Carnegie Hall (Warner Bros.) (1947)

d=aday feature (cont'd) (Every musically ambitious American as well as scores of young hopefuls abroad, have hitched their wagons to the star of Carnegie Hall. Among them are the world’s future artists like Lily Pons and Rise Stevens, Harry James and Artur Rubinstein. These current headliners too once looked to the Hall as their promised land — a land they have now reached with their own recitals and their collective appearance in Boris Morros’ “Carnegie Hall,’ the greatest concert ever filmed. In this series, these artists describe their glory road to Carnegie Hall.) (Third of a Series ) by RISE STEVENS A concert in Carnegie Hall has been the hallmark of the great artist since the Hall opened in 1891. And every ambitious musician, singer and conductor works to achieve that honor from the day his or her intention to make a career of music becomes crystallized. But to appear in Carnegie Hall too soon in your musical development becomes as great a tragedy in retrospect as never appearing there at all. I have been convinced of that since I was 17. Today, after several performances there in person and the great thrill of appearing in the United Artists film, “Carnegie Hall”, which brings the Hall and what it stands for to musical and non-musical Americans, near and far from Manhattan, I know I was right. Lots of people thought I was dreadfully conceited, not to say crazy, to turn down the offers I got after I starred in the Opera Comique at the Heckscher Theatre in New York. That was when I was 17. (I started singing at 10 on one of Milton Cross’s early local programs.) Mme. Anna Schoen-Rene, a famous discoverer of singers, heard me and offered to teach me. That offer I accepted. And when the Julliard School of Music gave me a three-year scholarship, I accepted that too. But when the Metropolitan Opera Company offered me a_ contract and some movie scouts urged me to come to Hollywood, I said no. I wasn’t ready and I didn’t want to jeopardize my chances for a long-term singing career and — not one but several — chances to sing for audiences in Carnegie Hall by being an ingenue “flash in the pan” who petered out because of too much publicity, too many performances and not enough time for study. I did enter the Metropolitan Auditions of the Air — mostly to test my own ability. And I did reach the semi-finals. But you should have the greatest confidence in yourself and your voice to aim at immediate stardom. I had faith in my voice — for tomorrow, not today — but I also had faith in the reverse of the old adage that opportunity knocks but once. If I were as good as I thought I could be, opportunity would not pass me by because I didn’t answer its first knock. Actually I did appear on the stage of Carnegie Hall in 1935, just when I was shocking my family and friends by turning down Hollywood and the Met. I was one of several singers who performed Bach’s B Minor Mass with Albert Stoessel and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. To me, though, this was not the On Stage. Rise Stevens sings “Seguidilla” from “Carmen’”’ in “Carnegie Hall.” goal I was working toward. It was an inspiration for future work so that some day I could reappear there, as I did in the motion picture, “Carnegie Hall”, on my own. After I reached the semi-finals in the Met Auditions, I went to Paris and Salzburg to study with Mme. Maria Gutheil-Schoder who was the original Octavian in “Der Rosenkavalier” and one of the greatest Carmens of her day. In 1937 I finally made my debut in the title role of “Mignon”. I’m Off Stage. Rise Stevens and cellist Gregor Piatigorsky in a betweenscenes tete-atete. very glad it was at the Prague Opera House because it was in Prague that I met my husband, Walter Surovy. After that I sang in Vienna, Egypt and Buenos Aires and when I came back to America, opportunity knocked again. I sang “Mignon” at the Met and went on to sing with the San Francisco, Cincinnati and Chicago Opera Companies. In the. 1945-46 season I sang “Carmen” at the Met and my reviews were well worth waiting and working for. In 1941 Hollywood invited me again. I went to the coast to make “The Chocolate Soldier”. You know, not only did opportunity repeat itself, history did too. I was singing “The Chocolate Soldier” when the first movie scout approached me, to be turned down. My last picture was opposite Bing Crosby in “Going My Way”. The name, Carnegie Hall, is a musical trademark identifying the greatest in music and the best in artists who interpret it. In the Boris Morros and William LeBaron production, it was a thrill not only for me to have a share in bringing movie audiences this music along with many other fellow artists like Artur Rubinstein, Jascha Heifetz, Artur Rodzinski and Ezio Pinza, but to know for the first time in its history, “Carnegie Hall”, like the artists it has housed, will play every city in the land. (Every musically ambitious American, as well as scores of young hopefuls abroad, have hitched their wagons to the star of Carnegie Hall. Among them are the world’s future artists like Lily Pons and Rise Stevens, Harry James and Artur Rubinstein. These current headliners too once looked to the Hall as their promised land — a land they have now reached with their own