MUSICAL COLLABORATION IN THE FILMS OF DAVID O. SELZNICK, 1932–1957 by Nathan R. Platte A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Music: Musicology) in The University of Michigan 2010 Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Mark A. Clague, Chair Professor James M. Borders Professor Roland J. Wiley Adjunct Associate Professor James E. Wierzbicki Professor Gaylyn Studlar, Washington University in St. Louis © NATHAN R. PLATTE 2010 To Diane ii Acknowledgements This dissertation has benefited tremendously from the support of many individuals and institutions. I am grateful to my committee chair, Prof. Mark Clague, and committee members, Profs. James Borders, Gaylyn Studlar, James Wierzbicki, and Roland John Wiley. Not only did they serve as guides during the dissertating process, but each has influenced me profoundly in my development as a writer and scholar. I would not be where I am now were it not for their help. The Rackham School of Graduate Studies, which has been a steady rock even in hard economic times, provided crucial funding for research, writing, and conference papers related to the dissertation. The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, served as my archival home base and also generously funded multiple trips to the enormous David O. Selznick Collection through a dissertation fellowship. I would also like to thank archivists Lauren Buisson at the University of California, Los Angeles, Edward Comstock at the University of Southern California, James D’Arc and Norm Gillespie at Brigham Young University, Nicolette Dobrowolski at Syracuse University, and Steve Wilson at the University of Texas at Austin, who helped me during my visits to their respective institutions and also provided numerous photocopies. My research trips to the Harry Ransom Center also benefited from the kindness of Stella Fiori, a resident of Austin who graciously hosted me. Many individuals supported this project by sharing their expertise, offering suggestions, and introducing new sources. I am especially indebted to William Rosar, iii whose vast knowledge of and enthusiasm for film music—and studio-era film music in particular—has enriched my work. I enjoyed many conversations with Edward Comstock at the University of Southern California and shared with him a mutual admiration for Dimitri Tiomkin’s music. Edward Comstock also facilitated my contacting Olivia Tiomkin, Dimitri’s surviving widow, who kindly shared memories of her husband’s work on specific scores. Steve Wilson at the Harry Ransom Center took time to give me a special guided tour of the impressive David O. Selznick Collection and helped me reach David’s surviving son, Daniel Selznick. Daniel Selznick’s enthusiastic responses to my inquiries and recollections of his father’s interest in film music proved vital. I also wish to thank Sarah Reichardt for sharing with me her conference paper on Portrait of Jennie, Linda Eggert for poring over secretarial shorthand with me, David Neumeyer for his illuminating conversations on Selznick and Franz Waxman, and Thomas Schatz for sharing insights from his own prodigious research on Hollywood film. Gratitude is due to the Library of Congress Serial and Government Publications Division for locating, copying, and mailing an article on music editor Audray Granville. I am also indebted to the faculty and students of the musicology department, especially Charles Garrett, Daniel Blim, and Rebecca Fülöp, whose advice helped me stay the course. The undergraduate students in my Residential College seminar, “Film Music of the Hollywood Studio Era,” also deserve thanks. They served as a sounding board for many of the ideas presented in this dissertation and contributed valuable insights of their own. Finally, I would like to extend a special thank you to those who have long nurtured and supported my work in music: Daniel Long, Greg Normandin, Dennis Smith, David Jackson, and, most of all, my family. iv Prologue After the release of The Paradine Case (1947), producer David O. Selznick gave the film’s composer, Franz Waxman, a special gift: a copy of the score, elegantly bound between maroon covers and stamped with gold lettering. The cover read: THE PARADINE CASE A David O. Selznick Production MUSICAL SCORE Franz Waxman It is a beautiful volume and its exterior resembles a serious edition of a piano-vocal score to an opera. The interior pages reveal something very different. Of course there are no lines for vocalists, though the full orchestral texture is similarly compressed onto fewer staves. There is something more troubling. The score bears visible signs of intrusion and violence. Measures are crossed out on many of the pages. Sometimes the slashing pencil only condemns a measure or two; at other times, an entire page. Some of Waxman’s work is