Bernard Herrmann wasn’t the first composer Hitchcock was displeased with. In the 1962 interviews with Truffaut, Hitchcock vents his feelings about Franz Waxman and the score of Rear Window (1954). “There was one thing I was very unhappy about in Rear Window. I had in charge of music a man called Franz Waxman. And I made a mistake in having that type of man, to do the music. Because I was very anxious to get from it a popular song. And I should have had a man who writes popular songs, to do it. I made a mistake.”(1) Hitchcock got his popular song two years later with Que Sera Sera, in The Man Who Knew too Much (1956), the second of nine consecutive films that Herrmann worked on for Hitchcock. Herrmann did the score, and the Jay Livingston and Ray Evans songwriting team were hired to come up with a song appropriate for a child to sing with his mother. The song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and was Doris Day’s biggest selling single record. Que Sera Sera quickly reached second place on the Billboard Hot 100, behind the Platters My Prayer, but it couldn’t reach number one because of Elvis Presley’s Hound Dog and Don’t Be Cruel that were released in August. Que Sera Sera had a rating of seven for the year, a year of intense competition. It was Elvis’s best chart year. Heart Break Hotel, Love Me Tender, and I Want You I Need You reached number one, and Love Me Tender peaked at number two.
Psycho (1960) was their sixth collaboration and Hitchcock didn’t want the murder of Janet Leigh in the shower to run with music. Herrmann described how he convinced Hitchcock to use music for the famous scene. “Hitchcock did not want music for it. And I said, ‘Well leave it to me. And go away on a holiday.’ And he came back. And we showed him the film music. And he said. ‘Well we’ll use that.’ But I said. ‘Hitch, you said absolutely no music.’ He said, ‘Improper suggestion.’ ”(2) A few words reveal one narcissist thinking he was in control and finessing the other narcissist to admit he was wrong.
For the score of Marnie (1964), Hitchcock was under intense pressure from Universal executives not to use Herrmann and get someone hip to capture the younger audience. Lew Wasserman, chief of Universal and MCA, did not like Herrmann and Herrmann didn’t think favorably of the Universal music department. According to composer David Raskin, Herrmann several years previously had turned down an offer from Wasserman to work at Universal. Wasserman got angry and said, “All right Benny, when you get hungry you’ll come to see me.” Herrmann replied, “Lew, when I get hungry I go to Chassen’s.”(3)Wasserman's money lured the best and the brightest to Universal, but over time the studio came to be known as the place "where the best people did their worst work."(4)
Raskin gave this account about Hitchcock after the box office failure Marnie. “That was when Hitchcock had begun his decline. And he’d been such an arrogant dreadful person to so many people, and so ruthless and cruel. That when he started on his way down, at the slightest slip, they know what’s happening here in town. People began to give him a hard time. And one of the things some of the guys did at Universal, did apparently, was to say ‘Now you don’t need that old fashioned score. What you need is something which is with it now.’ ”(5)
Torn Curtain was Hitchcock’s next film after Marnie. Hitchcock was under even more pressure from Universal not to use Herrmann. The Beatle’s movie A Hard Day’s Night was released in the U.S. a few weeks after Marnie, and the soundtrack had outgrossed the film’s profits. The music and Herrmann weren’t going to be Hitchcock’s only problems with Torn Curtain. “I was unhappy with the script and I wanted to postpone the beginning of shooting, but that was impossible because of Julie Andrews’s schedule. I had tried to free myself of her services, protesting that she was a singer and couldn’t be convincing as a scientist. But the studio insisted she was great box office… Newman read the script and found it pretty bad – something I knew already.”(6) Paul Newman and Hitchcock had a less than cordial relationship. It didn’t help any that when Hitchcock had Newman over to his home for their first social encounter, a dinner party, he took off his jacket at the dinner table and put it over the back of his chair, refused Hitchcock’s selected vintage wine, then got up and went to the refrigerator and took out a beer and drank it at the table straight from the can.7 This might sound normal today but it wasn’t to a major director from Victorian and Edwardian England. Soon after shooting started Newman sent Hitchcock a detailed memorandum about script deficiencies, scene by scene, and how they effected his being able to get into the character. Hitchcock had not favorably accepted the method over the past decade. Also it didn’t help that Hitchcock felt the salaries for Julie Andrews and Paul Newman were too high.
Early in the filming of Torn Curtain, Hitchcock cabled Hermann, who was living in London, to give him his requirements for the music.
TO FOLLOW UP PEGGY'S CONVERSATION WITH YOU LET ME SAY AT FIRST I AM VERY ANXIOUS FOR YOU TO DO THE MUSIC ON TORN CURTAIN HOWEVER I AM PARTICULARLY CONCERNED WITH THE NEED TO BREAK AWAY FROM THE OLD FASHIONED CUED IN TYPE OF MUSIC THAT WE HAVE BEEN USING FOR SO LONG I WAS EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTED WHEN I HEARD THE SCORE OF JOY IN THE MORNING NOT ONLY DID I FIND IT CONFORMING TO THE OLD PATTERN BUT EXTREMELY REMINISCENT OF THE MARNIE MUSIC IN FACT THE THEME WAS ALMOST THE SAME UNFORTUNATELY FOR WE ARTISTS WE DO NOT HAVE THE FREEDOM THAT WE WOULD LIKE TO HAVE BECAUSE WE ARE CATERING TO AN AUDIENCE AND THAT IS WHY YOU GET YOUR MONEY AND I GET MINE THIS AUDIENCE IS VERY DIFFERENT FROM THE ONE TO WHICH WE USED TO CATER IT IS YOUNG VIGOROUS AND DEMANDING IT IS THIS FACT THAT HAS BEEN RECOGNIZED BY ALMOST ALL OF THE EUROPEAN FILM MAKERS WHERE THEY HAVE SOUGHT TO INTRODUCE A BEAT AND A RHYTHM THAT IS MORE IN TUNE WITH THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE AFORESAID AUDIENCE THIS IS WHY I AM ASKING YOU TO APPROACH THIS PROBLEM WITH A RECEPTIVE AND IF POSSIBLE ENTHUSIASTIC MIND IF YOU CANNOT DO THIS THEN I AM THE LOSER I HAVE MADE UP MY MIND THAT THIS APPROACH TO THE MUSIC IS EXTREMELY ESSENTIAL I ALSO HAVE VERY DEFINITE IDEAS AS TO WHERE MUSIC SHOULD GO IN THE PICTURE AND THERE IS NOT TOO MUCH SO OFTEN HAVE BEEN ASKED FOR EXAMPLE BY TIOMKIN TO COME AND LISTEN TO A SCORE AND WHEN I EXPRESS MY DISAPPROVAL HIS HANDS WERE THROWN UP AND WITH THE CRY OF BUT YOU CAN'T CHANGE ANYTHING NOW IT HAS ALL BEEN ORCHESTRATED IT IS THIS KIND OF FRUSTRATION THAT I AM RATHER TIRED OF BY THAT I MEAN GETTING MUSIC SCORED ON A TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT BASIS ANOTHER PROBLEM THIS MUSIC HAS GOT TO BE SKETCHED IN IN ADVANCE BECAUSE WE HAVE AN URGENT PROBLEM OF MEETING A TAX DATE WE WILL NOT FINISH SHOOTING UNTIL THE MIDDLE OF JANUARY AT THE EARLIEST AND TECHNICOLOR REQUIRES THE COMPLETED PICTURE BY FEBRUARY FIRST
SINCERELY HITCH
Herrmann cabled back to Hitchcock.
