Weird Vibrations: How the Theremin Gave Musical Voice to Hollywood's Extraterrestrial “Others”

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Journal of Popular Film and Television

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James Wierzbicki

To cite this article: James Wierzbicki (2002) Weird Vibrations: How the Theremin Gave Musical Voice to Hollywood's Extraterrestrial “Others”, Journal of Popular Film and Television, 30:3, 125-135, DOI: 10.1080/01956050209602849

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Published online: 02 Apr 2010.

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Download by: [University of Sydney Library] Date: 02 November 2016, At: 17:50 How the lheremin Gave Musical Voice to HdWsExtraterrestrial ‘‘Others’’

By JAMES WlERZBlCKl

Abstract: The theremin played a ushered in a taste for unique role in 1950s science fiction Others of a more films. In Rocketship X-M, The Day the mundane sort. Many Earth Stood Still, The Thing from of them, distinguished Another Planet, and It Came from by race or social class, Outer Space, the instrument was not lent themselves to just a component of the studio orches- broad-brushed musical tra but, in effect, the diegetic “voice” stereotypes;’ some of of the alien entities. them, veering from the Key words: Electronic music, extrater- status quo only by virtue restrial, film music, science fiction, of an unbalanced mental theremin state? or a peculiar sense of m~rality,~required ne suspects the concept sprang more imaginative musical up in the days of the Nean- strokes. One way or anoth- 0derthals, yet the origins of West- er, however, their qualities em society’s “cultural 1maginq”- of Otherness were made an entity foreign and thus potentially musically obvious, and in threatening, yet at the same time the best examples the musi- somehow attractive-are usually cal characterizations of the traced back only to the dawn of Other served their scores not modernity in post-Renaissance Europe just semiotically but struc- (Stallybrass and White 193). Certainly turally (Middleton 60). That the earliest recorded musico-theatrical these musically well-defined Others In It Came froin Outer Space (19S3), the depictions of an exotic Other date were of great interest to both the cre- presence of unseen alien creatures is sig- naled by a theme sounded exclusively by from this period. It was at the begin- ators and the consumers of opera, the theremin. ning of the seventeenth century, in especially in the late-nineteenth and Italy, that opera was born; considering early-twentieth centuries, is evidenced the importance of the Other as a by the fact that so many of them are stream-native Americans, Asians. defense mechanism for the human titular characters. Feminist critics blacks, members of the more prominent psyche, it is not altogether surprising (McClary 63, ClCment 24-42) have European immigrant groups-were that the very first operas-Jacopo been quick to point out that most of identified by means of stereotypes at Peri’s 1600 Euridice and Claudio these eponymous protagonists are least loosely based on the subjects’ tra- Monteverdi’s 1607 La Favola d’Or- women, and that far more often than ditional music (Gorbnian 234-38). The feo-afford prominent time to the not their perceived dangerousness is more fantastic Others-monsters and limning of creatures not of this world. balanced by overt sex appeal. mad scientists, for the most part-were As opera matured over the next 150 During the first decades of the sound typically represented by modernistic years, the dramatic duties that at first film, composers in Hollywood fol- musical gestures that seemed deviant in had been assigned to mere Shades and lowed the operatic model in their de- the context of a score’s generally con- Furies were taken over by full-fledged pictions of the intriguing Other. Real servative norm. gods and goddesses. But the Age of people whose ethnicities obviously dis- Significantly, in almost all of these Reason and the ensuing Romantic Era tanced them from the cultural main- cases the medium of musical expres- 12s 126 JPF&T-Journal of Popular Film and Television sion remained constant. While the Lune,’O a fourteen-minute fantasy that military audiences-the studios re- microphones of the 1930s indeed features not only a trip to the moon by leased a raft of feature films. Their favored certain kinds of sounds, com- a group of earthlings but also the earth- wartime products ranged widely in posers tended to ignore the limitations lings’ encounter with moon men who subject matter, from frothy comedy (Prendergast 33); it was by choice, not vanish in puffs of smoke when the and gung-ho statements of patriotism because of technological constraints, earthlings strike them with their to increasingly noir crime stories and that the vast majority of early Holly- umbrellas. Other space-travel film titles controversial essays in social criti- wood film scores featured ensembles from the silent era are Parema, Crea- cism. But the action remained down- that at least in instrumental make-up turefrom the Starworld (1922), A Trip to-earth, and the accompanying musi- resembled the standard symphony to Mars (1924), and-most notably- cal scores held to convention. orchestra! The music that announced Fritz Lang’s Woman in the Moon The explosions of atomic bombs over the entrances of Carmen Miranda and (1929). Along with a great many sci- Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August the Bride of Frankenstein, for example, ence fiction films in which the charac- 1945 brought World War II to a quick or accompanied the dancing of Irish ters and action are entirely earthbound, conclusion. They also kindled new street urchins and Indians on the the first decade of the sound film pro- fears, for global destruction and radia- warpath, of course, varied greatly in its duced such pictures as Stratos-Fear tion-induced illness-nce the mere harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic con- (1933), Spaceship to the Unknown conceits of science fiction writers-had tent. But virtually all of this music drew (1936), and Sky Rocket (1937). in a dramatic flash become much more its sonic coloration from the same Then, after a handful of feature than theoretical possibilities. orchestral palette that served the needs films based on the popular Flash Gor- Along with the concept of a planet of Hollywood composers as they lent don and Buck Rogers serials,’’ Holly- reduced to a cinder, the years immedi- musical support to the activities of wood’s interest in extraterrestrials sud- ately following World War I1 con- “normal” characters. Quite a