al:

2009-09-26T01:00:00.000-07:00

This Island Earth

Music from THIS ISLAND EARTH (and Other Alien Invasion Films): Composers: Herman Stein, Ron Goodwin, Henry Mancini, et al

Monstrous Movie Music - MMM-1954, TT: 60.12, 47 tracks (stereo)

Verdict: Out of This World!

Producer: David Schecter, Kathleen Mayne, - Performed: Radio Symphony Orchestra of Slovakia, - Score Reconstructions: Kathleen Mayne – Conductors: Masatoshi Mitsumoto, Kathleen Mayne

by Ross Care

This 2006 Monstrous Movie Music release is a continuation of David Schecter’s on-going exploration of the outer limits of classic (and not so classic) genre scoring. The key score in this excellent compilation of world premiere recordings is Universal International’s THIS ISLAND EARTH (1955), one of the studio’s more elaborate sci fi features.

As Schecter’s notes explain, UI was a low-budget film factory in the 1950s, its scores produced in an assembly line, sometimes cut-and-paste (cue recycling) process in which the collective composers often remained anonymous. Ironically, UI still managed to evolve one of the most unique sounds of the studio era. The all-original THIS ISLAND EARTH is primarily the work of Herman Stein, assisted by UI horror veteran, Hans Salter, and new kid on the block, Henry Mancini who commenced his celebrated career scoring programmers at UI.

The score itself is simply one of the very best of the period. It’s heard here complete with 27 cues that aurally outline the film’s screenplay about earth scientists abducted by aliens to help fight an interplanetary war. The music is characterized by a duality representing earth and its humans by a noble, warmly symmetrical tonal sound, and the aliens and their influences by brief but weirdly evocative, harmonically askew cues. Though little time is actually spent in outer space and much of the film looks like a Technicolor Douglas Sirk melodrama, Stein’s other worldly score definitely keeps the alien ambiance firmly in the foreground of any viewer’s consciousness.

An early electronic keyboard, the Novachord, plus harp, celeste, marimba, bass marimba, and vibraphone, add to the alien mood, but the skillful use of exotic motifs, mild dissonance (including tone clusters), and economic but evocative orchestral effects are the key elements in the score’s impact. Especially effective: “Robot Plane,” with its almost new age harp arpeggios under string harmonics and tremolo, and “Exeter’s Mansion,” a kind of extraterrestrial pastoral that drifts though a gorgeous series of shifting modulations and anticipates Herrmann’s ethereal FAHRENHEIT 451 sound. Printed musical examples are provided, including Stein’s chromatic “Metaluna” motif that is heard throughout the score, often on the Theremin-like Novachord.

The compilation includes eight cues from Ron Goodwin’s THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS, and two brief main titles, Walter Greene’s manic genre-lite toccata for Roger Corman’s WAR OF THE SATELLITES and Daniele Amfitheatrof’s recycled 1942 cue for EARTH VS. THE FLYING

SAUCERS, an early Ray Harryhausen production that is tracked with other previously existing cues ranging from George Duning to Miklos Rozsa.

Attractive packaging and artwork (including an especially colorful CD label), embellish a 39-page booklet chock full of everything from author John Wyndham’s full name to photos of the composers (and Schecter’s adorable dog). I’ve always been intrigued by the lesser-known scores and composers of the UI music department and by other low budget, mostly tracked/library cue scores such as the early Harryhausens and other genre efforts from Columbia, and Schecter’s knowledge of the territory is enlightening, meticulous and encyclopedic.

Indeed together with the first two Monstrous Music releases Schecter’s notes provide an exhaustive, but often droll and never academic chronicle of this generally uncharted but vital macro-phase of classic era scoring. And his documentation is well backed up by the excellent performances of the scores themselves, all of which should be of interest to fans of both genre scoring and Golden Age orchestral film music in general.

CINEMAS of the World

2009-09-26T00:35:00.000-07:00

Somewhere in Yorkshire, England.

One of a series.

Bronislau Kaper: LILI

2009-09-17T21:54:00.000-07:00

Orchestrations: Robert Franklyn, Skip Martin – Film Score Monthly vol. 8, no. 15, TT: 72.21, 22 tracks (mono)

Producer: Lukas Kendall Performed: MGM Orchestra and Stars, Conductor: Hans Sommer

by Ross Care

Climaxing with its monumental 3-disc set of Mutiny on the Bounty, Film Score Monthly has single handedly brought about a revival of the film music of the talented, versatile (and until now relatively lesser known) Bronislau Kaper, a composer discovered in the 1930s by the beloved (by some) father of MGM himself, Louis B. Mayer. On a European tour Mayer heard Kaper’s melodic songs and signed the composer on the spot. While amply fulfilling LB’s faith in his song (and hit) writing potential during the ‘30s and ‘40s, Kaper also developed into a composer of major symphonic scores as well.

One film, Green Dolphin Street (1947), covered both bases: its epic symphonic score also produced one of the great melodies and popular jazz standards of the era, “Green Dolphin Street,” a song covered by a variety of artists including Miles Davis and Nancy Wilson over the ‘40s and ‘50s.

PHOTO: Leslie Caron appears at the American CINEMATHEQUE screening at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica.

Kaper returned to his songwriter roots in 1953 when he chose to score an intimate “quasi musical” entitled Lili over the epic Plymouth Adventure. Lukas Kendall’s liner description of Lili is an apt one, for the film includes only one song, “Hi –Lili, Hi-Lo.” It’s an unforgettable one, however, and beautifully serves as the haunting theme for the film’s bittersweet romance, the story of an orphaned French waif’s discovery of Life and Love in a touring provincial carnival. Kaper’s theme song, a simple, haunting Continental waltz with lyrics by screenwriter, Helen Deutsch, became one of the most popular movie themes of the decade.

The film’s carnival setting provides a pleasant blur between source music and traditional underscoring. Kaper provides a colorful kaleidoscope of melodies, ranging from energetic and witty background music for the various acts to bittersweet waltzes. (The cue “Magic Act” includes both). Many of the actual film’s 12 tracks heard here are in this intimate mode. Some are scored for solo accordion while even the ensemble pieces are intimate enough to forego the impression that the carnival is touring with the Paris Philharmonic.

Orchestral sound does come to the fore in the two dream ballets, the sophisticated “Adoration,” a glittering set piece with a new theme that was recycled in later MGM films, and a jazzy, big-band interlude (for the carnival sexpot, Zsa-Zsa Gabor), and “Lili and the Puppets,” based on the film’s main theme. A more traditional underscoring mode is heard in the very dramatic “Ladderpole,” when the despairing Lili contemplates suicide near the opening of the film, and in “Curtain Down” and “Lili Leaves Paul” near the end when complications arise in the story’s central relationship. The latter cue leads into the second ballet that alternates both modes, but climaxes in a deliriously romantic orchestral epiphany.

The Lili’s lyrical Continental mode also reminds me of Nino Rota’s use of similar melodies in Fellini films such as La Strada. Indeed the “Magic Waltz” seems suggestive of Rota’s later “E Poi” in La Dolce Vita. Bonus material (tracks 13/22) includes alternate takes, piano rehearsal cues, and an interrupted stereo cut of Caron and Mel Ferrer’s version of the title tune (which reached #30 on the Hit Parade in 1953).

The attractive booklet with color scenes from the beautifully designed film includes a photo of the original extended-play 45rpm soundtrack, which included the only four original tracks issued at the film’s original release.

- Ross Care

Alex North: THE LONG, HOT SUMMER; SANCTUARY

2009-09-11T07:39:00.000-07:00

THE LONG, HOT SUMMER; SANCTUARY: Composer: Alex NORTH

Orchestrations: Note: Not Credited, Edward Powell ? – Varese Sarabande Limited Collectors’ Editions, 29 tracks (mostly stereo)

Producer: Nick Redman, Robert Townson, Performed: 20th Century-Fox Studio Orchestra , Jimmy Rodgers, Julie London, vocals Conductors: Lionel Newman, Alex North

by Ross Care

THE LONG, HOT SUMMER and SANCTUARY are two parts of a trilogy of 1950s 20th Century-Fox films (very loosely) based on the novels of William Faulkner. All three are scored by Alex North who, thanks to his groundbreaking score for the film of Tennessee Williams’ A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE in 1951, had developed a reputation for scoring properties that were both literary and erotic. Many also had southern backgrounds well suited to North’s innovative fusion of 20th century orchestral and classic jazz techniques. Collectively North’s southern scores (including these two and STREETCAR) also constitute some of the sexiest music ever composed in Hollywood, and strongly influenced other new ‘50s composers such as Elmer Bernstein and Kenyon Hopkins.

Like THE SOUND AND THE FURY (which completes the trio) the film of LONG, HOT SUMMER is actually more Tennessee Williams than Faulkner. (North’s score for SOUND is the only element that really evokes the Faulkner ambiance in that film). The sharply-scripted, highly entertaining SUMMER seems specifically influenced by Williams’ CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, and the Orson Welles character, gruff town boss Will Varner, is an overtly Big Daddy-like figure.

North’s music is essentially lyrical, and a title song provides the thematic basis for much of the score. As sung by Jimmy (“Kisses Sweeter Than Wine”) Rodgers it’s both lyrical and intense, and its melody is associated with the developing relationship between Ben Quick, a drifter bucking a reputation as a notorious barn burner (Paul Newman), Varner’s repressed but self-aware daughter, Clara (Joanne Woodward).

The long, expansive melody reappears in several beautifully rearranged cues, (“Easy Living” “Respect”) peaking in” Ashamed,” a transcendent 5.54 cue for massed strings with dreamy vibes and bells.

Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman as Clara and Ben

Jazz elements represent the film’s other earthier couple, Tony Franciosa and Lee Remick, who play “Jody” and “Eula,” Varner’s put-upon son and nubile daughter-in-law. Eula’s theme is actually a fusion of jazz and ‘50s rock that was turned into a song, “Hey, Eula,” which is not heard in the film or on the disc. North’s cues for the troubled Jody are among the more serious in the score, suggesting the heavier, more intense mode of STREETCAR.

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SANCTUARY

Remick stars as Temple Drake in Tony Richardson’s film of one of Faulkner’s more sordid novels. Befitting the story the sound is darker than the composer’s other two Faulkner scores. Nobody could musically move from the delicate, almost neurotically tender to the raunchy, sometimes ominous low-down like North. SANCTUARY, another tale of a southern lady’s fall from grace, provides ample opportunities for this defining North trait, notably in the extended “I Remember Sanctuary” and “Little Girl” cues.

The score is also built around a bluesy title song that is not heard in the film, though this disc features a mono version of it coolly sung by Julie London. (Rodger’s SUMMER title track is also mono only). LONG, HOT SUMMER was released as a Roulette LP, but the score for SANCTUARY was never recorded, making this a rare and impressive North premiere. North of course had a remarkably wide range as a composer, but I consider these early southern scores, from STREETCAR to the now finally available SANCTUARY, to be among his most essential work.

I frequently hear that North is “difficult” for some listeners, but for an introduction to his unique work I suggest this disc, especially the lyrical LONG, HOT SUMMER, which is as easy to take as a southern breeze on a sultry day.

George Duning: BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE

2009-09-10T21:14:00.000-07:00

BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE & 1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS: Composer: George Duning

Film Score Monthly vol. 9, #1, 27 tracks (stereo)

Producer: Lukas Kendall Performed: Columbia Orchestra, Jud Conlon Singers, Conductor: George Duning, Morris Stoloff, Orchestrations: Arthur Morton

by Ross Care

In 1958 Columbia filmed a unique Broadway comedy, Bell, Book and Candle, a romantic fantasy that explored the comedic (and amorous) possibilities of witchcraft in modern Manhattan, and what happens when a beautiful young practitioner, Gillian Holroyd (Kim Novak) falls in love with a normal mortal (James Stewart).

The film also moved the setting to Greenwich Village and loosely linked witches (of both sexes) with beatniks, and so Jack Lemmon plays Gillian’s brother, Nicky, as a bongo-playing warlock. Thus much of the action revolves around a Village coffee house/jazz club, the Zodiac, and offers composer George Duning the chance to concoct one of his best jazz-inflected comedy/romance scores with atmospheric mystical/fantasy touches.

Many Hollywood studios had formed record subsidiaries in the ‘50s and Columbia Pictures released a soundtrack LP of the score on their ColPix label. The LP became a kind of cult hit on its own and was later reissued in stereo by Citadal. This recent FSM release is remixed from the original three-track album masters, and includes another Duning/Colpix release, the soundtrack from the animated feature, 1001 Arabian Nights.

Both scores retain their jazzy charm but Bell, Book and Candle is an especially welcome re-issue. Duning’s score is based on a memorable jazzy/magical theme (in AABA song form) that is first heard in the Main Title and developed throughout. (The visual credits are cleverly done with the pieces of primitive art in Gillian’s gallery representing each individual credit, including a tom tom for Duning’s as composer). The music continues unbroken into the opening scene, and conveys that Gillian is no ordinary lovesick mortal by its statement of the main theme in low, mysterious flute.

There are also several cues of Zodiac jazz combo source music by Duning, but these also include a track of Harold Arlen’s “Stormy Weather” which back-ups a manically comic sequence in the coffee house. Duning’s main theme comes to the fore in “The Spell” in which Gilliam hums the seductive melody against a magical orchestral backdrop.

1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS (1959) is one of the few features produced by the innovative United Productions of America (UPA), the only animation studio to give Disney any competition during the 1950s. It stars one of UPA’s major characters of the period, the lovably bumbling Mr. Magoo, here playing the bumbling father of Aladdin in a plot that does a spin on that familiar tale.

Duning’s score includes both songs and an alternatingly lyrical and toon-ish background score. The vocals are by Jim Backus (as the voice of Magoo) and a girl group, the Clark Sisters, and are supervised by Jud Conlon who had also provided the vocal direction and arrangements for Disney’s Peter Pan.

The songs are OK but Duning’s background score (which of course integrates the song melodies) is a witty and dynamic aural knockout, especially where the percussion and mallet work is concerned. Thus both Michael McDonald and Doug Schwartz should be respectively cited for the brilliant score remix and digital mastering (for both scores). All in all, a double feature sonic spectacular, with a welcome return of Bell, Book and Candle, one of the versatile Duning’s best and most charismatic scores.

My only criticism might be that liner notes do not include enough photos of the very bewitching Ms. Novak!

Royal Wedding

2009-09-10T18:05:00.000-07:00

Royal Wedding
Composer/Songs: Burton Lane (music), Alan Jay Lerner (lyrics) Arrangements/Orchestrations: Conrad Salinger, Johnny Green, Al Sendry, Robert Franklyn, Skip Martin,

Rhino Handmade RHM2 7777, TT: 55.11, 22 tracks (mono and stereo)
Producer: George Feltenstein, Performed: MGM Soloists, Studio Orchestra & Chorus, Musical Director, Johnny Green

by Ross Care

As the liner notes comment, Royal Wedding is best-known as the film in which Fred Astaire dances on the ceiling, but it’s also the only MGM musical featuring Winston Churchill’s daughter, Sarah, as the second female lead. Aside from all that the film is one of those modestly excellent and entertaining productions that MGM did so well during the twilight of the Hollywood studio system when studios were still churning out an astonishing number of films per year of all genres.

A musical set against the 1947 marriage of Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten, Royal Wedding (1950) is distinguished by its score by Burton Lane. Lane was the composer for a number of songs for earlier MGM musicals, but had also just had a tremendous hit on Broadway with Finian’s Rainbow, written with Wizard of Oz lyricist, E. Y. “Yip” Harburg. Lyricist/screenwriter Alan Jay Lerner had just written Brigadoon with composer Fritz Loewe, with whom the writer would eventually produce Broadway’s My Fair Lady and MGM’s Gigi. Lerner would later reteam with Lane for the less-successful but still popular, On A Clear Day You Can See Forever.

The score for Royal Wedding is more comparable to the latter than to any of the aforementioned mega hits, but (like the film itself) is charming and well-crafted with several fine numbers. “You’re All the World To Me” was obviously designed for the distinctive vocal talents of Fred Astaire, and is the score’s best tune, also heard instrumentally throughout. The haunting ballad, “Too Late Now,” is pristinely performed by Jane Powell, the youngest member of MGM’s stable of classy legit sopranos, in a dreamy Conrad Salinger arrangement, and even co-star Peter Lawford got a number, though it ended up cut and is heard here as a first-time stereo outtake.

Astaire and Powell team up for a raucous comedy duet, “How Could You Believe Me,” and for a torrid production number, “I Left My Hat in Haiti.” “Haiti” is vocal soloed by Astaire, but danced with Powell to Salinger’s throbbing orchestration which showcases the MGM symphony’s considerable battery of percussion. Too bad they did not have stereo components for this elaborate track, or for “Sunday Jumps,” an instrumental orchestrated by Skip Martin in MGM’s patented symphonic big band mode.

Of two operetta-ish choral ensembles “What A Lovely Day for A Wedding” credits Les Baxter as vocal soloist! The CD is rounded out by some of MGM’s always superb underscoring cues, one of which, “We Can’t Get Married,” opens with a passage which curiously suggestive of Nino Rota before segueing into an instrumental reprise of the “All the World” melody.

Producer George Feltenstein’s liner notes document the complicated production history of Royal Wedding which was originally conceived as a vehicle for MGM’s troubled and troublesome Judy Garland, and the CD concludes with a vintage radio interview with Astaire and Powell.

John Green, soon to take over as Musical Director for the legendary MGM music department, conducts, and in a few years would compose his only major film score for one of the last of the MGM historical blockbusters, Raintree County.
Ross Care

Kenyon Hopkins: BABY DOLL

2009-09-10T17:49:00.000-07:00

BABY DOLL: Music: Kenyon Hopkins

DRG/Sony 19053, TT: ??.??, 12 tracks (mono) **** Quintessential
Producer: Dan O’Leary , Performed: Warner Bros. Studio Orchestra, Conductor: Ray Heindorf
by Ross Care

Baby Doll, an original screenplay based on two one-act plays by Tennessee Williams, gained considerable notoriety in 1956 when New York’s Cardinal Spellman vehemently condemned it from the pulpit. Though the good cardinal later admitted he had never actually seen the film the damage was done and Baby Doll received a limited release which pretty much launched it into obscurity for decades. Today the relatively innocuous but still compelling film has been seen on TNT but it remains a modestly steamy property due to its central premise, a nubile child bride (Carroll Baker) withholding her favors from her klutzy older husband while being seduced by a lusty Sicilian on a poor white farm in the rural south.

Like A Streetcar Named Desire, Baby Doll inspired an alternatingly sexy/dramatic score by a composer new to Hollywood, Kenyon Hopkins. Hopkins was a product of the “new” Hollywood of the declining studio era, and like Alex North (who scored Streetcar) and Elmer Bernstein he fluidly fused elements of jazz and contemporary pop with orchestral scoring. In the summer, 1957 issue of the pioneering film music journal, Film and TV Music, Hopkins noted: “I’m inclined to select thematic material which I think will fit characters and situations, and develop it according to their needs. In Baby Doll you can find the main title in the end title; you can hear that theme in one type of development or another almost anywhere in the score. The Confession theme is derived from the first element of the Baby Doll theme, it in turn becomes Archie’s Break Up theme, and so on.”

All very good, but for some inexplicable reason the recent DRG reissue of the original Columbia soundtrack completely drops the main title from the CD! Imagine my shock when, as a fan of the original LP, the CD commenced with “Baby Doll and the Empty House,” actually the brief second part of the LP’s original opening title track. Hopkins’s exciting (and structurally essential) main title is a clever fusion of rock-pop saxes and brass under a lyrical string countermelody, aptly suggesting the innocent/erotic nature of the title character, and introducing a duality that will continue through the rest of the score.

Thus its absence here turns the score into a kind of variations without a theme. While this title theme survives in a few of the cues (the end of “The Fire and Baby Doll,” the beginning of “Baby Doll’s Fright,”) it is never heard in its original sax/brass/string instrumentation, and its omission seriously distracts from this reissue which is hyped as the score’s “first time on CD!” and which is otherwise authentic down to the Columbia LP number on the reproduction of the original cover art.

What remains, however, is a fresh, exciting, often sensual and humorous score for a unique black comedy/drama. Hopkins makes inventive use of the pop elements in the orchestration, many derived from jazz, blues, and period rock and roll. A lurid solo sax, and a subtle use of electric guitar and jazz drumming suggest the script’s more earthly elements, while velvety massed strings and a solo celesta evoke the child-like, virginal title character. (Hopkins used a similar schitzophrenic approach to his later Lilith score, another film about a psychologically conflicted heroine). Cues such as “The Cradle” and “The Confession” are warmly sensual, especially the latter’s languorous harmonica solo, while “Lemonade” is a clever jazz variation on the main title theme.

The CD is a fine remastering of the excellent Columbia 360 mono sound with the solo elements, notably a crisp mandolin and the on-going sax, clarinet, and harmonica, beautifully reproduced. The Warner Bros. strings are warmly luminous throughout under Ray Heindorf’s always-superb musical direction. Also included is a source music vocal, “Shame, Shame, Shame (On You, Miss Roxy”), an authentic and certainly energetic rock’n’roll track by Smiley Lewis.

This is an excellent score that I cite in my Library of Congress article on the key scores of the 1950s (Performing Arts: Motion Pictures, LOC, Washington, DC, 1998) and should appeal to anyone interested in the new Hollywood, North/Bernstein et al sound of that era. I just wish DRG would reissue the reissue and put back that great main title!

LOVELY TO LOOK AT

2009-08-23T10:17:00.000-07:00

LOVELY TO LOOK AT – Detail of the original MGM Records 10-inch (mono) LP jacket. Most of the MGM musicals were first released as 10-inch LPs.

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MGM Musical Scores:

LOVELY TO LOOK AT: Songs: Jerome Kern (music); Otto Harbach, Dorothy Fields, (lyrics)
TEXAS CARNIVAL: Songs: Harry Warren (music), Dorothy Fields (lyrics)
Arrangements/Orchestrations: LOVELY: Leo Arnaud, Wally Heglin, Conrad Salinger TEXAS: David Rose

Rhino Handmade RHM 2 7842, TT: 68.08, 23 tracks (mono and stereo) **** Quintessential
Producer: George Feltenstein, Performed: MGM Soloists, Studio Orchestra & Chorus, Musical Directors/Conductors: Carmen Dragon, David Rose

by Ross Care

Lovely To Look At is the second screen version of Jerome Kern’s second most well-known work (after Show Boat), Roberta. The 1934 musical comedy was first filmed by RKO in 1935, and remade by MGM in 1952 when Metro dusted off what was considered a somewhat creaky screenplay even in 1935 and turned it into a still less than compelling but visually dazzling tale of Broadway show biz confronting Parisian haute couture. However, with Otto Harbach’s original lyrics also revamped by Dorothy Fields, the score remains a class act with some of Kern’s loveliest and most poignant melodies, including the classic “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” “Yesterdays,” (both beautifully sung by lyric soprano Kathryn Grayson), “I Won’t Dance,” and the title song (which was added to the RKO film version and earned an Academy Award nomination for “Best Song” in 1935).

While hardly as dramatic as Kern’s Show Boat (which MGM had also remade with Lovely stars Grayson and Howard Keel in 1951) Lovely To Look At is one of the most gorgeous Technicolor films ever photographed, and the arrangements (mostly by Leo Arnaud) and orchestral sound (supervised by Carmen Dragon who would soon compose the score for the ‘50s sci-fi classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers) vividly reflect the film’s dazzling cinematography. The fusion of music and visuals peaks in the spectacularly populuxe fashion show finale, directed (uncredited) by Vincente Minnelli, and completely underscored with Arnaud’s lush and sometimes modernistic transcriptions of the Kern melodies. Particularly amazing is the arranger’s unique jazz take on “Yesterdays” (“Fashion Show Part II”).

I once saw an original IB Technicolor print of then-rarely seen Lovely To Look At at a Kern film retrospective in New York, and had truly never seen such color rendered on film before. The smolderingly saturated reds in the “Yesterdays” sequence, a torrid backdrop to an erotic Marge and Gower Champion dance duo, are perfectly matched by Arnaud’s primitive/moderne arrangement which is driven by aggressive piano vamps and throbbing tuned tom toms. Like many of the other numbers the purely orchestral and extended (three part) fashion show sequence is heard in vivid stereo. Listen also to the sleek arrangement of Ann Miller’s “I’ll Be Hard To Handle” which, with its swirling woodwinds runs and witty rim shots, seems to anticipate the sound of the innovative ‘50s big band, the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra.

Lovely To Look At is accompanied by five bonus tracks from Texas Carnival, an even more obscure MGM/Esther Williams musical from 1951. The score again features Fields lyrics, and music by the prolific Harry Warren, who for over three decades created some of the greatest and most popular songs ever composed in Hollywood.

Unfortunately the Texas Carnival numbers are not among them, but do include another always welcome Ann Miller number, “It’s Dynamite,” in which the dynamic Ms. Miller is backed-up by a jazz combo with a terrific vibes soloist. Rhino Handmade again provides a superb restoration for lovers of the lesser known but still classic film musical, and for devotees of dazzling peak studio-era orchestral sound beautifully revived in stereo.

Ross Care

2009-07-04T21:51:00.000-07:00

For July 4th, 2009

The footrace is about to begin in the wonderful 4th of July sequence in the MGM film version of Ross Lockridge, Jr.’s epic and complex American novel, RAINTREE COUNTY. Montgomery Clift as the barefoot John Shawnessy and Lee Marvin as Orville “Flash” Perkins. Rod Taylor is in the background.

Cover: Performing Arts – Motion Pictures, Iris Newsom, Editor, The Library of Congress, Washington, DC, 1998.

Ross Care - Shakespeare Songs

2009-05-10T17:54:00.001-07:00

Conductor Elizabeth Helms takes a bow after the Ventura Gold choral concert.

In March 2009, Ross Care had a new work premiered by the 80-voice Gold Coast Concert Chorus. The two performances, conducted by artistic director Elizabeth Helms, were part of Ventura County Gold, a concert of classical music by regional southern California composers.

RICH and STRANGE -
Songs from the Fantasy Plays of William Shakespeare

I. Fairy Song from A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
II. A Very Scurvy Tune from THE TEMPEST
III. Medley: Full Fathom Five (Ariel's Song) and Caliban’s Song
From THE TEMPEST
IV. Spring Song from THE WINTER'S TALE

From the program notes:

The songs in Rich and Strange were first composed as part of complete incidental scores for various theatrical productions.

For this choral cycle I expanded these tunes into developed movements for large choir, adding piano accompaniments and repeating and developing section in ways that could not be utilized in the concentrated dramatic context of the plays themselves.

Writing in the Ventura STAR, Margaret Nesbitt, an actress and journalist, commented:

“The concert opened with Rich and Strange, songs from the fantasy plays of Shakespeare. I had studied Shakespeare so all the plays were familiar. The music was delightful and brought to life the scenes from the various plays.

“As I listened it was impossible not to see Queen Tatiana being lulled to sleep by her fairy troop and the drunken Caliban carousing. The bawdy song of Autolysis from The Winter's Tale closed the piece.

“It was a wonderful opening to a varied program.”

++

About the Gold Coast Chorus:
The Gold Coast Concert Chorus, Elizabeth Helms, Artistic Director,
is a regional choir composed of singers of all levels and experience. GCCC traveled to New York in July 1991, to perform at Carnegie Hall (under the direction of John Rutter) and at Lincoln Center. Other tours were in 1995 to Great Britain and in 1998 to France, Italy and Croatia. The Chorus had successful tours of Central and Eastern Europe from June 28 - July 14, 2001, and the British Isles from June 25 - July 11, 2004.

Spring

2009-05-03T22:13:00.000-07:00

Serenity

2009-01-28T22:21:00.000-08:00

After Sunset,
near Ventura County Line, between Ventura and Santa Barbara, California, USA. January, 2009.
Photo by/COPYRIGHT Ross Care, 2009.

Felix in LA

2009-01-21T22:02:00.000-08:00

Felix Looms Over LA -
Near USC
Photo/COPYRIGHT by Ross Care

RIP Tom O'Horgan

2009-01-20T05:48:00.000-08:00

RIP director Tom O'Horgan

O'Horgan is best known as the director of HAIR and the original JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR.

During my New York period my friend Michael Sakara took me to see HAIR right after it moved from Off Broadway to Broadway. At the time the show was so new and unpublicized I did not even know there was a group nude scene at the end of the first act, a pleasant surprise.

Later, among other personal hits and flops of the era, O'Horgan directed this tripped-out extravaganza based on the songs of the Beatles. Though not a tremendous commercial success it was one of the most exciting things I've ever seen in live theater.

Cult figure Divine was just coming into popularity at the time and one of the things I most remember about this production is the swarms of Divine clones running wild throughout the production (and the auditorium!)

What Divine had to do with the Beatles no one ever really figured out, but it was a fabulous effect.

There was even a later film version, at least with the same title.

It's one of the worst film musicals ever made and O'Horgan's name flashes by in the credits, mercifully brief. (Happily, O'Horgan did NOT direct the film version).

Unfortunately I never got to see the infamous DUDE.

BTW Ted Neeley is still trucking with JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, most recently in a "farewell" Los Angeles revival.

For the New Year

2009-01-01T20:55:00.000-08:00

January 1, 2009: Into the FUTURE
Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles, California, ఉస

2008-12-31T06:14:00.000-08:00

A Christmas Memory on the last day of 2008.
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Circa late 1940s/early '50s.
Photo by Ross J. Care, from an original Kodachrome color slide.

FormerMSTGuys

2008-11-17T08:53:00.000-08:00

The MST guys are now called RiffTrax Live and if I had read the schedule program more carefully I would have seen they were referred to as the “former writers and cast-members of Mystery Science Theatre 3000” and perhaps avoided the chilling trauma that gripped me when I realized there was only going to be mere humans, however droll and astute, commenting on the film.

PLAN 9 FROM SANTA MONICA

2008-11-03T08:59:00.001-08:00

The Senate Theater on Market Square in Harrisburg where I first saw LILI.

It was unusual for an MGM film to be screened at the Senate which was usually the home of Universal International and RKO. This proves what Caron said at the screening, that MGM really did not know what to do with LILI, and that the film was almost not released at all.

Photo from a color slide by Ross Care. The beautiful Senate has of course since been razed.

Poster for Leslie Caron's appearance at the American Cinematheque in Santa Monica. In the LILI still she is seen with Carrot Top.

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A few weeks after the screening of MGM’s LILI, the whimsical poignant charm of which (in our currently mega crass age) now seems beamed in from another more benign age and planet, another spacey entry filled the Sunday evening slot at the American Cinematheque’s Aero Theatre in Santa Monica.

Ed Wood Jr.’s PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE was the final offering of a monumental Halloween series that included a Nov. 1 dusk-to-dawn Horrorthon of six films ranging from THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, PART TWO (1986) to LET’S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH (1971) and DEATHDREAM (aka DEAD OF NIGHT) (1974).

All that was missing for the Horrorthon was a drive-in setting but the mode at least continued with PLAN 9 the next evening. Though screened in the cozily retro setting of the neighborhood Aero on Montana Ave. there was an added attraction in the form of the three Mystery Science Theatre guys, Michael J. Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy who provided the kind of running commentary familiar to and beloved of fans of TV’s gone but never forgotten MST3000 show.

The guys were in top form though the occasional longueurs of Wood’s magnum opus at times even put a strain on their usually razor sharp repartee. However, a grand time was had by all and the audience was still chortling after Criswell concluded his epilogue and the “The End – Made in Hollywood, USA” (just like MGM) finally flashed on the screen and everyone left in high spirits.

Actually (and unlike MGM in Culver City), PLAN 9 apparently was made in Hollywood USA (and far flung environs including the then-city limit of San Fernando). Some of the most interesting footage was too brief shots of period LA for the “Saucers Over Hollywood” sequence, including a very brief shot of the Macambo on Sunset with Eartha Kitt’s name of the marquee! (A sign for Frances Faye also made a brief appearance, and knowing Wood’s taste these could not have been arbitrary choices).

At the conclusion of LILI audiences could actually admire the four beloved puppets from the film that were on display in the lobby. Much attention was paid and comments such as “Carrot Top vanished for fifty years.” And “Was Carrot Top married?” were heard.

Before the screening the lady who sat down beside me and, perusing the Aero program with the photo of Caron and Carrot Top (shown above) asked me “Is that Howdy Doody?”

Well, no, it wasn’t I said, and told her who it was, an explanation which still seemed to leave her somewhat disappointed and a bit mystified.

Re PLAN 9: I cannot conclude my account without expressing the crushing disappointment I felt when I first realized that Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot were not going to be seen anywhere at the screening.

However, the MST guys are now called RiffTrax Live and if I had read the schedule program more carefully I would have seen they were referred to as the “former writers and cast-members of Mystery Science Theatre 3000” and perhaps avoided the chilling trauma that gripped me when I realized there was only going to be mere humans, however droll and astute, commenting on the film.

So though I did have a great time, I do feel that the least they could have done was put Tom and Crow in a glass display case in the lobby. I’m sure they would have gotten as much attention (or more) as Carrot Top and his companions. And who knows what wonderful audience reactions and comments this may have inspired?

And, speaking of puppets, one of the most terrifying ever created - not! - will put in a rare appearance when the Cinematheque/Aero shows THE GIANT CLAW (1957) on Thurs., Nov. 6 as part of their 4-day ATTACK OF THE GIANT SCREEN post-Halloween series!

Imagine Bill Baird on a bad trip.