DELIGHTED TO COMPOSE VIGOROUS BEAT SCORE FOR TORN CURTAIN ALWAYS PLEASED HAVE YOUR VIEWS REGARDING MUSIC FOR YOUR FILM PLEASE SEND SCRIPT INDICATING WHERE YOU DESIRE MUSIC CAN THEN BEGIN COMPOSING HERE WILL BE READY RECORD WEEK AFTER FINAL SHOOTING DATE
GOOD LUCK BERNARD
It was the word “views” that set Hitchcock off. Paul C. Donnelly, on Hitchcock’s production staff, wired Herrmann an offer for $17,500 and the friendly advice, “Benny, there is one point that Hitch asked me to stress and that is the fact that you should not refer to his ‘views’ toward the score, but rather his requirement for vigorous rhythm and a change from what he calls ‘the old pattern.’ ”(8)
Herrmann returned from London and he played his sketches to Hitchcock, who told him the themes were too “heavy.” He also told him he didn’t want music for the long murder scene and that he wanted a love theme. Hitchcock thought Hermann would make the corrections. Goldwyn sound stage number 7 was reserved for three days to record the score. The orchestra was an unusual selection of “12 flutes, 16 horns, 9 trombones, 2 tubas, 2 kettle drums and a large group of cellos and bases”(9), well suited for Herrmann’s dark foreboding score. Herrmann felt the sound of twelve flutes would be “terrifying” and the brass with the heavy strings would be as disturbing as Psycho’s pure string orchestra. After the title sequence was recorded the musicians broke into spontaneous applause. The murder sequence and about half the score were recorded. Hitchcock and his assistant Peggy Robertson unexpectedly arrived and listened to the recording of the prelude. Alan Robertson, a horn player at the session, later said, “Hitchcock walked in and he said ‘What kind of music is this? It’s not what I want.’ ”(10) Hitchcock found out that the murder scene was recorded, and told Herrmann the session was over. Herrmann pleaded with him to let him finish recording since the stage and musicians were paid for the day. Hitchcock wouldn’t change his mind. He went back to Universal and apologized for his insistence on using Herrmann.
Herrmann’s version of the incident is that he quit and was not fired. Later that day Hitchcock phoned Herrmann. "I told him, ‘Hitch, what’s the use of my doing more with you? Your pictures, your mathematics, three zeros. My mathematics, quite different.' So it meant forget about it; I said, ‘I had a career before, and I will afterwards....’ He said he was entitled to a great pop tune. I said, 'Look, Hitch, you can’t out jump your own shadow. And you don’t make pop pictures. What do you want with me? I don’t write pop music.' "(11)
Hitchcock hired John Addison who had won the Academy Award for his score for Tom Jones (1963). Addison’s score is light where Herrman’s was heavy. A cue was written for the murder scene, which Hitchcock didn’t use. Hitchcock wanted to show how difficult it can be to kill someone. The murder of Gromek drags on with no music, as he is being choked, stabbed with a kitchen knife, repeatedly struck with a shovel, and dragged into a kitchen gas oven. The murder scene with the Herrmann score can be seen in the special features of the DVD or in the documentary Music for the Movies: Bernard Herrmann. The Herrmann cues add the tension that is lacking the way Hitchcock released the film. Was Hitchcock getting even with Herrmann with the no music murder scene? Hitchcock hated having to work under the domineering and micromanaging Selznik. He later got even with Selznik on the screen. In Rear Window, the murderer played by Raymond Burr, wears glasses like Selznik’s and cradles the phone between his neck and shoulder the way Selznik did. In North by Northwest Cary Grant plays Roger O. Thornhill. Eva Marie Saint asks him what the O stands for and he replies that it stands for nothing. Selznik would also tell people that he didn’t have a middle name and that the O stood for nothing. Thornhill had his matchbooks personalized with his initials – ROT.
Hitchcock had clearly spelled out what he wanted. Had Herrmann gone too far in challenging the auteur? Herrmann thought of himself as a doctor who resuscitated films. "A patient goes to a doctor because he isn’t well. That's what music is – music is part of helping a picture. And the patient gets well and goes back to the doctor and says, ‘Well, I know I got well, but you didn't make me rich!' Today a composer must not only write a film score, he must also make everybody rich.”(12)
John Williams, the most nominated musician in Academy Awards history, knew many of Hitchcock’s associates and thought that “Hitchcock may have felt that his style was too dependent on Herrmann’s music and that might have wounded his pride: they ended up being two matadors opposing one another.” Herrmann gave an interview in 1968 that appeared in the Los Angeles Times as Composer Settles a Score. “My only real complaint is that cinema music is not reviewed in the press, yet it reaches the greatest audience in the world” He went on to describe why he resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. I do not approve of music being listed as a technical credit. And there’s no point in belonging to an organization in which one is judged by one’s inferiors – not one’s peers. It was Tolstoy who said ‘Eagles fly alone and sparrows fly in flocks.’ But I’m afraid we eagles of the world are being pushed into sanctuaries.”(13) Herrmann never understood that Hitchcock hired eagles but he expected them to behave as sparrows when they flew on his set.(14)
During the Los Angeles Times interview Herrmann talked about how he hoped to work with Hitchcock again. When Hitchcock spoke at the University of Southern California, Hitchcock was asked if he’d ever work with Herrmann again. “Yes,” he replied, “if he’ll do as he’s told.”(15) The audience laughed. According to biographer Donald Soto, Herrmann came to visit Hitchcock, but Hitchcock hid behind the door to his office to avoid him.(16)
Hitchcock would only direct three more films in the ten years after Torn Curtain. His last film Family Plot was released in 1976 when he was 76 years old. Herrmann only lived nine years after Torn Curtain and scored ten films including François Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451 and The Bride Wore Black, Brian de Palma’s Sisters and Obsession and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. Interviews with de Palma and Paul Hirsch who edited eleven films for De Palma reveal how differently the New Wave filmmakers accepted Herrmann.