different denly waned. Newsreel reports of tained other fuels for America’s popu- situation existed in the early 1950s, deadly conflicts with perfectly human lar imagination. As a byproduct of when a very particular sonority came to Others in Europe and the Pacific held war-inspired advances in aviation and be associated with a vague yet potent the country’s attention, and apparently rocketry, scientists and government filmic Other that for all intents and pur- there was little appetite for terrors officials for the first time were engag- poses had just arrived on the scene. born of fantasy. There was, of course, ing in serious public discussion of a great demand for entertainment dur- space exploration. On a grimmer note, xtraterrestrials were not new to the ing the war years, and so-along with a previously unsuspected enemy-the Egeneral public of post-World War II countless government-supported doc- Soviet Union, now bent on spreading America, for they had long existed in umentaries aimed at civilian as well as communism worldwide-replaced literature. Perhaps only scholars were familiar with the various moon creatures depicted in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writing^.^ But even modestly educated citizens would have known at least the gist of such popular novels as Jules Verne’s 1865 L.e Voyage duns le Lune (popularly known in Eng- lish translations as From the Earth to the Moon) and H. G. Wells’s 1898 The War of the Worlds. And for the people who especially relished such fare, a wealth of material existed in the stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs6 and H. P. Lovecraft? in the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon comic strip^,^ and in such “pulp” magazines as Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, Fantastic Adven- tures, and Astounding St~ries.~ Like the writers of imaginative fiction, filmmakers were drawn to the ideas of space travel and extraterrestrials. Of the earliest commercial films, one of the best known is Georges The robot in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) makes no noise, yet quivery music MCliks’s 1902 Le Voyage duns Ee from a pair of theremins seems to represent its voice. Weird Vibrations: The Theremin 127 the foes that had just been vanquished content to stay at home and deal with widespread notes connected by exag- on the battlefield. Most intriguing of alien visitors. gerated slides, with sustained pitches all, the wake of the war swept into the The filmic extraterrestrials that coated in a rich vibrato-had much in American consciousness a brand new popped up on occasion in the first half common with the hyper-Romantic Other that the citizenry could easily of the twentieth century were entirely style of violin and cello playing that transform into an embodiment of its imaginary. Those depicted in 1950s developed in the last decades of czarist aspirations as well as its increasingly sci-fi movies were imaginary as well, Russia and that persisted, anachronis- urgent anxieties: In June 1947 a fleet but recent developments in science tically, through much of the Soviet era. of nine flying saucers was reported and the suddenly widespread belief in But the theremin came with no maneuvering in the vicinity of Mt. UFOs gave them at least a soupGon of strings attached. Originally and aptly Rainier in Washington State; a month credibility. And in those films freight- called the “aetherophone,” it drew its later-with an even greater splash of ed with more or less subtle political sounds literally from thin air. The tone publicity-an alien spaceship alleged- messages, what the extraterrestrials was produced by means of a pair of ly crashed in the desert near a military seemed to represent was most definite- identically tuned radio-frequency base in Roswell, New Mexico. ly real. Like the various earthly Others oscillators, one fixed in its broadcast These four elements-the bomb, who preceded it to the screen, the sud- frequency and the other allowed to the beginnings of aerospace research, denly ubiquitous and conceptually vary according to the distance of a sig- the incipient Cold War, and the per- graspable post-World War I1 extrater- nal-interrupting object (eg, the play- ceived presence of extraterrestrial restrial demanded a sonic calling card. er’s hand) hovering near its antenna. spacecraft--combined within a few With no anthropological materials to When the two frequencies were years to trigger what is often called guide them, Hollywood composers mixed, or heterodyned, the difference Hollywood’s Golden Age of science looked to technology for the alien between them resulted in a third fre- fiction Nms. The first few efforts were Other’s stereotypical voice. quency; it was this so-called “differ- modest in both their fantasy and their ence tone” that was amplified and frightfulness; the goals of their protag- ike the generalized idea of extrater- channeled to a loudspeaker. In the fin- onists were “exploratory and construc- restrials, the swoopy, tremulous ished models of the theremin, volume tive,” and the “dangers [were] limited sound of the electronic musical instru- levels were controlled by means of a to small groups of men ready and will- ment known as the theremin was not comparable heterodyne effect trig- ing to face them” (Everson 36). But exactly a novelty by the time America gered by the player’s other hand. the direction of the fictional space entered the atomic age. It is not likely Thtrkmin developed the instrument travelers soon shifted, for reasons that that the average American moviegoer in 1919 at Petrograd University’s had less to do with creativity than with would have been familiar with the Physico-Technical Institute. By the economics and politics. theremin’s earliest cinematic uses in summer of 1920 he was ready to On the one hand, Hollywood in the the Soviet films Alone (1931) and demonstrate it at an All-Union Electri- early 1950s was hard-pressed both by Komsomol: The Patron of Electrijica- cal Congress, and reports of the instru- the court-ordered selling of studio- tion (1934), with scores by Dmitri ment’s wonders quickly reached the owned theaters (Mast 316) and by Shostakovich and Gavreil Popov, highest levels of authority. Lenin was competition from the new medium of respectively. ** But radio listeners delighted with it, and he encouraged television; the financial pressures would have known the buzzy sound ThCrCmin to popularize his invention. reminded producers that it was effects with which a theremin player Within a few years ThCrkmin gave “cheaper to build one monster than a indicated the presence of the title char- almost 