Darling LILI, Darling LESLIE

2008-10-18T10:31:00.000-07:00

Leslie Caron at a screening of MGM's LILI at the American Cinematheque at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, October 12, 2008

Invitation

2008-10-10T15:50:00.000-07:00

Visit me at Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=543911028&ref=profile

I Read the News Yesterday, Oh Boy

2008-10-08T08:48:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, October 7,
2008

For the Record:

Today’s Headlines:

Fears of world recession deepen
Plummeting markets indicate limits to government’s power to

HELP!

Already, new state budget is in crisis

Turmoil sweeps the globe

25% of wild mammal species are imperiled

There’s little joy as the cost of gasoline slides

Pakistan blast targets politician; 20 die

Jobless man kills family, self

Is now a good time to panic?

YES

Meanwhile back in Ventura…….

A sleepy beach town wakes up

“To compete for shopper’s hearts and wallets, downtown Ventura has added upscale stores and eateries, while keeping a few reminders of yesterday”.

(It’s the end of the world as we know, and we feel fine….)

“The just-opened Watermark Restaurant brings a bit of Hollywood high life to Main Street,”

(Not to mention Hollywood prices….)

“ with a dress code and valet parking, both of which had been unheard of in these parts……”

(Thankfully, until now that is…..)

O. J.’s fate

(Some good news anyway….)

And of course, it being LA:

Oscar mania’s out of control
Oscar mania causes havoc

(Like we don’t have enough to worry about already….)

PUCCINI ThreeSome

2008-10-03T10:52:00.000-07:00

I was fortunate to experience the new production of IL TRITTICO just before it concluded its run at the Los Angeles Opera. Puccini’s relatively rare triptych of one-act operas was co-directed by film directors William Friedkin (Il Tabarro, Suor Angelica) and Woody Allen (Gianni Schicchi).

Only in LA.

The first two one-acters were staged in a fairly traditional mode, the Parisian Seine-side setting of Tabarro being especially impressive as it cinematically passed from sunset to darkness in the course of the tragic one-acter.

Allen’s Schicchi, Puccini’s only comic opera, was an up-date that transposed the original renaissance characters into a kind of retro Rossellini comic neo realist mode (if you can imagine) with Schicchi himself apparently a smarmy Mafioso don. Schicchi’s daughter, Lauretta, here visualized as a hot Mafia moll, looked like if anyone was thrown off the Ponte Vecchio she would be doing the throwing.

And after long lines at the lobby bar during the two intermission by the third act the audience was actually clapping along with the accordion music Allen had added as a none-Puccini Main Title sequence with ludicrous Italian credits on a drop-down movie screen before the actual opera began

James Conlon presided over the considerable forces (including a large international cast) needed to mount this elaborate work that ultimately clocked in a four and a half hours with the two intermissions.

I recall having seen TRITTICO many years ago in Philadelphia but I only really knew the score’s greatest hit, “O Mio Babbino Caro” (aka the theme from ROOM WITH A ROOM), and had actually performed it with my friend, Dianna Burdick, the previous Saturday evening.

Otherwise I deliberately eschewed any homework on TRITTICO and so was able to approach the evening with fresh ears. I was impressed with how well the libretto (or libretti) worked dramatically. I even found the essentially static Suor Angelica quite moving, wondering how the Catholic-suffused work was going to deal with the suicide of the heroine. I admit to being quite relieved (and moved) when the Virgin descended from on high, arms spread in benign forgiveness for the distraught (and dead) Angelica.

Unfortunately during the much-anticipated Schicchi I was frequently distracted by the blinding reflection of a spotlight in an on-stage mirror that focused so directly at my particular seat in the 12th row that I was barely able to read the super titles. Relief came only when someone in the cast passed in front of the mirror or the spotlight. Fortunately, due to Allen’s frenetic staging, this did happen frequently.

The opening Tabarro (The Cloak) was atmospheric verismo melodrama and for me the most engaging third of the trio. TRITTICO was composed during World War I. Throughout, but especially in Tabarro, you could discern the compositional influences of early 20th century, notably Debussy and the impressionists, and even Stravinsky. (Having just played the lush parallel triads of “Babbino” I was especially aware of the Debussy influence).

All in all another memorable and unique production from the innovative Los Angeles Opera. I only wish I could also have seen their also current production of Howard Shore’s THE FLY. In spite of lukewarm reviews, FLY seemed like another fascinating production in the mode of LAO’s production of GRENDEL – Transcendence of the Great Big Bad, by another composer who has worked in films, Elliot Goldenthal, and which I enjoyed in a previous season.

Disneyland Daze

2008-09-22T15:37:00.000-07:00

Merrily on our way........

The Happiest Place on Earth is frequently home to the Biggest Behinds on Earth.

+ + + + + + + +

I went to Disneyland for two days last Monday to use the last few days of my southern California annual pass. It being September, school back in session and so on, I naively thought it might be less crowded

That was not to be the case and I unfortunately discovered that Disneyland is now preschool/stroller hell at most anytime during the year.

In fact, it’s become more than ever a nightmare of apparently mindless fecundity. Not that it hasn’t always been but with economic and environmental chaos on the not-distant horizon people always seem to inexplicably retreat into The Family Mode for whatever reassurance and false security that may provide.

On Monday I was also kept wondering what the point is of taking weeks - sometimes seemingly days-old infants on the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters?

Do they nurse the kid with one hand and wield a blaster with the other?

And what will be the eventual effect of this barrage of noise and psychedelia on these newborns, some of who literally look like they just popped out of the womb?

One shutters to think…..

Across from Disneyland, in the aptly named new Toy Story Mania that now certified white elephant, California Adventure, finally has a major draw. The lines there even on a Monday almost rivaled those of the recently opened Finding Nemo remake of the old 20,000 Leagues submarine ride in Tomorrowland.

TS Mania is a sort of a high-tech fusion of video game and old-fashioned shooting gallery. Except you’re seated in a moving car and what you shoot at is an assortment of 3-D projections in which plates shatter and assorted other targets explode and fly in your face if you hit the mark.

It’s a fun experience and guaranteed to bring out the NRA in the most confirmed peacenik.

It’s pretty much conceded now that California Adventure, aka Michael Eisner’s folly, is a major dud and has already been scheduled for an embarrassing and majorly expensive makeover. And from the look of the gargantuan crane over Paradise Pier it is already in progress.

IMHO they might as well call it Pixar Land and get it over with, as, aside from putting a few unobtrusive Jack Sparrow automatons in Pirates of the Caribbean, there has not been a major new purely Disney attraction in any of the parks for years.

Well, at least the beloved Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride survives in California, which is more than it did in Florida.

Happily so, as we’re now more than ever merrily merrily on our way to nowhere at all…….

PS: Actually I still love Disneyland. It’s just that like seemingly every other appealing place on the planet it’s just become too popular for it's own good.

And the good of its “guests….”

El Dorado

2008-09-08T08:51:00.000-07:00

In the wine country around Los Olivos and Solvang, north of Santa Barbara, California.

Photos by/COPYRIGHT: Ross Care

On the Beach

2008-08-21T10:16:00.000-07:00

+++++

Well, the kids are back in school (as of August 19), and the tourists with their monstrous, ocean-view-blocking SUVs and RVs along old PCH have at least partically departed.

The surfers with their black wetsuits - which you never saw in the old California BEACH PARTY movies! - will always be with us, and that's OK. (The wetsuits are of course because most of the year you freeze you @** off going into the Pacific).

However, late August and the fall can sometimes be the true DAYS OF HEAVEN Out Here. Yesterday I had two extended swims in the surf and lingered with the pelicans until sunset while the tide was going out on one of my favorite remote beaches near Gaviota.

And the evening before I swam on the beach in the above photo (near Ventura) with hardly anyone else in sight.

Soon the avian winter visitors, sandpipers, godwits et al, will return as well. I always look forward to seeing them again.

So Heavenly Days On the Beach... for now.....

(But I'm also thinking of my relatives on the Atlantic coast of Florida who are experiencing terrible weather and flooding due to Hurricane Fay even as I write this).

Photo/Text COPYRIGHT 2008 by Ross Care

Santa Barbara Pyramid

2008-08-21T10:10:00.000-07:00

Even the cemeteries are grandiose in California. This one is on the bluffs overlooking the Pacific in Santa Barbara.
Photo: Copyright 2008 by Ross CARE

Flashes & Distant Rumblings

2008-08-15T10:54:00.000-07:00

Image, text by/COPYRIGHT 2008: Ross Care

After a prolonged visit to the Panda Buffet for lunch I slept through part of my birthday (August 14) so stayed up late watching DVDs that night. After seeing THE DARJEELING LIMITED and part of VELVET GOLDMINE I emerged from headphones to hear ominous (and real) stereophonic rumblings in the night.

At about 1.45 am a thunderstorm was rumbling across the Montalvo section of coastal Ventura. For anywhere in southern California this is unusual, almost unique. In fact, I had not heard such a racket from those little men bowling in the skies since we crossed the Nebraska plains on the 4th of July some years ago on The Way West.

As it turned out last night’s mostly rainless pyrotechnics outdid both the terrific storms I experienced on the Great Plains and even those monster cloudbursts in Florida and the South. The lightening last night came in both purplish, fog-muted flashes and huge kinetic bolts that snaked across the whole of the night sky in all directions. They were so brilliant they left a kind of imprint on your eyelids when you closed your eyes.

The jagged bolts sometimes left brief glowing domes of green light when they seemed to strike the ground. It reminded me of the alien special efx in the original George Pal WAR OF THE WORLDS. The effect was all the more frightening when I recalled that it was lightening strikes that started the recent devastating wildfires in northern California near Yosemite.

There was also the smell of eminent rain, that expectant redolence of first drops on macadam, by now an unfamiliar but well-remembered scent from another life when, unlike Out Here, rain still happened in summer.

About 2.05 a drizzle commenced. I optimistically closed an upstairs window. But I needn’t have.

For all the sound and fury there was not enough rain to form puddles or to create that nostalgic sound of rain spattering on the roof and pouring out of rainspouts.

About 2.15 there was a climactic thunderclap, like the blow of Donner’s hammer at the end of Wagner’s DAS RHEINGOLD. Then the storm seemed to move away, towards the eastern mountains and Ojai.

Flashes and deep distant rumblings continued in the night as I fell asleep. The storm slowly faded out as well.

2008-08-04T15:38:00.000-07:00

CINEMA: Somewhere in Yorkshire, England

Photo by/COPYRIGHT: Ross Care

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH in 3D

2008-07-19T15:19:00.000-07:00

I’ve had a weakness for 3-D ever since I saw the awful BWANA DEVIL (and the much better HOUSE OF WAX) when I was a kid back in the middle 1950s. And even before that there was one of my favorite “toys,” a Viewmaster (viewer) through which one got one’s first visions of faraway places in remarkably pristine and (seen today) poignantly uncrowded three-dimensions.

In a way the current JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH IN 3-D harks back to these nostalgic times and experiences. It’s not a great movie, but then the first 3-D films of ‘50s hardly were either. But like them it does have its exciting and even thrilling moments.

This JOURNEY is a remake (sort of) of the 1959 20th Century-Fox version, which was also shot in a then-new process, CinemaScope. Like 3-D, the wide screen process was launched to lure fickle ‘50s movie goers back into theaters and away from their new and highly addictive BxW television sets.

Both versions are of course loosely based on the Jules Verne fantasy novel. Here (as in the ‘50s version) a contemporary scientist follows a passage to a strange subterranean world at the center of the earth, and in the process verifies a discovery made by an earlier pioneer who had vanished without a trace. In this case the scientist is Brendan Fraser and he takes along only his cell phone addicted nephew and a capable girl guide the two guys hook up with in Iceland.

After that it’s pretty much the same as the earlier film but with some spectacular CGI efx (instead of matte shots and giant soundstage mushrooms) and much more realistic dinosaurs.

The new film gets off to a somewhat slow and talky start and you begin wonder when the 3-D is really going to kick in. But eventually it does. However, the thing I really liked about this film is that it is essentially benign, and you don’t have to endure fifteen endless and laborious battle scenes or an interminable pirate sword fight. (I realize this may not be a plus for many contemporary viewers)

There is also little gore and no really threatening violence. And there’s even time for some truly lovely effects (such as the flock of fluttering phosphorescent “glow” birds) and some luminous underwater scenes, these a kind of color nod to the effects in the iconic CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, also in early 3-D.

On the wilder side the storm sequence/chase on the underground sea with some nasty giant piranhas and their pursuing oceanic dinosaurs creates some genuinely impressive and Vernian imagery. And of course there’s the obligatory dinosaur chase and theme-park thrill ride sequence in run away mine cars.

But generally the tone is genial and tongue in cheek, a mode well served by the goofy throwaway charm of Fraser who seems to be having a good time through it all.

As did I.

I left 2.15 screening at the beautiful Arlington in Santa Barbara with the pleasant but not overwhelmed feeling I used to get after a Saturday matinee at the Senate Theater back in Harrisburg, Pa.

And when was the last time you saw a nasty but affectionately tacky man-eating plant attack and then get ripped out by the roots in a recent movie.

JOURNEY had a limited 7-day run in 3-D at the Arlington but is still playing in its dimensional version in the LA area.

By the way, some of the most thrilling 3-D efx are reserved for the first minute or so of the end credits, so stick around for those.

2008-07-10T11:00:00.000-07:00

Spring Shadows and Green return to the Onofreo Firezone

The stream, beach, and ocean are in the distance.

PHOTO: by/COPYRIGHT Ross Care

When we came back south from the Solvang/Buellton area the temperature must have dropped about ten degrees on the other side of the tunnel. The tunnel passes through a huge and rugged formation, virtually a mini-range of red rock mountains, which serves as a barrier between the sunny clear (hot) inland, and the (sometimes) gray (cool) foggy coast.

(It might be noted that the temperature hit a high of 126 in Death Valley this week, and wildfires are raging north of Sacramento).

As a weather/climatic barrier this sudden elevation of rock works extremely well because the coastal region around Gaviota was still remarkably cool and blanketed in fog while it was sunny and intensely hot in Solvang.

In spite of the fog we did spend some time on a favorite secluded beach, San Onofreo, to which there are two coastal accesses between Gaviota State Park and the Refugio State Beach to the south.

Neither one is what you’d call easy access. From the northern parking area, called Vista del Mar or something like that, you hike across the top of the bluffs and face a precipitous descent that is more like going down into a crevasse than a trail.

The southern access is less rigorous. From a parking area along the railroad tracks a sloping trail descends to the beach down a moderate slope. The trail once passed through a thick tangle of chaparral, but that was all burned away in a wildfire that crossed the freeway and burned to the sea last year.

For a while this was a blackened nether land of ash and charred trees but after spring rains it quickly came back to life and was ablaze with dazzling yellow mustard instead of fire. By July the mustard has dried into a combustible mass of ochre yellow but other growth continues.

It has been an interesting experience to see the area come back to life. Unfortunately for native plant enthusiasts much of the new growth is by invasive species. Among these castor beans, summer mustard, sweet fennel, jimsonweed, and a variety of thistles are the most fecund and aggressive.

By now these species are to be found everywhere along the coast. Some are quite decorative. Fennel adds welcome touches of feathery green to the arid summer landscape (but seeds like mad). The blossoms of the jimsonweed are beautiful but, like the entire plant, deadly (enough to kill cattle and sheep that have grazed upon it. The seeds are said to be a powerful but also toxic hallucinogen).

With all these invaders California natives face much competition for soil and space but some are making a comeback here as well. The stand of California sycamores seems dead and charred at first glance but new growth is sprouting profusely from the base of the trunks. (See photo). Chaparral and California sagebrush also seem to be gradually recovering and some California poppies dotted the ashen soil in the spring.

Before hitting the beach the trail passes along a stream. It flows between the chaparral and the steep hills that ascend to the bluffs that line this secluded coast for miles. It was a cool green riparian oasis but the fire also passed over the woods of sycamore and oak that line its banks.

Just before emptying into the Pacific there was a small oasis that was one of the most magical places I’ve ever seen in nature.

Blooming nasturtiums literally climbed into the trees, other flowers lined the banks, and the stream itself formed a small pond that was clear and tranquil and a home of tadpoles in the spring and early summer. After the small pond it burbled on over the rocks and into the ocean surf.

In fact, this was one of the places that were a decisive factor in my decision to move to California over ten years ago.

But like all coastal environments this bower undergoes constant change, not the least of which was last year’s wildfire.

But yesterday as I moved onto the beach and passed the clear waters of the pond I noticed plumb tadpoles resting on the underwater rocks and a sprig of late nasturtiums dangling over the back.

Change, sometime radical, is a part of nature, especially on the rugged, sometime inhospitable California coast.

But so is regeneration.

On to the beach……

Contrasts in Gray and Gold

2008-07-09T09:43:00.000-07:00

Along Alisal Road, towards Solvang.

Along route 101 near Gaviota. Fog rolls over the now golden hills, July 7, 2008.

Photos: by/COPYRIGHT Ross Care

++++++++

Speaking of contrasts, yesterday we drove up the coast from Ventura to my favorite country north of Santa Barbara along the Gaviota coast.

There was (and is) fog in Ventura. What’s commonly known as “June gloom” is a bit late this year, in keeping with the general and disturbing scrambling of seemingly all the natural elements on the planet.

We hoped it might disperse as it sometimes does in an unpredictable coastal region but the fog, so thick that you could see it drifting in soft gray clouds over the now golden hills, held out until we passed through the great red rock formations around Gaviota.

But once through the tunnel it was, almost startlingly, all bright golden hills, dark green oaks, sunshine and blue skies. We stopped at our favorite park, Nojoqui Falls, always a pleasant setting for a picnic and a walk in the charming woods there.

The stream, which runs off from the falls, is (predictably) dried up but the falls are still trickling. In spite of the dryness the woods remain green, if a bit dusty (and buggy). They are a riparian combination of dark oaks, California maples and sycamores, and profuse, still green undergrowth including some ferns on the hillsides.

There are also a variety of other trees and shrubs, which I still cannot identify among the profusion of natural life that flourishes in this secluded yet accessible environment. (We once saw wild turkeys wandering through the picnic area!)

I have visited this area in all seasons and yesterday recalled how the big leaves of the maples turn bright yellow in autumn and how the trail along the main stream is alive with side streamlets and the musical sound of running water in the spring.

The park is off Alisal Road that runs on to Solvang, the area’s appealing, if somewhat Disneyland-ish Danish village. The road there is a fascinating microclimate as well, unusual in that the oaks and other trees along it are festooned with pale mint green Spanish moss.

The ghostly moss on the live oaks also suggests, to me at least, the similarities between this section of southern California and the southeastern United States, particularly Georgia and northern Florida.

That’s rather odd, considering we are a dry, almost arid environment, and the southeast is so damp, humid, and swampy. But there is definitely a similar look to certain aspects of the landscape that I’ve also noticed in the Ventura river estuary. By the river there is a low scrub woods of oak, bay and underbrush, and the look and dim, tented feel of the place is very similar to the tangled palmetto groves of coastal Georgia and its sea islands (without the palmetto of course).

After a loop through the beautiful rolling wine country of Solvang and Los Olivos (seen in SIDEWAYS, and where a few of the vineyards still tout their appearance in that film) we drove back down 101 to a favorite secluded beach.

Once through the tunnel you’re back in the persistent fog that did not, however, stop us from enjoying an impressionistic, if somewhat chilly late afternoon of black gulls and gray Pacific on a beach that, remarkably, we had entirely to ourselves.

Always wonderful to discover that isolation is still possible, even in southern California.

To be continued……

Maples & Spanish Moss

2008-07-09T09:35:00.000-07:00

Along Alisal Road, near Solvang.
California maple leaves with California oaks and Spanish moss in the background. (See above entry).

Rim of the Canyon (and Disaster)

2008-07-03T09:56:00.000-07:00

Some entries ago I mentioned that many people think of California as having no seasons. As I also noted, it’s my theory that we have all four seasons, they just happen all at once, depending on the region, the microclimate, and the elevation.

Mature readers may remember the classic Ralph Rainger song, “June in Jaunary.”

Right now in southern California it’s October in July.

The lush greenness of the spring (i.e., January to May) has given way to a kind of golden fusion of summer and autumn. The grasses and hillsides are now a lambent gold, dazzling, glimmering (and combustible, as you may well know from news of the persistent fires around Big Sur and the recent one just happening today in Goleta, north of Santa Barbara).

Leaves and shrubs that have not completely dried out are turning autumnal reds and oranges in the canyons.

At any rate, now there’s gold along long the 101 freeway both to the north and south, an almost poignantly beautiful phase before the landscape’s inevitable demise into the dull (and dangerous) earthen aridity of the winter months.

I took a walk in Ventura’s Arroyo Verde this evening and, as often happens Out Here, I thought of how close, perilously close, any urban development is to a rugged, near-wilderness environment, particularly populated areas in or adjacent to the many canyons along the coast.

(Last year it was truly surreal to drive from Pasadena to Hollywood, traffic moving business as usual on the freeway as Griffith Park blazed, sending mountains of smoke into the otherwise clear blue sky).

Part of Ventura’s Arroyo Verde Park is of course kept verde (green), unnaturally so, by consistent irrigation. (Not to worry, we in California – and Las Vegas - are assuredly certain that the water supply will never ever run out).

Entering the Arroyo from Foothill Road the space between the hills is green as Kensington Gardens. Nobody seems to mind or even notice the incongruity of such a lushly expansive and landscaped lawn set between the unkempt wilds of the canyon walls.

But we feel we are entitled to everything here, even a village green, no matter how expensive or none-green politically.

This is not even to mention the incongruous, unnatural green expanses of golf courses of Palm Springs, and the surreally verdant Forest Lawns of Glendale, Burbank, et al).

It’s sort of the same thing when you drive across Coldwater Canyon in LA and descend over the Hollywood hills into Beverly Hills. The homes and profusely irrigated lawns look like something out of a particularly affluent (and sometimes kitschy) New England town (or a 1940s David O. Selznick movie which is tasteful in comparison!)

However, behind the pleasant, one might say complacent facade is the wild, somehow threatening aridity of dried brush and bare earth of the canyon walls, sometimes seemingly only a few feet behind this idealized vision of suburbia and The American Dream.

A vivid illustration of this California suburban/wilderness effect can be seen in one of my favorite science fiction films, the original INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956) when Miles and Becky flee out of the comfortable tree-lined streets of their small town into the wild canyons just beyond, and where Becky finally falls asleep and victim to her pod persona.

BTW didn’t that film, set in classic era ‘50s California, turn out to be one of the most prophetic ever made?????

Letter to the World - Program

2008-06-26T10:01:00.000-07:00

SPECIAL thanks to Molly Kohler Pei for her elegant program design and notes.

