Hitchcock's Music

HITCHCOCK’S MUSIC HITCHCOCK’S MUSIC jack sullivan yale university pr ess / new haven and london Copyright © 2006 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press),without written permission from the publishers. Designed by Mary Valencia. Set in Minion type by The Composing Room of Michigan, Inc. Printed in the United States of America by Sheridan Books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sullivan, Jack, 1946– Hitchcock’s music / Jack Sullivan. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-300-11050-0 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-300-11050-2 1. Motion picture music—History and criticism. 2. Television music—History and criticism. 3. Hitchcock, Alfred, 1899–1980—Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. ML2075.S89 2006 781.5Ј42—dc22 2006010348 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. 10987654321 For Robin, Geof frey, and David CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi OVERTURE xiii CHAPTER 1 The Music Star ts 1 CHAPTER 2 Waltzes from Vienna: Hitchcock’s For gotten Operetta 20 CHAPTER 3 The Man Who Knew Too Much: Storm Clouds over Royal Alber t Hall 31 CHAPTER 4 Musical Minimalism: British Hitchcock 39 CHAPTER 5 Rebecca: Music to Raise the Dead 58 CHAPTER 6 Waltzing into Danger 81 CHAPTER 7 Sounds of War 96 CHAPTER 8 Spellbound: Theremins and Phallic Frescoes 106 CONTENTS viii CHAPTER 9 Notorious: Bright Sambas, Dark Secr ets 124 CHAPTER 10 The Paradine Case: The Unhappy Finale of Hitchcock and Selznick 137 CHAPTER 11 Hitchcock in a Dif ferent Key: The Post-Selznick Experiments 144 CHAPTER 12 The Band Played On: A T iomkin Trio 156 CHAPTER 13 Rear Window: The Redemptive Power of Popular Music 169 CHAPTER 14 Lethal Laughter: Hitchcock’s Fifties Comedies 183 CHAPTER 15 The Man Who Knew Too Much: Doris Day versus the London Symphony 192 CHAPTER 16 The Wrong Man: Music from the Dark Side of the Moon 207 CHAPTER 17 Sing Along with Hitch: Music for T elevision 214 CHAPTER 18 Vertigo: The Music of Longing and Loss 222 CHAPTER 19 North by Northwest: Fandango on the Rocks 235 CHAPTER 20 Psycho: The Music of Terror 243 CONTENTS ix CHAPTER 21 The Birds: Aviary Apocalypse 259 CHAPTER 22 The Music Ends: Hitchcock Fir es Herrmann 273 CHAPTER 23 Topaz: The Music Is Back 290 CHAPTER 24 Frenzy: Out with Mancini, Hold the Bach 298 CHAPTER 25 Family Plot: Hitchcock’s Exuberant Finale 308 FINALE: HITCHCOCK AS MAESTRO 318 NOTES 323 INDEX 337 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express deep appreciation to Sidney Gottlieb for his gracious assistance and meticulous criticism; to John Waxman and Christopher Husted for their seasoned advice and expert help establishing contacts; to Harry Haskell for his early support; to Liz Weis for sharing her remarkable knowledge of film sound; to Jacques Barzun for his inspiration and encour- agement; to Seymour Solomon for recounting his vivid memories of Bernard Herrmann; to Art Paxton and George Chastain for help with images; to Sedgwick Clark for sharing his vast collection of recordings; to Jules Feiffer for his witty insights shared in our children’s schoolyard; to John Fitzpatrick for information about Spellbound; and to David Lehman for the title. A special thanks goes to Joseph Stefano, whose amazing memory and warm friendship brought the Herrmann-Hitchcock era to life. I am grateful to Rider University for grant support and for colleagues who helped with the project, especially Katherine Maynard, James Gui- mond, and Cynthia Lucia. I am indebted to the many librarians and schol- ars across the country and in London who helped me unearth materials; they include Kyle Barnett, Steve Wilson, David Peers, Barbara Hall, Jenny Romero, Warren Sherk, Shari Weid, Julie Heath, Tegan Kossowicz, Heather Schwartz, Carolyn Davis, and Ned Comstock. Portions of this book have appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Educa- tion, the Hitchcock Annual, Opera magazine,and the American Record Guide. xi OVERTURE Alfred Hitchcock employed more musical styles and techniques than any director in history, from Marlene Dietrich singing Cole Porter in Stage Fright to the revolutionary electronic sound track of The Birds. For nearly half a century he created films full of gripping and illuminating music. Re- becca, Spellbound, Notorious, Rear Window,Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho are landmarks in the history of film music, unsurpassed in their power to hypnotize and bring to life ideas and emotions that cannot be cap- tured by dialogue and images. Hitchcock’s most radical experiments— Rope, The Wrong Man, The Birds—redefine film music altogether. The sus- tained quality of his music over such a long period—from Blackmail in 1929 to Family Plot in 1976—is a unique phenomenon. Although music is essential in Hitchcock’s concept of pure cinema, it is