Hollywood Spectator (Apr-May 1939)

says. Lubitsch wants to solo-star Mademoiselle Illona as soon as she has fulfilled his immediate two-picture contract for United Artists. * * * Gentle and Yet More Background music for We Are Not Alone demonstrates engagingly that music need not be heavy of touch to be emotionally emphatic. Comooser Max Steiner and his orchestrator. Hugo Friedhofer, have emulated with artistic fidelity the general deftness of touch with which Producer-Director Henry Blanke has bared human tragedy in this picture. It is a story of a good man crushed between the coarse and inexorable milestones of small-town convention, and hard-hearted propriety which turns real human decency into murder of soul and body. It is a deadly conflict between human natures too far apart to come to terms. It is the story of the trial and the doom of people who do not belong together, and whose pitiful, guiltless failures are judged traditionally by a court of public opinion and law, instead of being tended by psychiatrists. All this has been taken into account by Steiner, who writes tenderly, using bits of folk songs, of Mozart, Haydn and Schubert, if memory does not fail me. Quite personally speaking, I do not relish the obvious change of Kommt a Vogerl into a dirge when the victims of unawareness are sentenced to die. I liked greatly the merry-go-round background music for the scene of quiet conversation between the doctor and the girl. On other occasions, too, Steiner has written apart from the visual scene, and with notable results of suggestion. * * * More Than Effective •I Albert Sendrey's background score for Whirlpool of Desire (shown at Cinema Arts T heatre) makes me curious to know other music he has written for the screen. The whole film leaves much to the imagination in the best sense of the word. The music hints at what is going on in the hearts of the chief personages. Sendrey never waxes complex musically. He does exhibit himself in that part of film-dramatic no-man’s land which the author. Peggy Thompson, leaves undescribed as far as actual dialogue goes. At times, dialogue is duly laconic and music adds what need not be said in so many words. Occasionally I missed the help of orchestral underscoring. Very neat is the sequence of the inspection of the dam. when a waltz is made to serve also as a tone picture for unseen men and engineers at work. The waltz serves as one of the emotionally significant key themes, but I could have wished for something strong musically to accompany the symbolic shots of turbulent water which allegorize visually the tur moil in a human soul. It is a well recorded and engagingly simple score which definitely aids the picture. The composer, a Los Angeles man. confirms my suspicions that the score was cut when the picture was re-edited in America. Sendrey bears watching. j}i SJ1 5«C Lovely Voice PERHAPS it is MGM studio policy to keep lyric soprano Florence George sound-tight, at least as far as the screen is concerned. Perhaps the Georgean state of “protective custody" is the result of story-differences of opinion. I have been told that fully half a dozen tales have been proposed, but no quorum could be reached among those who decided the filmic fates of the fair singer. Which is a pity. La George (in private life Mrs. Everett Crosby), however, is not letting any grass grow under her . . . vocal chords. She is working daily with vocal maestro Charles Dalmores and coach-pianist Sylvan Breen. Bennett Returns <]( Russell Bennett, for years arranger and orchestral collaborater with Jerome Kern, is back from New York City where Very Warm for May, the new Kern-Hammerstein musicale, was considered warm enough also for New York in November. I watched him listening to the orchestra rehearse a quite difficult sequence, looking a bit quizzical and pained and pleased in turn. The sequence was from Bluebird and the highly atmospheric orchestration by Conrad Salinger, for the last several years staff orchestrator at Twentieth Century-Fox. * * * Mr. Malotte's Luck Cfl Considering that Albert Hay Malotte’s songs (a whole group of them, old and new ones) have been sung by John Charles Thomas at Carnegie Hall and on tour, I am not surprised that Malotte will do the songs the baritone sings in Kingdom Come, which Sig Schlager is producing for Producers’ Corporation. Schirmer is publishing five new Malotte chansons: Among the Living, a timely lullaby, which I predict will be heard much. (It will be on the Tibbett tour program). One, Two 7 hree was written for Nelson Eddy, whose tour program includes another Malotte novelty: Melody of My Love. The other two titles are Miracle and The Poor Old Man. Malotte has also sold to Schirmer’s a piano piece: Chanson Pastorale. He is a versatile, genuine melodist whose tophits includes such contrasted topics as Perdinand the Bull (for Disney) and 23rd Psalm. Malotte just wrote part of the music of Paramount’s Dr. Cyclops. I have had faith in him since Gertrude Ross, when ballet committee chairman for the Hollywood Bowl, produced his Red Riding Hood score with La Gam tarelli dancing. I think Schlager made a good choice in Malotte. The public is welcoming more sensitive background music for underscoring of film. It will enjoy a change from song-tunes, most of which are written with an eye on dance band royalties. A change from hoofing to real heart tunes would be nice. Iisro end There <1 Producer Lee Garmes has signed Frank Tours as musical director for And So Goodby at RKO. Tours will later work at Kingdom Come. Aaron Copland expects to finish his score for the Hal Roach-Milestone film Of Mice and Men. by the middle of next month. Irvin Talbot will conduct the recordings. He does most of them at Paramount when composers are better with a pen than with a stick. Virginia Wright of the Daily News sized up Copland well when suggesting that 20th-Century Fox sign him to compose background music for Grapes of Wrath. Werner Heyman, former music director for UFA of Berlin, is being kept busy by Nat Finston, MGM’s music chief. Heyman is at work on two important productions by Lubitsch and Saville. He also was responsible for music in Garbo’s Ninotchka. THIS HOLLYWOOD (Continued from page 10) the meantime, though, what is to be done? Mo Wax urges exhibitor organizations to take a concerted stand and serve notice now on film exchanges that none of their members will contract for more than 30 features from any company next season. Producers would have nearly a full season to readjust their schedules. It is impossible for any studio to turn out more than 30 features of a calibre worthy of being presented to the public, he contends. Limitation to this number would result in immediate improvement in the quality of films in general. Once quickies are eliminated, double bills will go "the way of the buffalo." Public appetite for films would be revived. "30 Is The Top — And No Quickies!" he advances as a slogan for next season's buying. Sounds pretty logical. * * * A FOOLISH PRODUCTION WASTE Two Rip Van Winkle productions are to reach the screen, from all appearances. Twentieth Century-Fox announces its intention of making the legend, despite an earlier announcement by the independent Monogram, which plans to film the tale as a piece de resistance, sinking its highest budget yet into the production. Why not give the little fellow a break? PAGE TWELVE HOLLYWOOD SPECTATOR