Ross

Letter to the World - Program Cover, Design and Notes by Molly Kohler Pei

Take That CALIFORNIA TRIP(tych)

2008-06-21T10:59:00.000-07:00

San Onofreo

On the central coast
you do not collect shells.
Instead there are moonstones to be gathered,
and agates,
microcosmic mesas and plateaus,
lava flows,
the planet Jupiter itself.

You could live out a life on these rocks,
on this beach,
among these wavebuffed fragments
of the fragile shell of earth,
and it would be a rich life

The sun lowers,
the day hovers like a gull
on a reluctant golden closure
and the sea runs misted silverblue.

With the long twilight
comes the scent of dillgreen licorice
and the atonal submarine slurrings
of a massive
earthtoned marimba.

Ross CARE

From: "Take That CALIFORNIA TRIP(tych)"

Post-Concert Blues & Heat Wave

2008-06-21T10:38:00.000-07:00

“Ah, Sunflower,
Weary of time…..”
William Blake

Well, the much-anticipated June 8 concert went well, and was well attended (in spite of the competition from the many early summer activities in the area, including the world-famous Ojai Music Festival).

I wish to thank my entire crew of singers and instrumentalists for their talent and dedication, as well the First United Methodist Church of Venture for providing the beautiful setting.

Special thanks to Dianna Burdick from making this happen. From our first meeting looking for an aria from Norma at Wright Library through the final Sunday performance with four singers, two fine Los Angeles string players, and me apprehensively on piano, it’s been a genuine pleasure working with and getting to know you (and everyone).

You really made it happen, Dianna, and have become a wonderful, understanding friend as well. I’m more grateful than I can say for both your talent and friendship.

Thanks of course also to Molly, Steve, Philip, and Maksim, and Linda for her invaluable vocal supervision and inspiration.

So, in spite of the inevitable post-concert doldrums (tempered with a bit of relief) we move
Into the Future and Whatever Happens Next.

“There’s gonna’ be a Heat Wave, a tropical heat wave…”.
Irving Berlin
(and Marilyn Monroe - in CinemaScope –
in THERE’S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS)

What Happened Next for California is a Major Heat Wave.

Temperatures for the end of the week and current weekend are in the triple digits in many spots and hitting record highs for this early in the summer. (Today’s Times listed a high of 118 in the appropriately named Thermal, California - where ever that is - but it’s been higher than that in Palm Springs and Death Valley).

Coastal Ventura is moderate compared to inland, but yesterday the (comparatively moderate) humidity was still too much like the East Coast for my taste.

Living in California you forget about the ghastly eastern humidity but yesterday reminded me too much of Lancaster, Pa., or one especially wretched 4th of July weekend spent in Washington, DC (Humidity Capitol of the World) where all you could do of flee from one air-conditioned space to another in a dazed, lethargic frenzy.

Still we were (and are) better off than Ojai and certainly cooler than in the Valley. On Wed. Dianna and I attended a rehearsal of Verdi’s Rigoletto in Canoga Park which at 7.00 pm was still like a blast furnace.

The heat wave is expected to abate around Sunday, none too soon for me.

Letter to the World CONCERT

2008-06-05T19:04:00.001-07:00

Ross Care, composer/pianist, Dianna Burdick, soprano, Molly Kohler Pei, soprano, Steven Perren, baritone.

"He who hears music, feels his solitude peopled at once." - Robert Browning"

LETTER TO THE WORLD – POETS TO SONG
Original Songs and Theater Music of Ross CARE

Sunday, June 8, 2008, 2.00 PM,
First United Methodist Church,
1338 E. Santa Clara St.
Ventura, California

Singers: Dianna Burdick, Molly Khler Pei, Steve Perren, Linda Ottsen
Philip Vaiman, Violin, Maksim Velichkin, Cello,
and Ross Care, Piano

I. POETS/ART SONGS

Letter to the World (Emily Dickinson)

Song: When I Am Dead, My Dearest (Christina Rossetti)

Oh See How Thick the Goldcup Flowers (A. E. Housman)

White in the Moon (A. E. Housman)

The Owl and the Pussycat (Edward Lear)

Tarquin (Frank O’Hara)

4 Songs from CHAMBER MUSIC to Poems of James Joyce for Voice, Violin and Cello with Piano Obligato

Strings in the Earth and Air
The Twilight Turns from Amethyst
Winds of May
Rain Has Fallen

2 Songs to Poems of William Blake for High Soprano Solo, Violin, Cello, Piano, and 2 Backup Voices

The Lamb
Ah, Sunflower

II. THEATER MUSIC

The GLASS MENAGERIE

Suite from the incidental music

for the play by Tennessee Williams
for Solo Violin, Cello, and Piano

Laura’s Theme
Paradise Ballroom
Wish on the Moon

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
I’ve Never Felt This Way Before
(Lyrics: Cheryl Clemson/Ross Care)

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
Poems by Lewis Carroll
Soloists & Ensemble, Piano, Violin & Cello
Prologue: Child of the Pure, Unclouded Brow
Jabberwocky
Tweedle Dum & Tweedle Dee
The Lion and the Unicorn
Royal Lullaby
The Feast
Epilogue: Come, Harken Then

CONCERT: Music of Ross CARE

2008-05-28T11:21:00.000-07:00

CONCERT:

Letter To The World –

The Original Songs and Theater Music of Ross Care

BIO:

Composer Ross Care (ASCAP) graduated from West Chester University in Pennsylvania and studied with Ben Weber (New York) and Harold Boatrite (Philadelphia). In Ventura the Ventura Master Chorale has performed several of his choral works, and his score for The Glass Menagerie was used in the Rubicon Theatre production with Susan Clark. His music for early films by Academy Award-winning (2007) animator, John Canemaker, may be heard on a recent DVD, and another of his short film scores won a “Best Score” award in the ASIFA-East Film Festival in New York. His musicals (Alice) Through the Looking Glass and The Prophet (after Gibran) have been performed nationally, the latter at Philadelphia’s Annenberg Center.

As an author/critic, Ross has written for the Library of Congress, and film journals such as Film Quarterly and Sight and Sound. Recently he wrote the liner notes for the acclaimed Film Score Monthly 2-disc CD restoration of the classic 1957 John Green/MGM score for RAINTREE COUNTY. For several years he wrote a regular music column for the cult genre magazine Scarlet Street.

Notes on the Music

Care has always been interested in the fusion of music and poetry in a somewhat neglected form, the modern art song. “Letter To The World” draws from both classic and modern texts. The settings in this concert are written for voice and piano and voices with piano, violin, and cello.

Songs

The concert’s opening segment features settings of poems by Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, William Blake, and Frank O’Hara. All of these poets are extremely modern in every aspect but the chronological. Frank O’Hara was also a noted art critic and a key figure in the New York school of contemporary poetry.

A. E. Housman is most famous for his popular volume, A Shropshire Lad from which two settings are drawn. Edward Lear is most famous for his nonsense verse, especially “The Owl and the Pussycat,” but he was also a noted visual artist. James Joyce is most well known for his complex novels but his small volume of poetry, Chamber Music, like Shropshire Lad, has been popular with modern art song composers.

Theater Music

Care’s original incidental score for The Glass Menagerie follows the detailed musical directions in Tennessee Williams’s original script. The new suite from this score has been arranged for solo violin, cello, and piano, and is a California premiere. Philip Vaiman, a concert and recording violinist from Los Angeles, will perform the work. Vaiman is also a part-time string professor at Ventura College.

From Care’s original musical version of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass comes a cycle of nonsense poems and rhymes. The theatrical version uses the Carroll poetry included in the original book, including the mysterious and much celebrated (and analyzed) “Jabberwocky”. Care faithfully adapted the script from Carroll’s second Alice book. NOT combining it with Alice in Wonderland as many more diffuse adaptations do.

Dianna Burdick and Molly Kohler Pei who will also be singing in the program have organized this concert. The third vocalist is Steve Perren, baritone. All singers have performed extensively in area concerts and theater. Guest instrumental soloists are Philip Vaiman, violin, and Maksim Velichkin, cello, both from Los Angeles. The composer will be at the piano.

Letter to the World, Original Songs and Theater Music of Ross Care, First Methodist Church, 1338 E. Santa Clara St, Ventura.

Sunday, June 8, 2.00 PM. Suggested donation: $15.00, net proceeds to benefit FUM Church Music Program.

More INFO, PHOTOS - contact Molly Pei:

Email: mkpei@earthlink.net, phone: (805) 218-2042

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Cole Porter's OUT OF THIS WORLD: Musical Theatre Guild Concert Staging

2008-04-30T10:28:00.000-07:00

GRAPHIC: Sheet music cover from the original production of OUT OF THIS WORLD.

Illustration from the book,

Performing Arts - Music, Iris Newsom, editor, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, 1995

which features the illustrated article,

Out of This World: The Lesser-Known COLE PORTER

by Ross Care.

This article is based on primary material from the Library's Cole Porter collection and includes a lengthy section on the evolution of OUT OF THIS WORLD.

OUT OF THIS WORLD was Cole Porter’s much-anticipated follow-up to his sensational comeback show, KISS ME, KATE. In fact, KATE was still playing on Broadway when WORLD opened in New York in December of 1950. However the new show did not match either its predecessor’s critical acclaim or longevity, closing (and more or less disappearing) after only six months. But OUT OF THIS WORLD was fated to quickly to enter the pantheon of glittering Broadway legend.

Today it’s still well remembered for Lemuel Ayers’ opulent sets, effects, and costumes, the racy choreography of Agnes de Mille (who though still credited with staging was replaced as director during the show’s troubled try-out period), and the Broadway return of Charlotte Greenwood as Juno. It’s also legendary for its difficult try-out phase which involved much re-writing, song shifting, and a switch in directors, and during which parts of the show were literally “banned in Boston”. (This new version, spiced up with some polymorphous metro sexual goings-on, would have created even more of a scandal back in 1950!)

So during its pre-opening phase the offstage activity at OUT OF THIS WORLD was apparently as (or more) colorfully dramatic than those in the troublesome script. But eventually Porter’s score reached such cult status that several attempts were made to revise the show’s problematic book (which was freely based on the ancient Plautus comedy, AMPHITRYON, which in turn was based on the myth of the god Jupiter’s infatuation with a beautiful mortal woman).

The recent Musical Theatre Guild’s staged concert reading of OUT OF THIS WORLD (at the Scherr Forum of the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, and also at the Aero in Glendale) used one of these new revisions (by Greg Mackellan). It maintains the basic concept of mortals unwittingly caught up in the machinations of the lecherous gods and goddesses of ancient Greece. But these are no mere mortals; rather now ‘50s Hollywood types who are doing a film on location in Athens, metamorphosing the original plot (involving an average honeymooning American couple interacting with gods and gangsters) into a kind of satiric Clash of the Titans.

The original Chicago gangster is here replaced by a busybody bisexual Hollywood columnist (acidly played by Eileen Barnett) who amusingly tempts the various secondary gods (including Mars and Apollo) to go aggressively Hollywood in the show’s second act. This revision also maintains the show’s original period, providing a timeframe for Porter’s patented “list” lyrics which remain as cuttingly satiric and “in” as ever for those with a knowledge of the references (Peggy Joyce, Truman’s Bess).