200 recitals-featuring a reper- series of planet landscapes and props” acter of the syndicated program The toire of transcriptions of works by (Hill 55). On the other hand, the rising Green Hornet.13 And aficionados of Chopin, Schubert, and other classical tide of paranoia brought to American classical music might well have composers-in various parts of the shores a keener than usual interest in heard-live or on the air-a perform- Soviet Union. In 1923 he performed in outsiders. As Peter Biskind so illumi- ance by Clara Rockmore, in the 1930s Berlin, and in 1924, in Leningrad, he natingly pointed out in his 1983 study and ’40s generally regarded as Ameri- was the soloist in Andrey Pashchen- of 1950s films, fear of Others was “an ca’s foremost theremin virtuoso, or by ko’s Symphonic Mystery for theremin occupational hazard of the cold-war her teacher, the Russian inventor after and orchestra. battle of ideas” (1 1l), and the conceit whom the instrument is named. The instrument and its inventor of using nonhumans as metaphors for Leon ThCrCmin never intended his traveled to Paris in 1927, and the terrestrial enemies appealed as much device to be used for anything but much-anticipated concert at the Paris to screenwriters of leftist persuasion as melodic music in the traditional vein. Opera was a smashing success. Simi- to their right-wing counterparts. Born in 1896 in St. Petersburg, he was lar attention and acclaim greeted Although the heroes of 1950s science trained not only as a physicist but also ThCrCmin when, in January 1928, he fiction films continued to venture into as a cellist. Indeed, his preferred made his American debut in the Grand outer space, far more often they were approach to the instrument-with Ballroom of the New York Plaza 128 JPF&T-Journal of Popular Film and Television

Hotel. A few days later he performed trist who throughout the 1930s used time, Hitchcock and Selznick had nei- before a capacity crowd at the Metro- the pseudonym Hal Hope when, in his ther heard nor heard of the theremin, politan Opera. spare time, he performed with a small but they were open to the suggestion. Almost overnight, ThCrCmin became dance band in which he was the fea- To make a demonstration recording the darling of the East Coast classical tured soloist on both violin and featuring the angular theremin theme music establishment; thanks to radio theremin. In 1941 Hoffman moved his he had devised, R6zsa contacted the broadcasts, within a year he was medical practice to Los Angeles, by-then quite famous Clara Rock- famous throughout the country. Ameri- where-at Leone’s Restaurant on Sun- more, who indignantly replied that her can-based modernist composers launch- set Boulevard, and still using the stage artistry was above the level of Holly- ed a series of works that showcased at name Hal Hope-he also moonlighted wood entertainment. R6zsa then least some of the theremin’s poten- as a musician. Hoffman’s musical turned to the Los Angeles musicians’ tial.14 On the more popular front, in the tastes were very much down-to-earth, union book; among the handful of early 1930s the Russian CmigrC Clara and he never anticipated a career in the thereminists listed, the only one who Rockmore (nke Reisenberg) began to film industry. Yet it was his mere pres- could read musical notation was concertize throughout the United ence on the scene that eventually Samuel Hoffman (Glinsky 253-54). States with theremin programs built forged the link between the theremin Hitchcock and Selznick responded around lyric works drawn from the and cinematic extraterrestrials. favorably to the theremin-flavored standard repertoire. sketch that R6zsa concocted for the The fact that Rockmore, like ThkrC- lthough commercially made there- scene in which the film’s male protag- min himself, regarded the instrument Aml*ns had been available since the onist (played by Gregory Peck) first as primarily a vehicle for traditional late 1920s, it was not until 1944 that lapses into a possibly murderous music’* was met with derision in cer- one of the instruments found its way trance (Brown 274). Then, Rdzsa said, tain quarters. As late as 1937, the onto the soundtrack of a Hollywood “they wanted to use it everywhere in avant-garde composer John Cage, in film.17 The breakthrough opus was the picture” (Prendergast 69). After an address to a Seattle arts society, Lady in the Dark, Mitchell Leisen’s R6zsa’s-and Hoffman’s-contribu- complained that generally unremarkable adaptation of tion to Spellbound won an Academy the Broadway show that had featured a Award for best score, “the theremin when Theremin provided an instrument with genuinely new possibilities, Ther- book by Moss Hart and songs by Kurt gained instant status as an emblem for eministes did their utmost to make the Weil and Ira Gershwin. The plot con- the unbalanced side of the human psy- instrument sound like some old instru- cerns a career woman who, as she che” (Glinsky 254). Before long, the ment, giving it a sickeningly sweet gropes for the source of her unhappi- Hollywood press corps concluded that vibrato, and performing upon it, with ness, undergoes psychoanalysis. Func- “the theremin [was] Rozsa’s trade- difficulty, masterpieces from the past. Although the instrument is capable of a tioning more as a special effect than an mark just as the sarong [was] Dorothy wide variety of sound qualities, obtained integral element in Robert E. Dolan’s Lamour’s” (Palmer 33). by the mere turning of a dial, Theremi- score, quivery tones played on the In fact, R6zsa utilized the theremin nistes act as censors, giving the public theremin serve as the requisite “signifi- only twice more, as “the official those sounds they think the public will er” whenever the protagonist submits to ‘voice’ of dipsomania” (Rbzsa 129) in like. (4) treatment. his score for Billy Wilder’s 1945 film It was more a matter, one suspects, of Thus began a short-lived association The Lost Weekend and two years later the American public genuinely liking between the sound of the theremin-in to inject a heavy dose of eeriness into what it heard. Especially when it was essence, acoustically unstable-and Delmer Daves’s The Red House. But applied to tried-and-true melodies and various states of mental instability as his fellow composer Roy Webb fea- approached with a conservative inter- projected by filmic characters. That tured the theremin to good effect, as an pretive sensibility, the new-fangled Lady in the Dark in any way influ- identifier for the serial killer, in his theremin was clearly a hit. Its inventor’s enced him, however, would have been music for Robert Siodmak’s 1946 The celebrity in America ran unabated until denied by the composer who truly put Spiral Staircase. In 1947 the theremin 1938, when Soviet agents broke into his the theremin on the Hollywood map. added a touch of the bizarre to the oth- New York apartment and forcibly As Mikl6s R6zsa tells it in his erwise run-of-the-mill scores for W. returned him to Moscow.I6 autobiography, it was his own, entirely Lee Wilder’s suspenseful The Pre- In 1929 the Radio Corporation of original idea to use the theremin when, tender and-whenever hypnosis en- America purchased a license to manu- early in 1945, he was approached by tered into the comic plot-Norman facture theremins. RCA’s publicity director Alfred Hitchcock and produc- McLeod’s The Road to Rio. The scores campaigns were well funded, and er David 0. Selznick and asked if he of two films from 1948-Corkscrew approximately 200 instruments were could come up with “something Alley and the romantic comedy Let’s sold. Significant for the course of film unusual” to limn the intensely psycho- Live a Little-included theremin parts. music, one of them was purchased by logical scenes of their upcoming film So did the dramatically diverse 1949 Samuel Hoffman, a New York podia- Spellbound (R6zsa 126).18 At that films The Fountainhead, Impact, and Weird Vibrations: The Theremin 129

Devil Weed. And so did the 1950 comedies Fancy Pants and Let’s Dance (Glinsky 280-83). In all of these films, the theremin player was Samuel Hoffman. The success of R6zsa’s music for Spellbound had meant success for the podiatrist as well, for in the wake of the Oscar he appeared as soloist-at the Holly- wood Bowl and on television-in an extract from the score that R6zsa called the “Spellbound ’’ Concerto. Hoffman was also invited to be the featured performer on several “easy listening” albums for various recording labels. These projects included The Chinese Album (Columbia, 1947), Perjkme Set to Music (RCA, 1948), and Music for Peace of Mind (Capitol, 1950). But it was Hoffman’s frrst album that perhaps planted the seed, in the minds of film directors, for the theremin’s later use as the In The Thingfrom Another WorM (1951), the theremin figures into the score only when clichkd voice of extraterrestrials. the title character is shown on screen. Issued by RCA in 1947, the eight-disc collection consisted of deliberately “dreamy” compositions by Harry relatively few film scores go deserved- theremin but nonetheless feature

Revel as arranged by Leslie Baxter. It ly uncelebrated.20In a study of music theremin-like sounds and gestures. was titled Music out of the Moon.19 for cinematic extraterrestrials,however, For better or worse, the theremin Grofk’s contribution to Rocketship X-M itself decorated the soundtracks of e moon, as it happened, is the warrants attention. Not only is Rocket- Operation Moon (1953), The Day the T”scheduled destination of the protago- ship X-M the first science fiction film to World Ended (1956), and Earth vs. the nists of Kurt Neumann’s 1950 film feature the theremin in its score; the Spider (1958), all of which arguably Rocketship X-M. Alas, their plan goes length of the passage in which the count among Hollywood’s lesser sci-fi awry, and before long the space travel- theremin is dominant easily exceeds efforts.22In the 1960s, after the genre’s ers discover that they are headed- anything that came later. Golden Age had begun to tarnish, the albeit against their will-toward Mars. What came later, most notably, are theremin was heard in the music for Exploration of the red planet leads the Robert Wise’s 1951 The Day the Earth the comic television programs The Jet- crew to a startling discovery: Once Stood Still, Christian Nyby’s 1951 The sons and My Favorite Martian.23And upon a time a humanoid civilization Thing from Another World, and Jack more recently, in gestures that obvi- indeed existed on this distant orb, but Arnold’s 1953 It Came from Outer ously pay homage to their 1950s inspi- that civilization-technologically ad- Space, a trio of science fiction classics rations, composers Howard Shore and vanced beyond the dreams of earthly remarkable as much for the enduring Danny Elfman included the theremin scientists-apparently destroyed itself worthiness of their theremin-flavored in their scores for Ed Wood (1994) and in an atomic holocaust. “Were there any scores (by Bernard Herrmann, Dmitri Mars Attacks! ( 1996).24 survivors?’ asks a member of the crew. Tiomkin, and Henry Mancini, respec- “I certainly hope not,” replies the expe- tively)21as for the intensity of their s in earlier films that utilized the in- dition’s leader. sociopolitical subtexts. Also in the wake Astrument, in all the science fiction The score for Rocketship X-M is the of Rocketship X-M, significantly, are films mentioned above the mere sound work of Ferde Grofk (1892-1972), a Byron Haskin’s 1953 The War of the of the theremin (or an imitation there- composer best known for his perennial- Worlds,Gordon Douglas’s 1954 Them!, has strong semiotic properties. ly popular 1931 Grand Canyon Suite Fred McLeod Wilcox’s 1956 Forbidden Between the science fiction films and-at least among music histori- Planet, and Ib Melchior’s 1959 The and their predecessors, however, there ans-for his orchestration of the 1924 Angry Red Planet, the scores of which is an important difference in the semi- original version of George Gershwin’s (by kith Stevens, Bronislau Kaper, otic function of the theremin sonority. Rhapsody in Blue. Grof6 was not a reg- Louis and Bebe Barron, and Paul Dun- A comparable difference exists be- ular on the Hollywood scene, and his lap, respectively) do not include the tween the theremin-flavored musical 130 JPF&T-Journal of Popular Film and Television ideas with which composers for the sci- most cases, their generically “anxious” dramatic contexts into which the ther- ence fiction films limned their extrater- theremin parts consisted of little more emin is introduced almost always sug- restrial Others and Hollywood’s stan- than a sustained tone followed by a gest that the instrument’s ethereal dard musical depiction of outsiders drop of a half-step, then a slow descent sound is somehow diegetic, that is, (i .e ., with anthropologically based spanning a third or fourth?’ While the that it emanates not just from a mem- musical stereotypes filtered through a purely musical meaning of these ber of the studio orchestra but also homogeneous orchestral screen). The clichkd themes was arguably shallow, from something actually contained difference has to do with symbolistic the requisite associative links were within the film’s narrative. depth. Whereas in most film scores the nevertheless forged simply by the In these science fiction films, the potent musical signifier is meaningful theremin’s sound, which cuts through a notes prescribed for the theremin (or on only two levels, the theremin music its equivalent) are of course compo- in the science fiction films from the nents of the musical score. At the 1950s is typically freighted with yet a same time, the theremin’s distinctive third layer of signification. sonority takes on an “objective” In considering any film score that The !heremin parts in SCO1eS for quality, that is, it becomes a charac- features the theremin, it is important to science fiction films teristic of a specific filmic object, distinguish between the mere sound of and that object in turn functions as the instrument and the musical materi- from the ’I 950s convey the source of the sound (Metz 156). al assigned to it. Notwithstanding var- There is a tantalizing ambiguity ious nuances in performance and cre- considerably more than what here, for the distinctive theremin ative settings within the orchestral might have been sonority tends to be what certain context, the sound of the theremin is French theorists have called more or less a constant, and its quasi- communicated had the “acousmatic”: It exists “. . . nei- vocal timbre-similar to that of a male ther inside nor outside the image” voice singing the long “u” vowel in composers orchestrated the (Chion 129). The correspondence falsetto-is instantly identifiable even between the activity of the filmic same- -. musical material for, when the audio mix plunges the score object and the theremin sonority deep into the background. On the say, violins or trombones is rarely so exact as to suggest other hand, the actual music played by or flutes. what is conventionally known as the theremin varies widely. a “sound effect.” At least in an For The Lost Weekend and Spell- abstracted way, however, when bound, Mikl6s R6zsa gave the theremin the audience hears the theremin music genuine themes, i.e., melodic ideas so musical underscore like a knife applied it also hears the actual voice of the distinct that they would be recognized to sun-softened butter. So long as the extraterrestrial Other. no matter what instrument brought sonority was not overused, the slightest them to life? These themes, because of hint of the theremin could signal what- n Rocketship X-M,quivery orchestral their ebb and flow of dissonance and ever idea dominated the narrative when Ichords are heard whenever a member consonance, of tension and resolution, the sound was first introduced. of the crew enters the spaceship’s are in and of themselves emotionally- But whether hackneyed or not, the engine room. But the unmistakable albeit vaguely-meaningful (Meyer theremin parts in scores for science fic- sound of the theremin is withheld until 197-233). And like the leitmotifs of tion films from the 1950s convey con- the astronauts don their oxygen masks Wagnerian opera, they gain additional siderably more than what might have and set out to explore the Martian meaning by virtue of their associations, been communicated had the composers landscape. Just as the imagery of this in the context of their films’ narratives, orchestrated the same musical material otherwise monochrome film suddenly with certain physical or psychological for, say, violins or trombones or flutes. turns reddish when the four crew entities. Thus, while R6zsa’s theremin They convey more, too, than whatever members disembark, so does the themes for The Lost Weekend and Spell- associations might have been estab- theremin suddenly permeate the score. bound are unsettling by the very nature lished between the mere sound of the The Martian scene, which climaxes of their pitches and rhythms, their high- theremin and some physicaYpsycho- with the space travelers’ violent ly discriminate usage in the scores logical element of the plot. encounter with the planet’s horribly relates them specifically to the dramat- Before Rocketship X-M, the ther- mutated inhabitants, lasts almost thirty ic ideas of severe alcoholism and mur- emin music that symbolized abnormal minutes. Through all of it, the there- derous potential. mental states, impending doom, or min hovers ominously over slow-mov- Most of the second-rate composers generalized “spookiness” comes from ing harmonies punctuated with occa- who gravitated to the theremin in the the accompanying orchestra that exists sional bursts of musical action, and it 1940s and 1950s opted for decidedly somewhere beyond the screen. With is silenced only when the crew’s two less memorable musical patterns; in Rocketship X-M and its successors, the surviving members find sanctuary in Weird Vibrations: The Theremin 131 their black-and-white spaceship. The ment brought it to life. Yet it is the invaders are depicted on screen. Broni- symbolism is obvious. Not only does theremin, and only the theremin, that slau Kaper’s masterly score for Them! the music played by the theremin sig- sounds this identifying melodic frag- introduces its famous electronic buzz nal the ominousness of the Martian ment. When the scary yet basically only when the giant mutant ants are in environment, for all intents and pur- friendly aliens actually speak, their the scenario. As is the case with the poses, the sound of the theremin is the words are thickly coated in reverbera- 1950 Rocketship X-M, 1959’s The sound of the Martian atmosphere. tion; when they are simply on the Angry Red Planet bathes its otherwise In The Day the Earth Stood Still, the scene, scouting out the situation or black-and-white imagery in a reddish theremin artfully drifts in and out of gently “borrowing” the bodies of filter when the astronauts disembark Bernard Herrmann’s score as the narra- selected earthlings, their presence is following the cue of the earlier film, tive dances around the more or less inevitably given away by queer composer Paul Dunlap overlays his pressured undercover activities of the thereminesque vibrations. music with shimmery vibraphone son- benign extraterrestrial protagonist. At Holding to the tradition established orities only when the crew is exploring these moments, the instrument’s role is in the 1950s, the theremin is almost the Martian envir~nment.