recitals and their collective appearance in Boris Morros’ “Carnegie Hall,” the greatest concert ever filmed. In this series, these artists describe their glory road to Carnegie Hall.) (Last of a Series ) by HARRY JAMES Trumpets are pretty universal instruments, when you come to think of it. You hear them in symphony orchestras, in instrumental groups, in dance bands, in hot jazz combinations and of course, when Gabriel has his inning, you'll hear it then — solo. I myself started playing mine with a circus band. I gradu ated from the circus to dance bands, from there to a feature spot with Benny Goodman, from there to my own band. I’ve played my trumpet before cameras for the movies and on the stage of the home of great music, Carnegie Hall. In fact I’ve been in the Hall twice — which is surprising for a jazzman. The first time was when jazz got its first nod from the boiled shirt audiences — Benny Goodman’s jazz concert in Carnegie Hall. That was something new for the Hall’s habitues though I’ve always thought it was high time filing music into different compartments stopped. Music is music and if it’s good, it deserves appropriate appreciation whether it’s eight to the bar or a symphony by a 300-year-old composer. The second time I played there was the living proof of my theory. The picture, “Carnegie Hall,” which United Artists is releasing, is honestly the greatest concert ever filmed and it covers a wide range of the very best in music and performance from the classical masters to the popular trumpet — with me on the blowing end. Betty teases me frequently about having gone “long hair.” She knows she can get a rise out of me that way because I never did go for those arbitrary and superficial distinctions between types of music. Page Twenty-four The notes are there for everyone to play and everyone, that is everyone who has music in his veins, plays them his own way. They tell me Bach enthusiasts sneered at Wagner when his first works were played. And I hear audiences laughed Stravinsky off the stage the The New York Philharmonic Orchestra provides the symphonic background for the “57th Street Concerto,” written especially for the United Artists film, “Carnegie Hall,” in which the world’s greatest instrumentalists perform the world’s best known and best loved music. first time they heard his music. Maybe in some future century “hot licks” will be “old hat.” I didn’t know when I appeared with Goodman in the Hall whether the lines were sharply drawn between the jazz lovers and the classical adherents or not. I had my hep-cat following to think of. Would they desert me if I played in the building that has been known since 1891 as the home of symphony, chamber music, divas and solo instrumentalists? Would they think I was deserting them and joining forces with traditionalists? I always was one to think of audience reaction. When you’re born in a circus, you do. I’m not kidding. I was born in a circus. Harry James performs the new “57th Street Concerto for piano and trumpet,” composed especially for “Carnegie Hall” by W. and M. Portnoff, Harry James’ appearance in “Carnegie Hall,” representing modern swing, is proof of the fact that this contemporary musical form is recognized as an integral part of the world’s musieal literature like the music of the masters, with which it shares the stage in this picture. My mother was a trapeze artist and my father led the band for the Might Haag Circus. They even named me for the hand that fed them: Harry Haag James. They were playing Albany, Georgia when I arrived — on Income Tax Day, too. As soon as I could navigate for myself, an old codger in the troupe taught me how to tie myself in knots, thus starting me on a career. But when I was six, I had a mastoid operation which ended my contortionist activities. To console me, my Dad taught me to play the drums. A couple of years later, the . Jameses switched paymasters and joined the Christy Brothers Circus. Dad started me on the trumpet and pretty soon I was playing in the band. When I was 12, I was leading the circus’s No. 2 band. When my parents retired from tent life and settled in Texas, Dad opened a music school and I decided I wanted to play something besides Sousa marches. I began to “sit in” with dance bands around the Southwest. Around then I wrote a trumpet solo called “Deep Elm.” Benny Goodman heard it in 1937 and asked me to join his band. And just in case that didn’t go to my head quickly enough, I had to go and “solo” on the stage of Carnegie Hall with him. In fact every giant step forward I took was at Benny’s word. He suggested that I form my own band after I’d been with him for only two years. And he lent me the money to do it. I’ve made over half a dozen pictures of one sort or another since 1941 and in each the James trumpet played jazz, jive and jitterbug. “Carnegie Hall” gave me the opportunity to demonstrate my theory that this distinction between “long hair” and popular music is all a state of mind, and that the Hall exists to present the best in music no matter what form it takes and no matter what type artist presents it. I think the producers of “Carnegie Hall” have done a_ great service to the world of music and the world of music-lovers and I’m pretty darn proud. that I could contribute.