But today of course OUT OF THIS WORLD is most fondly remembered for Porter’s fabulous score as a whole that (like his work for the MGM film THE PIRATE around the same period) took some time to achieve the recognition and respect it so richly deserves. Porter’s music is a brilliant pastiche, and anticipates such later shows as FOLLIES and CANDIDE. The songs range from some of his loveliest and least-known ballads, “Use Your Imagination,” and “I Am Loved,” both particularly moving in as sung by Teri Bibb/Helen, to the pseudo spiritual “Climb Up The Mountain” which provides a boffo opening to act two.

In between are some of Porter’s most tongue-twisting (and Gilbert and Sullivan-ish) list/patter numbers and ensembles. “They Couldn’t Compare to You,” was brilliantly executed by Richard Israel as Mercury, and a melodic trio, “What Do You Think About Men,” (like the opening “Hail to Juno”) could have come out of an Offenbach operetta.

Suffice to say each number is a glittering jewel and here brilliantly performed by an equity cast well up to the challenges of both Porter’s scintillating words and demanding music. This OOTW maintains almost all of the original score in more or less the order of the 1950 version, but also reinstates the now classic “From This Moment On” which was dropped from the original score. One minor personal carp, however, is that this version drops “Hark To The Song of the Night,” one of Porter’s mostly lyrical melodies and a number to which I was especially looking forward to due to the stirring baritone of David Holmes as Jupiter. But it was replaced by “You Don’t Remind Me,” which was one of many numbers dropped from the original production,

This production featured a true ensemble cast and it’s difficult to mention individuals though Damon Kirsche was a super and sexily nerdish Clark Kent-style male lead, and his brief turn disguised as the smitten, if still pompous Jupiter was especially well done. The petite Marsha Kramer amply filled in for statuesque Greenwood as Juno, the show’s plum role. But then everyone, gods and mortals, were supernaturally excellent as a whole, an aspect of these MTG concert productions even more amazing considering the tight schedule with which they are put together.

The costumes by Shon Leblanc, were mostly, yes, white (Leblanc, get it? J) but inventively accessorized to provide an opulent and visually cohesive impression. The minimal choreography, Todd Nielson’s direction, full of both broad and subtle comic detail, and Ed Martel’s music supervision and fluid keyboard work, kept everything both focused and animated.

This superb Music Theatre Guild presentation proves you don’t need falling chandeliers or a retro pop anthology score to provide a brilliant and endlessly entertaining evening of theater, if you’ve got the right material. OUT OF THIS WORLD definitely is the right stuff, and this production was a legendary Broadway dream come true.

For me it also re-emphasized the magical, poignantly transient wonder of live musical theater and I came away wishing this production could be ensconced in one of those reasonable 99-seaters in Los Angeles (or anywhere) where everyone could have the opportunity to orbit OUT OF THIS WORLD every night!

Ross Care

California Spring

2008-04-16T10:13:00.000-07:00

Lupine and California poppies cascade down Figueroa Mountain, Santa Barbara county, California. April, 2008.

Seizing the California Moment!

A March 1989 Sunset magazine article calls California’s wildflowers a “treasure of the moment.”

This is definitely the year and time to seize that moment because after plentiful rains, not to mention some of the worst wildfires in the state’s history, there are now wildflowers everywhere. Even the fire zone that leads down to one of my favorite beaches near Gaviota has been transformed from a charred wasteland to ground now ablaze with glowing yellow mustard instead of wildfire.

My favorite landscape on the central coast is the country between Santa Barbara and Gaviota and beyond. It began to green up after the midwinter rains of December and January. Even after the record heat wave of last week (April 10 to 13) the land remains green and undulant, except where the hills are covered with acres of wild mustard, a none-native plant that nonetheless is extremely decorative this time of year.

Veering away from the coast around Gaviota route 101 passes through some vast and incredible red rock formations and on to Solvang and Los Olivos where the waysides and hills of this beautiful wine country (featured in SIDEWAYS!) are now literally a lavenderblue riot of massed lupines that have sprung forth this year.

A trip off 101 and into the mountains (such as Figueroa) and canyons will also reveal all manner of wildflowers aside from the ubiquitous lupine and mustard: shooting stars, crimson paint brush, canyon sunflowers, and, if you’re lucky, the elusive Mariposa lily. Just looking along the side of the road or having a closer look at some rough rocky bank will also reveal species that will send you back to your favorite wildflower guide.

This week I explored new territory by going back Refugio Road, which cuts off from 101 just beyond El Capitan state park. The road is a key example of California’s unique microclimate environment, passing through rolling coast hills, many now planted with vineyards, riparian deciduous woodland with a beautiful roadside stream, and finally past the Circle R and Reagan ranches on to the dry high country from which can be seen awesome vistas of the road just traveled and on down to the Pacific and channel islands.

Further up 101 I was amazed that the riotous lupines had remain fresh and vibrant even after the sweltering heat wave of last week, but near Solvang the green of the hills is already tempered with the Mediterranean gold of the inevitable (and relentless) California summer.

They are not long, the days of wine and lupine, but while they last California is truly the paradise it’s so obsessively (and not always accurately) hyped to be (even with regular gas hitting $4.00 per gallon this week!)

For more California spring and wildfire photos see:

http://good-times.webshots.com/slideshow/562855063CvSefw

SCARLET STREET: RecordWracked

2008-03-28T13:17:00.000-07:00

Scarlet Street cover, featuring Ross Care's article on CHINATOWN, the Film and Jerry Goldsmith's score.

Partial bibliography of Record Rack and other film and music articles by Ross Care.

Scarlet Street was a popular genre magazine created and edited by Richard Valley. It achieved quite a cult following over a decades-long run.

__________________________________________________________

Care, Ross. “Dark Passages: The World of Film Noir – Some Like It Hot,” Scarlet Street, (#40, 2000) – An esay on the Billy Wilder noir comedy.

Care, Ross. “Disney Unlocks the Music Vault” Scarlet Street, (#27, 1998) – Overview of the first classic Disney Original Soundtrack CDs. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi, et al.

Care, Ross. “Disney’s Unburied Treasures, DVD Reviews by Ross Care, Barry Monush, and Richard Valley” Scarlet Street, (#47, 2003) – The classic Disney animated features on DVD.

Care, Ross. “Forever Raksin: An Interview with David Raksin” Scarlet Street, (#22, 1996) – An interview with the famous composer of "the face in the misty light."

Care, Ross. “The Music of Sound: Alfred Hitchcock Rear Window,” Scarlet Street, (#37, 2000). A detailed look at the use of sound and music in the 1954 Hitchcock film. Composer Franz Waxman provided the original musical theme but a variety of other music cues were woven into the film’s total soundtrack. This article also draws on the original cue sheet for the film.

Care, Ross. “Record Rack: Adventures on Marco Polo” Scarlet Street, (#35, 1999) – The Uninvited, Adventures of Marco Polo, King Kong, Moby Dick, etc CDs of music by Victor Young, Max Steiner, Philip Sainton, and others are reviewed.

Care, Ross. “Record Rack: Bernard Herrmann on CD,” Scarlet Street, (#17, Winter 1995)

Care, Ross. “Record Rack: Chinatown, the Film and the Score,” Scarlet Street, (#24, 1997)

Care, Ross. “Record Rack: Classic Hollywood Scores on Marco Polo” Scarlet Street, (#20, Fall 1995) – Music by Hugo Friedhofer and cother.

Care, Ross. “Record Rack: Classic Musicals on DVD” Scarlet Street, (#43, 2001)

Care, Ross. “Record Rack: “Fox Renascent: The Fox CDs ” Scarlet Street, (#28, 1998) –
CDs discussed: Journey to the Center of the Earth, Mephisto Waltz, Overview of the 20th Century-Fox music department.

Care, Ross. “Record Rack: Fun with Peter, Alice, and Lolita” - Scores for the Films of Disney and Kubrick” Scarlet Street, (#32, Winter 1999)

Care, Ross. “Record Rack: More Music from 20th Century-Fox on CD” Scarlet Street, (#44, 2002) – How to Marry A Millionaire, Blue Denim, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Batman: the Movie (1966), Illustrated Man, Stagecoach

Care, Ross. “Record Rack: Music for Gods, Monsters, and Bugs” Scarlet Street, (#34, 1999) - The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Psycho, Mighty Joe Young, Gods and Monsters, et al

Care, Ross,.“Record Rack: North by Northwest on CD,” Scarlet Street, (#21, Winter 1996) – A review of the complete score on Rhino CD.

Care, Ross,.“Record Rack: Portraits in Black, Music for Film Noir ” Scarlet Street, (#29, 1998) –
CDs discussed: Film Noir (Stromberg/Morgan/RCA Victor CD), Double Indemnity (Koch CD), Murder Is My Beat (Rhino CD), LA Confidential

Care, Ross.“Record Rack: Rebecca, Meet Me in St. Louis, Ziegfeld Follies” Scarlet Street, (#19, Summer 1995). - CD reviews.

Care, Ross. “Record Rack: RecordWracked: Recent Scores on CD,” Scarlet Street, (#18, Spring 1995) Ed Wood, Interview with the Vampire, et al

Care, Ross,.“Record Rack: Miklos Rozsa” Scarlet Street, (#38, 2000) -

Care, Ross. Record Rack: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs & Pinocchio: the First CD Releases” Scarlet Street, (#12, Fall 1993) - Care’s first column for Scarlet Street.

Care, Ross. “Record Rack: Tony Perkins Just Sings” Scarlet Street, (#49, 2003) – The singing career and records of actor Anthony Perkins.

Care, Ross. “Record Rack: 20th Century-Fox Music on CD” Scarlet Street, (#28, 1999) – A roundup of vintage CD soundtracks from the major Hollywood studio.

Care, Ross. “Record Rack: Warner. Bros. 75 Years of Film Music,” Scarlet Street, (#31, 1999) – A review of the WB CD anthology.

Care, Ross. “Record Rack: A Wistful Longing for Horror: The Fantasy World of MGM” Scarlet Street, (#44, 2002) – Bandwagon, Brigadoon, Meet Me In St. Louis, Wizard of Oz, Ziegfeld Follies, et al

Scarlet Street, (#25, 1997) – The fantasy/horror elements of MGM musicals are mused upon.

Hollywood Singing & Dancing

2008-03-27T13:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Wed., March 26, the American Cinematheque at the Aero in Santa Monica launched a five-day series of musical screenings with Hollywood Singing and Dancing, a new anthology film directed by Mack McLaughlin. (The film actually had its LA premiere at the Egyptian in Hollywood on March 19).

Director McLaughlin appeared after the screening, along with Shirley Jones who appeared in and narrated the documentary. The 111-minute film covers a lot of territory, from the birth of sound (and thus the musical film) in the late 1920s through Chicago and Dreamgirls. There are new interviews with artists who have been involved with musicals both past and present, but for those familiar with the genre there is otherwise not a lot new material or footage and no real revelations.

There was also virtually no criticism of any of the films on view, and flopolas like Hello Dolly seemed to be put on equal ground with Singing In the Rain and On the Town. There will probably be a DVD with some or all of the 13 hours of material originally shot for the film. McLaughlin also mentioned a public television series, but, tellingly, said PBS was only interested in musicals from the 30s to the ‘50s.

However, it was an entertaining evening, though (like PBS) my interest somewhat flagged when the film moved out of the studio era and into the latter decades of the 20th century. (Clips from Ken Russell’s Tommy and The Rocky Horror Picture Show do add a few jolts of bizarre energy to the second half).

But on the whole all the film clips were wonderful to see on the big screen and if nothing else the concentrated overview that Hollywood Singing and Dancing provides also proves that, even with some less than pristine clips, the Technicolor and color styling of MGM and other major studios of the era absolutely peaked in the musicals of the 1940s and early 50s. (The brief clip from the American in Paris ballet was virtually breathtaking on the big screen!)

Ironically a “Quick Take” in the March 25 LA Times noted that a revival of West Side Story is in the offing for Broadway, two years after its 50th anniversary. The item also revealed that author Arthur Laurents does not care for the 1961 film version and that the revival will do a tougher take on the Sharks and Jets.

Commented Laurents: “They’re not adorable street kids. They’re killers, each and every one of them. They’re vicious and they have to be played that way.”

In that case perhaps Scorsese will be called upon direct a new film version with Leonardo DiCaprio. Maybe they could also restore some of Steven Sondheim’s original lyrics, which, though not that controversial, were nonetheless adapted (censored) for the film version (as were most Broadway lyrics of the era).

For the rest of the Aero Cinematheque series:
March 27, Cabaret and All The Jazz; March 28, Singing in the Rain and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (the latter in CinemaScope); March 29, a 70mm screening of the 147-minute Hello Dolly! (I’ve got my tickets!); March 30, Showboat (1951), and Carousel.

MGM star Kathryn Grayson was scheduled to appear at this Sunday screening but her appearance has been cancelled at the last minute. When Grayson was indisposed I had to settle for Streisand. However, Gene Kelly’s widow, Patricia Kelly, is scheduled to appear at the gala Dolly screening.

Ross Care Published Articles: BOOKS

2008-03-24T15:24:00.000-07:00

A page from the Performing Arts Annual, Iris Newsom, Editor, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, 1986.
From the article Memoirs Of A Movie Childhood in Harrisburg’s Film Palaces

An excerpt from my recently compiled bibliography. This includes only BOOK articles:

See also:

http://rosscare.net/

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Ross Care Published Writing

BOOKS:

Cartoon Music Book, The, Daniel Goldmark, Yuval Taylor, editors. A Cappella Books, Chicago, 2006

Chapter:

Care, Ross. Make Walt’s Music: Music for Disney Animation, 1928-1967. – An overview of music and composers at the Walt Disney Studio.

Performing Arts Annual, Iris Newsom, Editor, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, 1986.

Article:

Care, Ross. Memoirs Of A Movie Childhood in Harrisburg’s Film Palaces – “The architectural and entertainment styles of bygone movie palaces are traced from their Golden Age to their demise as parking lots and porno movies houses.”

Illustrated with movie stills from the Library’s Motion Picture Division and vintage photos from the Pennsylvania State Archives.

Theaters illustrated and discussed include LOEW’S Regent, the State, the Colonial, the Rio, the Senate, and the Penway.

Performing Arts Annual, Iris Newsom, Editor, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, 1989

Article:

Care, Ross. Hot Spell – Alex North’s Film Score for A Streetcar Named Desire – “The score for A Streetcar Named Desire contains some of the most potent and atmospheric evocations of the America South ever heard on a motion picture soundtrack. Alex North, a Russian-Jewish composer from Chester, Pennsylvania, created it.”

Performing Arts at the Library of Congress, Iris Newsom, Editor, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, 1992

Article:

Care, Ross. Hot Spells – Alex North’s Southern Gothic Film Scores (The Sound and the Fury, The Long Hot Summer, Hot Spell, The Rose Tattoo, Sanctuary) – “Alex North’s film scores for The Sound and the Fury, and The Long Hot Summer evoke a passionate South as depicted during Hollywood’s late Golden Age, before the demise of the studio system.”

Performing Arts – Music, Library of Congress, Iris Newsom, Editor, Washington, DC, 1995.

Article:

Care, Ross. Out of This World – The Lesser-Known Cole Porter (Out of This World, The Pirate, Silk Stockings, Les Girls) – “Through his investigation of the Music Division’s collections, the author has achieved insights into Cole Porter’s creative processes by analyzing some of his lesser-known movie and Broadway productions.”

Performing Arts – Motion Pictures, Iris Newsom, editor Library of Congress, Washington, DC, 1998.

Two Articles:

Article 1.

Care, Ross. The Great (Almost) American Novel Becomes The Great American Film Score – Johnny Green’s Music for Raintree County – “Composer-author Ross Care presents an in-depth and entertaining analysis of Green’s score for the film version of Ross Lockridge, Jr.’s great American novel Raintree County."

Article 2.

Care, Ross. Twilight’s Last Gleaming The Americanization of Hollywood Film Music 1950-1965 – “Using many high quality film stills from the period as a backdrop for his essay, Ross Care describes the Hollywood studio system from 1950 to the mid-1960s – one of the most varied and brilliant periods for both filmmaking and original film scoring – and the events that led to its demise.”

Performing Arts – Broadcasting, Library of Congress, Iris Newsom, Editor, Washington, DC, 2002.

Article:

Care, Ross. Movies in the Air: Dramatized Shows in Radio’s Late Golden Age – "During the thirties and fifties movies and radio were the entertainment mediums that dominated the American imagination. Hollywood soon learned to exploit the airways and established film stars were encouraged to act in radio dramas, which led to a mutually supportive and profitable alliance and the production of programs ranging from Lux Radio Theatre to Fibber McGee and Molly.”

Wonderful Inventions: Motion Pictures, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound at the Library of Congress. Iris Newsom, editor, The Library of Congress, Washington, DC, 1985

Article:

Care, Ross. Threads of Melody: The Evolution of a Major Film Score – Walt Disney’s Bambi – From the study of two rare scores in the Music Division of the Library of Congress the author discusses the several-years development of composer Frank Churchill’s original material into the final symphonic score as arranged and refined by orchestrator Edward Plumb and a staff of Disney studio musicians. Article includes original film and production stills, composer portraits, and rare printed musical excerpts from the Library’s piano conductor’s score and the first draft manuscript score.

NOTE: A short version of this article originally appeared in The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, (Spring, 1983)

Note: A bibliography of magazine articles is also forthcoming.

California Spring

2008-03-24T15:16:00.001-07:00

A rather scarce WHITE lupine in the Santa Monica mountains.

Spring, 2008. After winter storms California is blooming.

For the moment. It won't last long.

To see more:

http://good-times.webshots.com/album/562855063CvSefw

LISZTOMANIA Review

2008-03-20T10:01:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to the complete Film Quarterly LISZTOMANIA review.

It discusses the relationship between Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner as seen through the fantastic eyes of British director Ken Russell.

http://www.iainfisher.com/russell/ken-russell-article-lisztomania.html

Villa Wesendonck, Zurich, Switzerland

2008-02-22T10:52:00.000-08:00

The Villa Wesendonck, now part of the Museum Rietberg complex in Zurich.

One of several Richard Wagner sites in Switzerland, though the Rietberg is devoted to Asian/exotic art and has nothing to do with Wagner.

The villa was the home of conductor Otto von Wesendonck and his wife, Mathilde.

Mathilde provided the inspiration for Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, and he set her poetry to music in the famous orchestral song cycle, the Wesendonck Lieder which include several references to the Tristan score.

In "The Master Musicians: Wagner" Barry Millington writes:

"Their relationship was intimate, but as was suggested earlier, probably stopped short of the sexual act. Consummation would have shattered the dream and made it impossible to write Tristan und Isolde, the ultimate glorification of love."

Wagner himself wrote:

"As I have never in my life tasted the true joy of love, I will raise a monument to this lovliest of all dreams....."

As I recall, the villa can be seen in one sequence in the 1955 Wagner film biography, MAGIC FIRE.

For another even more bizarre take on Wagner see Ken Russell's LISZTOMANIA.

The Imperfect Wagnerite

2008-02-11T11:43:00.000-08:00

I’ve been interested in Wagner ever since I wrote a term paper on the Ring cycle for Mrs. Christman’s college prep music classes at Central Dauphin High School in Harrisburg (Pa.) back in the late 1950s. I’ve remained interested (though not obsessed), but when the LA Opera announced a production of Tristan und Isolde for their 2007-2008 season I got my ticket early.

I’m not particularly star/diva oriented either. For me the main focus of interest is the music and (being one myself) the composer. I didn’t even know who the stars were in the production I saw on Sunday, February 10 (2008). For the record they were Linda Watson as Isolde and John Treleaven as Tristan. They were both super, and as the first real opera queen I ever knew used to say: “such screaming and carrying on.” (He meant it as high praise indeed, as do I).

I did, however, know that David Hockney designed this Tristan, a well-publicized fact that was for me, however, a mixed but intriguing incentive. Hockney’s version, a revival of the 1987 original for the LA Opera, turned out to be quite distinctive, a stylized 3-dimensional fusion of the British artist’s now patented LA (quasi-Matisse) style and a rethinking of a classic retro Bayreuth look. At any rate, it worked and was aptly complemented by Duane Schuler’s shifting and atmospheric lighting.

For me personally the main attraction is Wagner’s revolutionary score and the lush sound of the company’s symphony orchestra under James Conlon (who also provided a well-attended pre-show chat before the curtain). Kuddos to everyone involved there, but especially the bass clarinet, English horn, and off-stage French horn players.

I admit I did not get the full night’s sleep I had hoped for before taking on the 1.00 to 6.00 Wagner shift, and so during the first act I did phase in and out just a wee tad. The program notes ask “Does Tristan make demands on the audience?” The answer is, of course, yes, one of them being simply to remain conscious for the duration, a challenge I almost met this time. (I remember seeing the von Karajan Valkryie at the Lincoln Center Met some years ago, a production so obscured in super low-key storm cloud lighting effects that it was all but impossible to avoid sinking into intermittent comatose states as deep as Brunnhilde’s third act slumber at some points over the duration).

However, I find supertitles – a line-by-line translation of the libretto projected over the proscenium arch - the best thing to have happened to opera since Barber’s Vanessa and here they were a great boon to truly appreciating the drama (such as it is) and poetry of Wagner’s own libretto. And in addition they are certainly an aid in keeping focus throughout.

I know Tristan most intimately by the famous orchestral Prelude that encapsulates some of the major motive of the score, and I also had my ancient, well-worn copy of Albert Lavignac’s “The Music Dramas of Richard Wagner” (Dodd Mead and Company, New York, 1898) for a quick refresher course between acts. I was engrossed throughout but at a certain point in the second act love duet a certain episode strangely familiar from knowing the classic films scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold kicked in and I was unselfconsciously swept away. Unfortunately around the end of the this segment of the (on-going) duet dawn breaks and King Mark walks in and proceeds to bore both the lovers and the audience for the next half hour.

At any rate, around 5.45 I staggered down the grand mirrored staircase of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, slightly stupefied but also with a rekindled interest in the Great and Malevolent One.

An interest apparently shared by the LA Opera who are scheduled unveil their long touted new production of the Ring cycle with Das Rheingold and Die Walkure in February and April of 2009. This new version (designed by Achim Freyer) may not have the Light and Magic effects that were once mentioned as a possibility for an LA Ring, but even without George and Star Wars efx I’ll probably be in line for tickets as soon as they’re available. Especially for the cinematic Rheingold, as way back in Mrs. Christman’s class, those Rhinemaidens, dwarves, and giants got me hooked on Wagner in the first place!

See also: http://laopera.com/media/