~~ similar to those it played in the scores exclusively the musical concomitant Of all the nontheremin scores for for Spellbound and The Lost Weekend; of the “fictional” or “real” extraterres- the classic science fiction films, per- the musical material in and of itself has trials in the more recent Ed Wood and haps the most intriguing is the one for an unsettling quality, and the combina- Mars Attacks! And although its use is Forbidden Planet. Louis and Bebe tion of theme and sonority forms a leit- Barron’s contribution to this 1956 film motif that clearly signifies the extrater- is emblazoned in music history restrial. Quite a different situation texts as the first entirely synthe- exists, however, whenever the extrater- sized score commissioned for a restrial’s robot companion is put into full-length motion picture. The action. In these situations, the exagger- Barrons’ so-called “electronic ated tremolo of the theremin fairly signal the ominousness of t~nalities”~~were painstakingly roars with superhuman power.28 The generated on what was then state- robot makes no other sound as it disin- the Martian environment, for of-the-art equipment, and the wide tegrates offensive soldiers or sets out to range of the composers’ aural rescue its injured master; when the all intents and purposes, the imagination is amply demonstrated robot raises its angry voice, the voice is sound of the theremin is by the soundtrack’s abundant blips, that of the theremin. .- bleeps, and bloops. Nevertheless, In The Thing from Another World, the sound of the Martian whenever the script veers from the composer Dmitri Tiomkin employs merely exotic to the truly dire, the the theremin only in scenes in which atmosphere. electronic music reverts to the estab- the bloodthirsty extraterrestrial is lished formula. Whether merely depicted on screen. The musical alluded to or brought frighteningly to material is subtle as the vegetable-like the fore, the film’s “monsters from the creature is cut from the ice and then sorely clichCd, the theremin plays a Id” are inevitably identified by sonori- gradually thawed. But the theremin similar triple role-not just as a vehi- ties that are high pitched and tremu- music trembles with increasingly cle for dramatically expressive music lous, applied to musical themes that demonic force as the alien begins to and as a timbral leitmotif that by its for the most part consist of sustained wreak havoc on the arctic explorers sonority alone suggests an alien or notes with only slight chromatic alter- who discovered it. When the alien is monstrous presence but also as a ations. In their laboratory, the com- finally exterminated, so too are the diegetic sound apparently emanating posers could have concocted virtually unearthly tones of the theremin. directly from the Other-in the vin- any sound to depict these psychic In It Came from Outer Space, as in tage Operation Moon, The Day the antagonists; it seems significant that the calmer moments of The Day the World Ended, and Earth vs. the Spider. for the film’s key dramatic moments Earth Stood Still, relatively nonviolent The tradition and the clichC, which the Barrons devoted considerable time music played by the theremin accom- ultimately are one and the same, can and energy to creating synthetic musi- panies the scenes featuring extraterres- also be illustrated by science fiction cal gestures that could have been real- trials. Henry Mancini’s theremin parts films from the 1950s whose scores do ized in an instant at the hands of a for It Came from Outer Space, howev- not employ the theremin. In kith skilled theremin player. er, are far more motivic than Herr- Stevens’s music for The War of the mann’s filler material. Indeed, so Worlds, musically purposeful noises f one limits discussion only to recent relentlessly used is Mancini’s “alien” that might be described as at least Iscores, it is easy to concur with the theme that it would serve its significa- somewhat thereminesque enter the commonly held notion that “the sci- tional purpose no matter what instru- sonic mix only when the Martian ence fiction film, as a genre, lacks a 132 JPF&T-Journal of Popular Film and Television distinctive music” (Lemer). Consider films as Hour of the Gun (a Western unlike anything that audiences had for a moment the brilliant constella- from 1967), King Solomon’s Mines (a ever before encountered. Over-used tion of themes that John Williams cre- Victorian epic from 1985), and Exec- and over-imitated, the thereminesque ated in 1977 for the first installment in utive Decision (a modem political gesture eventually lost its potency. At the Star Wars series and then recapitu- drama from 1996). least for a glorious while, however, the lated for The Empire Strikes Back Like Williams, the prolific and theremin’s weird vibrations formed (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). hugely successful Goldsmith could the perfect voice for Hollywood’s That much of the music is arguably hardly be accused of repeating himself extraterrestrial Other. derivative does not go unnoticed by from one project to another. Yet virtu- sophisticated ears.31 Nonetheless, ally all of his film music, like the music NOTES these ideas are rich in character, and of Williams, features the same sonic 1. The peasants who rub against the within their filmic contexts they seem palette and the same aesthetic position aristocracy in Mozart’s 1786 The Marriage perfectly suited to their associated nar- vis-8-vis the film’s narrative content. of Figam and 1787 Don Giovanni are rative entities. What is “special” about Goldsmith’s or introduced with suitably rustic dance rhythms; the bloodthirsty Scythians who But consider also the same compos- Williams’s music for one film or make the Greeks, in comparison, seem so er’s music for the 1981 Raiders of the another is its thematic material, not its civilized in Cluck’s 1779 Iphiginie en Tau- Lost Ark and its two sequels (the 1984 basic sound or significational function. ride are given music that has a convincing- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Goldsmith’s and Williams’s contribu- ly barbaric ring. One does not need to read Doom and the 1989 Indiana Jones and tions to recent science fiction films are the libretti of Verdi’s 1871 Aida, Bizet’s 1875 Carmen, or Puccini’s 1926 Turandot the Last Crusade). In particular, con- certainly praiseworthy, but their sci-fi to know that the eponymous protagonists sider the theme that identifies the scores are not in essence distinct from are, respectively, a noble Ethiopian slave, a eponymous protagonist of the Indiana their other work. Like almost every seductive gypsy, and a cold-hearted Chi- Jones films, and then compare it to the other composer working in Hollywood nese princess, for their accompanying “main title” theme of the Star Wars today, Goldsmith and Williams try music clearly identifies not only their per- sonalities but also their ethnicities. In the series. These two themes are of course hard to avoid the genre’s best-known case of Haltvy’s 1835 La hive and Meyer- memorable and distinct, yet their musical clicht. beer’s 1865 L’Africaine,the titles speak for musical content-their melodic But once upon a time, in an era far, themselves. shapes, their harmonic architecture, far away, the clicht was actually an 2. Probably the best known of the men- their rhythmic impulses-is at the original idea. Like the disembarking tally aberrant Others are the title characters of Bellini’s 1831 La Sonnambula, Doni- very least quite similar, and their astronauts in the 1950 Rocketship X- zetti’s 1835 Lucia di Lammermoor, and orchestrations are virtually identical. M,composer Ferde Grof6 took a bold Puccini’s 1918 Suor Angelica. More significant, also virtually identi- step when he used the mere sound of 3. Examples of the morally degenerate cal are the themes’ emotive messages. the theremin to represent not only all Other include the title characters of There is nothing particularly “archaeo- the dire implications of a distant plan- Massenet’s 1884 Manon, Verdi’s 1853 La Traviata, and-perhaps most famously- logical” about the one or “interstellar” et but also the peculiar tingle of that Berg’s 1937 Lulu. about the other; in essence, the themes planet’s atmosphere. In their landmark 4. The orchestras tended to be small- signify only grandness of character 1951 scores for The Day the Earth between twenty and thirty players-but and the promise of heroic action. Stood Still and The Thing from Anoth- their instrumentation for the most part Indeed, had the Indiana Jones and Star er World, Bernard Herrmann and matched that of the conventional symphony orchestra. Wars themes been interchanged at the Dmitri Tiomkin were still blazing the 5. These include Johannes Kepler’s series’ outsets, the communicative trail that linked the theremin’s distinc- Somnium, published posthumously in results would have been the same. tive sonority to noises that conceivably 1634; Francis Goodwin’s The Man in the Jerry Goldsmith’s music for the could be emitted by extraterrestrials. It Moon: Or a Discourse of a Voyage Thith- 1979 Star Trek: The Motion Picture may be that Henry Mancini was er, from ca. 1640; and Cyrano de Berger- ac’s 1656 L’Histoire comique des itats et and various of its sequels (The Final already falling into a musical rut with empires de la lune. Frontier in 1989, First Contact in his contributions to the 1953 It Came 6. Burroughs, who lived from 1875 to 1996) is similarly potent and apt for from Outer Space, but it was a rut that 1950, published prolifically. He is best its subject matter. It can be noted that had only recently been dug. known for his “Martian” series of stories at least in a general way the music As in the psychological thrillers of that ran from 1912 to 1948, but his works also include The Moon Maid (1 926) and a bears a stylistic/sonic resemblance to the late 1940s, the theremin in these trilogy of novels (1934-39) set on the Goldsmith’s scores for other science Golden Age science fiction films was planet Venus. fiction films (1968’s Planet of the ear-catching to the extreme. But in its 7. Most notable among them, in terms Apes, 1979’s Alien, 1990’s Total triple signification-not just as a vehi- of their focus on extraterrestrials, are The Recall). But it can also be noted that cle for purely musical expression and Colour Out of Space (1927) and The Call of the Cthulhu (1928). the music, in a general way, bears a as an aural leitmotif, but also as a sug- 8. The Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon stylistic/sonic resemblance to Gold- gestion of a diegetic sound emanating comic strips began in 1929 and 1934, smith’s scores for such down-to-earth from an on-screen entity-it was respectively. Weird Vibrations: The Theremin 133

9. Although the “pulps” had been in 17. In casual writings about film music, 27. In film music, this figure can be existence since the turn of the century, it one occasionally encounters mention of a traced back to Franz Waxman’s masterly was not until 1926, when Hugo Gernsback theremin being used in the scores for King score for the 1935 The Bride of Franken- launched Amazing Stories, that there was a Kong (1933) and The Bride of Franken- stein, but its origins lie in the so-called magazine devoted exclusively to science stein (1935). In fact, these scores used only Expressionistic music that Arnold Schoen- fiction. Astounding Stones was started by conventional orchestral instruments. berg and other Viennese modernists were John Wood Campbell, Jr., in 1937, and it 18. R6zsa had been interested in the writing in the years surrounding World stood apart from its competitors in that its theremin since 1939, when he tried-with- war I. stated goal was to attract science fiction out success-to use it in the genie seg- 28. Actually, in the robot passages Herr- writing of the highest literary quality. ments of his score for The Thief ofBagdad mann used a pair of theremins. 10. Like the 1875 operetta by Jacques (Prendergast 69). 29. In the 1950s, thereminesque sounds Offenbach, the film is based-albeit very 19. Three of Hoffman’s albums-Music generated exclusively as musical refer- loosely--on the same-titled novel by Jules out of the Moon, Pe&me Set to Music, and ences to extraterrestrial or mutant activity Verne. Music for Peace of Mind-were reissued were hardly limited to the major produc- 1I. These include The Deadly Ray from in a 1999 compact-disc collection (Basta tions. Among the weaker examples whose Mars (1938, based on the Flash Gordon’s 30-9093) titled Ds Samuel J. Hornan and soundtracks prove the point are Abbott and Trip to Mars serial and also known as Flash the Theremin. Costello Go to Mars (1953), This Island Gordon: Mars Attacks the World), Destina- 20. Along with Rocketship X-M, Grof6 Earth (1955), Tarantula (1955), Earth vs. tion Satum (1939, based on the Buck scored only The King of Jazz (1930), Yan- the Flying Saucers (1956), The Black Scor- Rogers serial), and Purple Death from kee Doodle Rhapsody (1936), Minstrel pion (1957). and The Attack of the 50 Foot Outer Space (1940, based on the Flash Man (1944), Rme Out of Mind (1946), and Woman (1958). Gordon Conquers the Universe serial). The Return of Jesse James (1950). 30. They were so called at the insistence 12. The ondes martenot, an electronic 21. The only musical credit in It Came of the Los Angeles chapter of the Ameri- instrument whose sound is in some ways from Outer Space goes to Joseph Gershen- can Federation of Musicians, which vigor- similar to that of the theremin, was fea- son, who is listed as the film’s “musical ously resisted the use of the term “music” tured in Arthur Honnegger’s score for the director.” The score was collaboratively to describe sounds generated entirely by 1934 French film L’ldee. written by Manchi, Herman Stein, and electronic means. 