Not
long ago, in my review of the Max Steiner CDs Music for Bette
Davis Films (Naxos 8.570184) and The Treasure of the Sierra
Madre (Naxos 8.570185), I wrote: “For too many years, for many
music lovers, the perceived impression of “film composers” [always
used as a pejorative term, and usually spoken with a sneer on
the lips] was of talentless hacks who couldn’t make it in the
world of real (concert) music …” Never have two composers been
seen as nothing but hacks as Frank Skinner and Hans J Salter.
They
had a fruitful working relationship, starting with Skinner’s
score for Son of Frankenstein, which was orchestrated
by Salter! In the long run, it seems that Skinner fared rather
better than Salter. Skinner was quite well known, getting screen
credits for some of his work, and he scored several of the Basil
Rathbone Sherlock Holmes
films (1940s) and Bedtime for Bonzo (in which Ronald Reagan is acted off the screen by a chimpanzee) (1951)
to The Appaloosa (aka Southwest
to Sonora) (1966)
and his music even made a posthumous appearance in an episode
of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery (1972). His credits number
over 300 films. Salter, however, didn’t receive the same kind
of recognition. He was also associated with over 300 films,
both in Germany, and Hollywood, but, in both their cases, especially
so in Salter’s, their work was often classified as “stock music”,
music which could be pulled off the shelf to fit a particular
mood or event in any given picture (without a composer credit)
– rather like Chappell’s Music Library where an innocent little
piece, which was sitting on the shelf, could gain world-wide
fame if used in the right context; perhaps the most famous example
of this is Charles Williams’s The Devil’s Galop which
will forever be associated with Dick Barton, Special Agent,
because of its use as the title music to the BBC radio serial
in 711 episodes between 1946 and 1951, and ten episodes in 1972.
Salter’s
and Skinner’s backgrounds couldn’t have been different; after
studying at the Chicago Musical College, Salter became a vaudeville
pianist, later joining a dance band before moving to Hollywood,
whereas Salter (Austrian by birth) had studied with Alban Berg
and Franz Schreker and was music director of the Berlin State
Opera before starting to compose for the UFA Studios in Berlin,
emigrating to the USA in 1937.
This
is a wonderful disk. Skinner’s title music for Son of Frankenstein
is so eerily creepy that it had me running for the safety you
can always find behind the sofa! And I don’t normally do running!
If ever proof was required that it was music which determines
our reactions to a film this single cue gives the confirmation;
we just know that something unpleasant is going to happen and
it’s going to scare the pants off us. The rest of the score
is in a similar vein – except for a poignant passage portraying
this Frankenstein’s infamous father. String tremolandos, telling
use of low brass, often muted, and timpani, create a world where
nothing is right. There’s the police chief who, as a child,
lost an arm to the monster and the hunchbacked, body-stealing,
old family retainer, Ygor. This is a weird, almost expressionist
world created by the sets - full of daring diagonals - and lighting design. Striking
shadows are cast against bare walls. Nothing
is what it seems. So perfect is this music for the film that
it’s hard to believe that some of the music was re-used in,
amongst others, Tower of London (1939), The Mummy’s
Hand (1940) and Sherlock Holmes
and the Scarlet Claw (1944).
The
Invisible Man (1933), based on H.G.
Wells’s 1987 novella of the same name, starred Claude Rains
as Jack Griffin and it made him a star, even though he was only
seen on screen in the death scene for a few moments. To make
himself invisible Griffin takes the drug Monocane. In the sequel,
The Invisible Man Returns (1940), Frank Griffin, Jack’s
brother gives Duocane - a stronger preparation I suppose - to
Vincent Price, who plays the invisible man here and, like Rains,
is only seen on screen for a matter of minutes. This time, the
titular protagonist doesn’t go mad, and doesn’t create mayhem;
he merely tries to clear himself of a conviction for a murder
he didn’t commit. Therefore the music is less hectic – indeed,
it’s quite pastoral, recalling some of Korngold’s love music
in his swashbucklers. There’s some gorgeous woodwind playing
here, and the massed strings are full-blooded and as romantic
in feeling as you could want.
As
horror film plots go, that for The Wolf Man is as nutty
as any of them. Lawrence Stewart, "Larry" Talbot returns to his ancestral home
in Llanwelly, Wales, where he becomes romantically interested
in a local girl named Gwen. One night, Larry attempts to rescue
Gwen's friend, Jenny, from what he believes to be a sudden attack
by a wolf. He kills the animal with his walking stick, but is
bitten in the process. Talbot soon discovers that it was not
just a wolf; it was a werewolf, the son of a gypsy fortuneteller
who had been a werewolf for years. Now the curse of lycanthropy
has been been passed to Larry. Without more ado, Talbot stalks
the countryside in the form of a two-legged wolf. Although he
struggles to overcome the curse, he is finally bludgeoned to
death by his father with his own walking stick. As he dies,
he returns to human form.
With
this film we’re back in familiar horror film territory with
big music making big gestures to accompany the onscreen action.
The booklet describes the music magnificently: “this is music
which ‘runs around on all fours and bites and snaps and bays
at the moon’”. But the music is not without its moments of pathos,
after all we have to sympathise with Talbot for losing his humanity
after the fatal bite. Again, to quote the booklet, ‘the hero’
experiences “… sprouting fur and fangs and ferocious behaviour
whenever the moon is out …” It’s a rich and varied score – and
all the better for the contrasts.
Thank
you, Naxos. Yet another marvelous entry in your collection of
Film Music Classics. I can’t wait to hear more.
Bob Briggs