Paul Hirsch’s second feature film as an editor was Sisters, and he was disappointed with the murder sequence. On television one night he was watching Psycho, and noticed that when Janet Leigh was being followed by the policeman, there were only three simple shots being repeated – a close up of Janet Leigh, the road from her point of view, and the police car in her rear view mirror. He turned the sound off and realized the suspense was coming from the music. He bought a record of the sound track and transferred it into the sound track of Sisters. De Palma thought Herrmann was dead but Hirsch was able to locate him through relatives in New York. “I could hardly believe the genius who had scored Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho was really going to write our music,” De Palma said.(17)
Herrmann was living in England and flew to New York to work on Sisters. De Palma gives a detailed account of how Herrmann worked and his understanding of filmmaking:
“What’s that!” shrieked Herrmann with unbelievable horror. “That’s where the first music cue is,” I frantically explained. I just wanted to show you the type of music I had in mind for this sequence…”
“Stop it,” he cried, his cane thumping the floor in rage.
“But I thought…”
“You thought!!” he rasped contemptuously. “That’s Marnie, not your movie!”
“But Marnie’s perfect,” I argued.
“Turn it off,” he ordered. “I don’t want to hear Marnie when I’m looking at your movie. How can I think about anything new with that playing?”
When the film was over, silenced ensued. After what seemed an eternal pause Herrmann started to reminisce. He wasn’t shouting now.
“I remember sitting in a screening room after seeing the rough cut of Psycho. Hitch was nervously pacing back and forth, saying that it was awful and that he has going to cut it down for his television show. He was crazy. He didn’t know what he had. ‘Wait a minute.’ I said. ‘I have some ideas. How about a score completely for strings? I used to be a violin player you know…’ ”
If Herrmann was comparing my film to Psycho maybe he liked it.
“But let’s talk about the film while it is fresh in my mind,” continued Herrmann.
“Fine” I replied and launched into an eager ten minute explanation of why I didn’t want any title music… After I finished Herrmann exploded.
“No title music? Nothing horrible happens in your picture for the first half hour. You need something to scare them right away. The way you do it, they’ll walk out.”
“But in Psycho the murder doesn’t happen until forty…”
“You are not Hitchcock! He can make his movies as slow as he wants in the beginning! And do you know why?”
I shook my head.
“Because he is Hitchcock and they will wait! They know something terrible is going to happen and they’ll wait until it does. They’ll watch your movie for ten minutes and then they’ll go home to their televisions.”
Herrmann was brutal and, of course, right.
“What do you think we should do?” I asked.
“I will write you one title cue, one minute and twenty seconds long. It will keep them in their seats until your murder scene. I got an idea using two Moog synthesizers.”(18)
Hirsch was in awe with Herrmann and recalls:
“When we were spotting the music, he’d have these fantastic ideas for not using music where you would expect to use it, and using it where you didn’t expect it. In Sisters there’s a scene where Margot Kidder is backed into a corner by Bill Finley, and he’s trying to shock her into recalling the murder. He’s holding a knife in front of her, and unbeknownst to him she’s reaching for a scalpel on the table. When we looked at this, my idea had been to play it as a suspense cue. The cutting had been designed to create a sense of anticipation, getting faster and faster leading to a climax when she cuts him. My idea had been to reflect this in the music; there would be this growing tension building to a crescendo. But Benny said, “No. Watch – this is what I want to do.” We reran the scene and I asked, “You bring in the music here?” He said, “No, not yet… not yet…” We played the whole scene through, and suddenly when she cuts him he said, “That’s where I start the music.” Instead of playing the whole build up he let that play silent; then at the release, where you might have ended the music, he started it. I later noticed he did the same thing in the famous crop duster scene in North by Northwest. He was brilliant in his sense of how silence was an effect also.”(19)
Herrmann did the score for Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1975) when he was extremely weak and had been in congestive heart failure for over a year. He finished the score and was found dead in bed the next morning. He was only 64 years old. Scorsese later said, “If the film is successful a great deal of it has to do with the score. It supplied the psychological basis throughout.”(20) It took the new generation of directors to rediscover Herrmann. Had the studio system changed so much that Hermann couldn’t adapt to the changes during the system’s final years? Herrmann and Hitchcock had disagreements before but they were able to continue working. Was the corporate pressure at Universal too much on Hitchcock, who capitulated and took it out his frustration on Herrmann?