13. The Green Hornet first aired on Irving Gertz, and the theremin passages 3 1. The “Darth Vader” theme, for exam- Detroit’s WXYZ in 1936; it was syndicated are generally considered to be the work of ple, recalls “Mars: The Bringer of War” by the Mutual network in April 1938 and Mancini. from Gustav Holst’s The Planets, and the continued until December 1952. Through- 22. Other films from the 1950s that fea- second section of the “main title’’ music out the run, the theremin player was Vera ture the theremin include The Five Thou- bears a striking resemblance to its counter- Richardson Simpson (Glinsky 199-200). sand Fingers of Ds (1952), The Mad part in Tchaikovsky’s March Slav. Z 14. These include Joseph Schillinger, Magician (1953), Murder at Midnight whose First Airiphonic Suite, for theremin (1953), Please Murder Me (1956), The WORKS CONSULTED and orchestra, was premiered in Cleveland, Ten Commandments (1956), The Delicate Altman, Rick. “The Evolution of Sound Ohio, in November 1929; Edgard Varkse, Delinquent (1957), and Voodoo Island Technology.” Film Sound: Theory and who used two theremins in his 1934 Ecua- (1957). In the comic Delicate Delinquent, Practice. Ed. Elisabeth Weis and John torial; Percy Grainger, who called for four the character played by Jerry Lewis actu- Belton. New York: Columbia UP, 1985. theremins in his 1935 Free Music; and ally encounters the instrument on screen. Bellman, Jonathan, ed. The Exotic in West- Anis Fuleihan, whose Concerto for 23. The instrument heard in the theme em Music. Boston: Northeastern UP, Theremin and Orchestra was premiered by for My Favorite Martian was actually an 1998. the New York Symphony Orchestra in Feb- “electro-theremin.” The device-invented Biskind, Peter. Seeing Is Believing: How ruary 1945. in the late 1950s by the trombonist Paul 0. Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying 15. Rockmore’s recorded legacy, collect- W. Tanner-differed from the theremin and Love the Fifries. New York: Holt, ed and reissued on a compact disc (Delos largely in that it was capable of staccato 2000. D CD 1014) titled The Art ofthe Theremin, articulations and more precise pitch con- Brown, Royal S. Overtones and Under- consists of piano-accompanied arrange- trol (Glinsky 289). tones: Reading Film Music. Berkeley: U ments of Rachmaninoff’s Song of Grusia 24. Elfman’s score for Mars Attacks! of California P, 1994. and Op. 34 Vocalise; Saint-Saens’s “The features not a theremin per se but, rather, Burt, George. The Art of Film Music. Swan” from The Carnival of the Animals; digital samples of theremin tones. Boston: Northeastern UP, 1994. the “Pantomime” from De Falla’s El Amor 25. In the 1950s, “thereminesque” musi- Cage, John. “The Future of Music: Credo.” Brujo; the “Romance” from Wieniawski’s cal effects that emphasizedtremulousness of Silence. Cambridge: MIT P, 1958. Violin Concerto in D Minor; Joseph tone were commonly produced on the Ham- Cavalcanti, Alberto. “Sound in Films.” Achron’s Hebrew Melody; the “Berceuse” mond organ, the vibraphone, and string Films 1.1 (Nov. 1939): 25-39. from Stravinsky’s The Firebird; Ravel’s instruments played with a wide vibrato. Pas- Chion, Michel. Audio-Vision: Sound on Vocalise-e‘tude (en forme de habanera); sages emulative of the theremin’s character- Screen. Trans. Claudia Gorbman. New Tchaikovsky’s Berceuse (Op. 72, No. 18) istic smooth connection of melodic notes York Columbia UP, 1994. and Valse sentimentale (Op. 51, No. 6), were easily realized on the electrical key- . La Voix au cinema. Paris: Cahiers and Se‘re‘nade me‘lancolique; and board instrument known as the Novachord, du cinkma, 1982. Glazunov’s Op. 71 Minstrel’s Song. the so-called musical saw, string instruments CICment, Catherine. Opera, or the Undo- 16. The fascinating story of what hap- played with an exaggerated glissando, and ing of Women. Trans. Betsy Wing. Min- pened after Uon Th6r6min’s repatriation human whistling or vocalizing. neapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1988. is told in Steve Martin’s 1993 documentary 26. The same could be said for R6zsa’s Doerschuk, Robert L. “Music in the Air: film The Electronic Odyssey of Leon theremin music in his score for The Red The Life and Legacy of Leon Theremin.” Theremin and in Albert Glinsky’s 2000 House, and for Roy Webb’s and Max Stein- Keyboard (Feb. 1994): 5 1-58. book The‘re‘min: Ether Music and Espi- er’s use of the theremin in The Spiral Stair- Dollard, John, Leonard W. Doob, Neal E. onage. case and The Fountainhead, respectively. Miller, 0. H. Mowrer, and Robert R. 134 JPF&T-Journal of Popular Film and Television

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Schaeffer, Pierre. Traite‘ des objets musi- Neumeyer. Hanover: Wesleyan Universi- Warren, Bill. Keep Watching the Skies! caw. Paris: Seuil, 1967. ty/UP of New England, 2000. American Science Fiction Movies of the Schelle, Michael. The Score: Interviews Sobchack, Vivian. Screening Space: The Fifries. New York McFarland, 1997. with Film Composers. Los Angeles: American Science Fiction Film. Silma-James, 1999. Brunswick Rutgers UP, 1997. Smith, Jeff. “That Money-Making ‘Moon Stallybrass, Peter, and Allon White. The River’ Sound: Thematic Organization Politics and Poetics of Transgression. JAMES WIEEBIC~ teaches classes in and Orchestration in the Film Music of London: Methuen, 1986. film music and twentieth-century topics at Henry Mancini.” Music and Cinema. Ed. Stokes, Martin, ed. Ethnicity, Identity and the university of california, hine. James Buhler, Caryl Flynn, and David Music. Oxford Berg, 1994.

000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0 0 0 0 :0 Coming attractions 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 The Western 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Look for the Winter 2003 issue of the Journal of Popular Film and Television, 0 0 0 0 which focuses on the Western, with an introduction by Jack Nachbar. The follow- 0 0 0 0 ing articles are included: 0 0 0 0 0 0 “The Cross-Heart People”: Race and Inheritance in the Silent Western, 0 0 0 0 by Joanna Heme 0 0 Soldiers in Stetsons: B-Westerns Go to War, by R. Philip Loy 0 0 a The Romance of Competence: Rethinking Masculinity in the Western, 0 0 0 0 by Wendy Chapman Peek 0 0 0 A Politically Correct Ethan Edwards: Clint Eastwood’s The Outlaw Josey 0 Wales, by Robert Sickels 0 0 0 As Sure as the Turning of a Page: A Bibliography on The Searchers, by Jack 0 0 : Nachbar 0 0 0 0 0 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000