completely absent from the volume while music by Roy Webb written for other films has been inserted. One wonders how Waxman, perusing this token of gratitude and appreciation, felt about a commemorative volume that betrayed the degree to which his music had been sliced, abridged, and replaced before being dubbed into the final film. Instances of producers giving bound copies of film scores to their composers are rare. The contradiction encapsulated in this particular volume, however, is not. One the v one hand, there is the myth of the cover (or name credit) that proclaims a single composer and, by implication, a faithful presentation of the composer’s work. On the other, there is the more complicated reality: pages with omissions, scratch marks, and insertions. These pages allow one to glimpse the contested and collaborative process of film scoring, a process that involves producers, directors, composers, orchestrators, orchestral musicians, sound engineers, music editors, and copyists, among others. The purpose of this dissertation is to explicate and understand this process more fully. The construction of a film score, after all, is an impressive project in its own right. Conflicts, compromises, and collateral damage (usually taking the form of rejected, unused music) reveal not only the many roads not taken, but also foreground tensions that would go unnoticed if alternate versions did not survive. More importantly, focusing attention on the “how” and “why” of film scoring makes us more able to appreciate and analyze the “what”: music that sings, screams, and whispers as stories flicker before our eyes. vi Table of Contents Dedication………………………………………………………………………………...ii Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………iii Prologue…………………………………………………………………………………...v List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………..x List of Tables…………………………………………………………………………....xiii List of Appendices……………………………………………………………………....xiv List of Abbreviations………………………………………………………………….....xv Abstract……………………………………………………………………………….....xvi Chapter 1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………..1 The Film Score: Process, Sources, Authorship…………………………..16 2. Selznick and the Early Scores at RKO and M-G-M…………………………..26 Selznick’s Life in Film…………………………………………………...26 Selznick and (Film) Music……………………………………………….33 Symphony of Six Million (1932): Music Begins at Home………………..38 Selznick and Steiner’s Island Adventure Trilogy (1932–1933)………....52 Selznick and Stothart at M-G-M (1933–1935)…………………………..72 3. Scores for Selznick International Pictures…………………………………….78 Lou Forbes, Music Director (1937–1939)……………………………….99 vii Selznick, Waxman, and Musical Humor in The Young in Heart (1938)……………………………………..109 Music by “Max Steiner & Co.” in Gone with the Wind (1939)………...124 Selznick and Waxman Turn a New Leaf in Rebecca (1940)…………...135 Selznick and Steiner’s Final Collaboration, Since You Went Away (1944)…………………………………...147 4. Musical Whodunits: Illuminating Collective Authorship in the Score for Spellbound (1945)………………………………………………………….169 Synopsis and Secondary Literature……………………………………..173 “Bombarded by the famous Selznick memos:” Spotting and Composing the Score…………………………………………...178 Audray Granville’s Revisions…………………………………………..194 Rózsa’s Music Beyond the Film………………………………………..230 5. A Deceptive Melody: Musical Duplicity in The Paradine Case (1947)….…238 Dueling Auteurs: Hitchcock’s and Selznick’s The Paradine Case…….243 Scoring The Paradine Case…………………………………………….247 Waxman’s Deceptive “Sympatheme”…………………………………..257 Music in the Source Novel……………………………………………...260 Musical Adaptations in the Scripts …………………………………….263 Developing the Melodic Deception…………………………………….266 The Paradine Theme in Context………………………………………..284 Into the Bedroom: Imploding the Fetish………………………………..292 6. “Straining for Something Extraordinary in Music”: Creating a Score for Portrait of Jennie (1948)……………………………………………….310 Synopsis………………………………………………………………...315 Selecting Debussy and Tiomkin………………………………………..317 viii Tiomkin and Duel in the Sun…………………………………………...321 Classical Music in Studio-Era Hollywood Films……………………….330 “Our Valedictory to Wild Extravagance”: Selznick and Tiomkin’s Collaboration…………………………………………………………....335 (Re)Constructing the Musical Score…………………………………....343 Discerning Selznick’s Influence in the Score…………………………..356 Tiomkin’s Navigation of Selznick’s Notes……………………….…….369 Composing beyond Selznick’s Notes…………………………………..388 Aubrey Lind’s and James G. Stewart’s Revisions……………………...400 “The year’s most unusual entry”: Portrait’s Reception………………..417 7. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………...432 Beyond Hollywood……………………………………………………..432 Final Thoughts, Further Possibilities…………………………………...446

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