largely unexplored. The scores to Vertigo and Psycho have certainly received attention; indeed, a remarkable consensus among moviegoers and critics holds that the collaboration between Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann was the greatest director-composer partnership in film history. But the special connection Hitchcock had with music began much earlier, with the dawn of movie sound, and continued until his final collaboration, with John Williams. The premise of this book is that one cannot fully understand Hitch- cock’s movies without facing his music. Music is an alternate language in Hitchcock, sounding his characters’ unconscious thoughts as it engages our own. What follows is an exploration of its meaning and an account of how Hitchcock interacted with its creators. Based on archival material and inter- views with Hitchcock’s composers, writers, and actors, including John Williams, Maurice Jarre, Joseph Stefano, Teresa Wright, and Janet Leigh, this book examines not only Hitchcock’s scores but all the ways he used this most elusive and personal of the arts. Many of Hitchcock’s most original films make music a crucial part of the narrative—sometimes the key to the mystery—and many more comment on his musical tastes and prejudices.1 His characters are often musicians who play or sing music central to the story, sometimes in operatic set pieces; heroes and villains alike ally them- xiii OVERTURE xiv selves with songs and musical themes, much like characters in opera or musical theater. Hitchcock changed the way we think about film music. Films like Ver- tigo, Psycho, and The Man Who Knew Too Much are indivisibly linked in the popular imagination with their scores; Rebecca and Spellbound were among the first to successfully use complex orchestral suites as marketing tools.2 With lesser directors, music is often a form of hyperbole, blasting defen- sively onto the sound track to make up for a lack of pictorial distinction; with Hitchcock, the latter is taken for granted, and music is freed up to cre- ate its own realm of meaning, deepening or counterpointing memorable images with sounds that are far more sophisticated than what we hear in standard Hollywood scores. This phenomenon characterizes other directors who use music effectively—Curtiz, Fellini, Kubrick, and Spielberg, for example—but Hitchcock’s innovations span a uniquely long period and have a dazzling variety. From the beginning, he ignored the convention that film music should stay in the background. Often its presence is so strong that it behaves like a character in the drama. In the rarely shown Waltzes from Vienna, a cinematic operetta about the Strauss family, he dramatized ideas about music that he would use for the next forty years. He also estab- lished a consistent pattern of shots that he would reprise in numerous films depicting orchestras and singers. Even Hitchcockians neglect Waltzes; here I shall try to bring it back to life. Hitchcock rarely spoke on the record about music, but when he did, his words were incisive. Clearly, he regarded music as much more than accom- paniment or an easy way to generate suspense. Like Erich Korngold, he compared film to opera. By the early 1930s, he was calling music a revolutionary medium with the potential to destroy or enhance a film, a counter- point to the power of silence. This book examines the full range of Hitchcock music used in his pro- ductions, including Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which unleashed a black hu- mor new to television. I strongly agree with Peter Conrad in his riveting book The Hitchcock Murders that “anyone who is genuinely fascinated by Hitchcock will find all his work indispensable.”3 Even movies Hitchcock himself panned, like Jamaica Inn, Stage Fright, and Topaz, have superb scores and songs, impeccably woven into their textures. Rather than succumb to the temptation of covering the half-dozen films with the most famous scores, I launch into all of them. Leaving any out would be painful, and a disservice to Hitchcockians, who value detail and thoroughness. The importance of music in Hitchcock has been acknowledged in a OVERTURE xv general or metaphorical way. The French compare Hitchcock’s creation of an alternate universe of games and illusions to the state of music; the 1999 Hitch- cock exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art compared his “no-accidents- permitted” storyboards to musical composition; Hitchcock himself con- nected his role as director to that of orchestrator and composer, commenting that he cut the picture beforehand in his imagination “just like a composer makes those little black dots to make music.”4 Hitchcock’s first image was a musical one: the frantic, spinning jazz dancer in the opening shot of The Pleasure Garden, his debut film from 1926.

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