NOTES
1 Approximately 12 hours of the 1962 interviews with François Truffaut are available at http://www.hitchcockwiki.com/wiki/Interview:_Alfred_Hitchcock_and_Francois_Tuffaut_(Aug/1962).The portion quoted has been personally transcribed from part 20 labeled initial discussion about the "The Birds" through to "Rear Window".
2 Music For The Movies: Bernard Herrmann, Kultur Video, DVD Release Date: September 25, 2007.
3 Smith, Steven C. A Heart at Fire’s Center, the Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann (Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), p.267.
4 Harry Tatelbaum who worked at Universal for approximately 40 years as a producer and as head
of the literary department, is credited with this remark about Wasserman’s mistakes in running
Universal. McDougal, Dennis. The Last Mogul: Lew Wasserman, MCA , and the Hidden History of
Hollywood (New York: Crown Publishers 1998), p.346.
5 Music For The Movies: Bernard Herrmann, Kultur Video, DVD Release Date: September 25, 2007.
6 Spoto, Donald. The Dark Side of Genius : the Life of Alfred Hitchcock (Boston: Little,
Brown, c1983), p.490.
7 Taylor, John Russell. Hitch: The Life and Times of Alfred Hitchcock (New York:
Da Capo Press, 1996), p.276
8 Smith, Steven C. pp268–270.
9 Sullivan, Jack. Hitchcock’s Music (New Haven: Yale University Press, c2006), p. 281.
10 Music For The Movies: Bernard Herrmann, Kultur Video, DVD Release Date: September 25 2007.
11 Smith, Steven C. p.273.
12 Smith, Steven C. p.274.
13 Thomas,Kevin. “Film Composer Settles a Score” Los Angeles Times 2-4-68.
pp 17-21.
14 Sullivan, Jack. p. 289.
15 Vertlieb, Steve. Herrmann and Hitchcock, the Torn Curtain. Originally published in Midnight Marque
Magazine #65/66, 2002.The article appears on the Bernard Herrmann Society web site.
http://www.bernardherrmann.org/articles/misc-torncurtain/
16 Spoto, Donald. p. 491.
17 Smith, Steven C. p.320.
18 Smith, Stven C. p.320–322.
19 Smith, S
teven C. p.322.
20 Smith, Steven C. p.352.
Tengo un vecino que tiene un césped detrás de la casa, situado en el fondo de una colina. Durante la primavera con todas las lluvias el pasto está alto, grueso y muchas veces húmedo. Su podadora de césped no tiene bastante fuerza de torsión para mantener las cuchillas girando, y el motor se detiene frecuentemente a pesar de que las cuchillas están a una altura de seis pulgadas. La podadora no está autopropulsada y es muy difícil empujarla en estas circunstancias, especialmente con el peso de la bolsa llena de los recortes de pasto. La plataforma de corte es muy estrecha y el hombre necesita toda la mañana para cortar la yarda delantera y detrás de la casa. Con el pasto cortado a seis pulgadas, él tiene que repetirlo otra vez en unos días.
Hay muchas cosas a tener en cuenta antes de comprar un cortacésped. Si usted tiene un césped grande, especialmente si hay terreno disparejo, el cortacésped de montar o un tractor cortacésped podría ser la mejor opción. Yo tengo otro vecino con un césped de tamaño medio, y con terreno totalmente plano. Él tiene un tractor cortacésped. El tamaño de la plataforma es muy ancho, y es una podadora de radio de giro de cero. En menos de diez minutos ya está terminado, y no hay ningunas bolsas de recortes.
