Hollywood Spectator (1938)

Hollywood Spectator Page Twenty-five dotes, but will bring to the screen a broad record of this entire romantically glamorous age. Apart from great political and literary figures, including, of course, George Sand, the list of musical characters will include Berlioz, Liszt and Paganini. So you can judge the scope of musical material which we can use through every medium, whether solo, orchestral or vocal. It will be a picture that can be shown for many years to come to audiences of every type and to schools in every country of the world.” You and Me and Zaza . . . YJJHICH heading is just a way of reminding myself IT that Kurt Weill, the theatre-minded and yet ro¬ mantic German composer, will be back on the Para¬ mount lot within a few days to complete the score for the Fritz Lang produced and directed You and Me. Music has been employed by producer and com¬ poser in a novel way. In fact, Boris Moros, ensconced in his elegantly refurbished office at the end of the long music building, still keeps me under a promise of secrecy. The new Weill-Lang method has been called a novel musical scenarization. I dare to lift the curtain for the over-curious, by saying that Weill has done, in collaboration with Lang, what he achieved so strikingly in his all too little known dramatic cantata called Lindberg’s Flight. Those who heard that work, broadcast a number of years ago by Sto¬ kowski, can guess what I mean. Paramount has been so gratified with the songs and orchestral sketches of Weill that they have re-signed him. He was to write the music for the Wanger production of The Adven¬ turess. Instead the score has been assigned to Werner Janssen, who also wrote his notable General Died At Dawn score for Morros. Weill, whose specialty is modern drama and opera of contemporary back¬ ground, will compose new music for Zaza. The original music was composed by Leoncavallo, but in that version the opera lacked realism. Prokofieff for Paramount . . . BORIS MORROS is justly proud to have the MJ promise of Serge Prokofieff, internationally re¬ nowned Russian composer, to write two scores for Paramount. ‘‘I am expecting Prokofieff in February of next year,” Morros assured me. ‘‘One score and for that matter, the picture, too, will be based on his own satirical story, Peter and the Wolf. The other story has not yet been chosen definitely, but very likely the subject may be drawn from early English history of the Arthurian era. I am planning a large score of novel effects, yet musically sound, in the pic¬ ture Men with Wings. Tiomkin already has started work on Hathaway’s Spawn of the North produc¬ tion. Hageman may write the music for Frank Lloyd’s next picture. If I Were King , an original version based on the Vagabond King story material, with complete underscoring. As for opera films, I decline to say that their day has passed. It depends on the story. I am just now going through material for such stars as Gladys Swarthout, Tito Guizar and Florence George. Opera films may have been over¬ done, but I'm still willing to bet on opera, given the Best Wishes to the Spectator on its Twelfth Birthday LEO F. FORBSTEIN Musical Director Warner Bros. Lyrics “Maytime” “ Firefly ” Current Assignment “Sweetheart” “Three Comrades” BOB WRIGHT & CHET FORREST Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer