MOTIVIC DEVELOPMENT IN MAX STEINER’S SCORE FOR GONE WITH THE WIND ______

A Thesis

Presented to the

Faculty of

California State University, Fullerton ______

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts

in

Music History and Literature ______

By

Sarah Margaret Weinzetl

Thesis Committee Approval:

John Koegel, School of Music, Chair Nicole Baker, School of Music Larry Timm, School of Music

Fall, 2016

ABSTRACT

This thesis explores the musical development of the major themes in Max

Steiner’s score for Gone with the Wind. One of the most revered composers of

Hollywood’s Golden Age, Steiner scored David O. Selznick’s epic Civil War drama in

12 short weeks with a collaborative team composing in the Steiner style. Steiner relied on his European post-Romantic compositional training, as well as his Broadway arranging and conducting experience, to craft an expressive, expansive score for what would become one of the most successful films of all time.

This study analyzes the borrowed and original material of Steiner’s score by highlighting the compositional techniques that make it effective, and viewing it through a historical lens. By incorporating recognizable patriotic songs, Stephen Foster melodies, and original leitmotifs for the principal characters and their relationships, Steiner emphasizes the narrative tone, conveys the regional setting and historical time, and accentuates the film’s dramatic themes of nostalgia and survival. He achieves this primarily through repetition of character leitmotifs, distinguishable melodic construction, and expressive instrumentation. Steiner’s arsenal of musical tactics are effectively put to use in eliciting empathy from audiences of Gone with the Wind across generations, especially its first audiences in the Great Depression era at the dawn of World War II. In particular, Steiner’s inspirational theme for the Tara plantation elicited the nostalgia and message of survival those audiences needed to hear.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... ii

LIST OF TABLES ...... v

LIST OF FIGURES ...... vi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... ix

Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Review of Existing Scholarship ...... 3 Research Methodology ...... 7 Chapter Descriptions...... 9

2. MAX STEINER: LIFE AND WORKS ...... 13

Life in Europe ...... 14 New York City and Broadway...... 17 Hollywood ...... 20 RKO Pictures ...... 21 Selznick International and Warner Bros...... 27 Steiner’s Compositional Style ...... 36 Wagnerian Influences ...... 38 Film Scoring Techniques ...... 40

3. THE PRODUCTION OF GONE WITH THE WIND ...... 45

Margaret Mitchell’s Novel...... 46 Selznick International Pictures and Max Steiner ...... 48 Production and Premiere ...... 53 Lasting Impact ...... 59 Plot ...... 61

4. MOTIVIC DEVELOPMENT IN STEINER’S USE OF BORROWED MUSIC 65

Stephen Foster and Nostalgia ...... 67 “Katy Bell” and Katie Scarlett ...... 72

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Twelve Oaks Barbecue Medley: Plantation Songs ...... 74 “Massa’s in de Cold Ground” and Scarlett’s Husbands ...... 81 Other Quotations of Foster’s Songs ...... 84 “Dixie” and Nationalism ...... 88

5. MOTIVIC DEVELOPMENT IN STEINER’S USE OF ORIGINAL MUSIC: ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS ...... 105

Melanie and Ashley ...... 107 Ashley and Scarlett ...... 117 Scarlett and Rhett ...... 130

6. MOTIVIC DEVELOPMENT IN STEINER’S USE OF ORIGINAL MUSIC: TARA’S THEME ...... 145

Act I ...... 146 Act II ...... 153 Scarlett’s Men and Tara ...... 156 “Tomorrow is Another Day” ...... 159 Concluding Thoughts ...... 165

REFERENCES ...... 170

iv

LIST OF TABLES

Table Page

1. Intervallic Relationships in “Battle Hymn of the Republic” ...... 98

2. Appearances of Leitmotifs, McDonough Road ...... 137

v

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

4.1. Foster & Cooper, “Katy Bell,” verse 1 excerpt ...... 72

4.2. “Katie Bell,” Reel 1, Part 3 ...... 74

4.3. Foster, “Lou’siana Belle,” verse 1 ...... 75

4.4. “Lou’siana Belle,” Reel 2, Part 4 ...... 76

4.5. Foster, “Dolly Day,” chorus ...... 77

4.6. “Dolly Day,” Reel 2, Part 4 ...... 78

4.7. Foster, “Ring, Ring de Banjo,” verse 1 ...... 79

4.8. “Ring, Ring de Banjo,” Reel 2, Part 4 ...... 80

4.9. Foster, “Massa’s in de Cold Ground,” chorus ...... 82

4.10. “Massa’s in de Cold Ground,” Reel 4, Part 3 ...... 83

4.11. Foster, “My Old Kentucky Home, Good-night,” verse 3 excerpt ...... 85

4.12. “My Old Kentucky Home,” Reel 8, Part 1 ...... 85

4.13. Foster, “Old Folks at Home,” verse 1 excerpt ...... 86

4.14. Emmett, “Dixie’s Land,” verse 1 excerpt ...... 93

4.15. Howe, “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” verse 1 excerpt ...... 95

4.16. “Fire Segment,” Reel 9, Part 2 ...... 97

4.17. “Country Road,” Reel 10, Part 1...... 100

4.18. “Dixie,” Reel 12, Part 2A ...... 101

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5.1. “Melanie,” Reel 3, Part 1 ...... 108

5.2. “Love Theme,” Reel 3, Part 2 ...... 109

5.3. “Love Theme,” Reel 6, Part 4A ...... 112

5.4. “Love Theme,” Reel 10, Part 3 ...... 113

5.5. “Love Theme,” Reel 13, Part 1 ...... 114

5.6. “Love Theme,” Reel 13, Part 1 ...... 115

5.7. “Love Theme,” Reel 23, Part 2 ...... 116

5.8. “Ashley” and “Mammy,” Reel 1, Part 3 ...... 121

5.9. “Ashley,” Reel 4, Part 1 ...... 122

5.10. “Ashley,” Reel 6, Part 4A ...... 124

5.11. “Ashley,” Reel 10, Part 3 ...... 125

5.12. “Ashley,” Reel 13, Part 2 ...... 126

5.13. “Ashley,” Reel 13, Part 2 ...... 127

5.14. “Katie Bell,” Reel 1, Part 3, transposed to C major ...... 133

5.15. “Scarlett,” Reel 3, Part 1 ...... 133

5.16. “Rhett,” Reel 3, Part 1 ...... 134

5.17. “Scarlett,” Reel 10, Part 1A ...... 138

5.18. “Rhett” and “Scarlett,” Reel 10, Part 1A ...... 138

5.19. “Rhett,” Reel 10, Part 2A...... 139

5.20. “Scarlett,” Reel 10, Part 2A ...... 140

5.21. “Scarlett” and “Rhett,” Reel 18, Part 2 ...... 142

6.1. “Tara,” Reel 1, Part 1 ...... 148

6.2. “Tara,” Reel 12, Part 1 ...... 155

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6.3. “Tara,” Reel 13, Part 2 ...... 156

6.4. “Tara,” Reel 18, Part 2 ...... 158

6.5. “Finale,” Reel 24, Part 3 ...... 161

6.6. “Finale,” Reel 24, Part 3A ...... 163

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am indebted to the many people who supported me as I wrote this paper. Thank you to everyone who lent an ear and provided insights. Thank you to the faculty of

California State University, Fullerton, especially my advisor, Dr. Koegel. From my first day as a graduate student to now, your guidance, advice, and patience have been unwavering, and this paper would not have been possible without you. Special thanks to the other members of my committee, Dr. Nicole Baker and Dr. Larry Timm, for taking time from your busy schedules to share your expertise. To my family and friends, thank you for being my sounding board and my caffeine enablers. Most importantly, thank you to my husband, Taras Wybaczynsky, without whom this paper would not have been possible. Thank you for believing in me, and for your constant support and love.

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Max Steiner was one of the most prolific screen composers in film history.

Known affectionately by his colleagues as the “Dean of Film Music,” his work

“effectively sired the fabled golden age of motion picture scoring.”1 Raised in a family heavily involved in the arts, he made his musical mark everywhere he lived: in Vienna, on Broadway, and in Hollywood. His use of the Wagnerian leitmotif principle is the compositional technique for which he was most renowned, yet he was also admired for his expertise in orchestration, and for his ability to incorporate borrowed melodies into his original film scores.

In his score to Gone with the Wind (1939), Steiner uses multiple leitmotifs to represent places, individual characters, and their relationships. These not only express the film’s main musical and dramatic themes, but also serve to unify Steiner’s almost three- hour-long score, his longest. Although it was his most substantial work, Steiner was only given twelve weeks to complete it. He was able to compose a score of this magnitude in such a short time period by using pre-existing and thematic material, and by collaborating with several other composers and arrangers who were able to compose in the “Steiner style.” To meet the demands of this tight schedule, and because it suited the dramatic

1 Steve Vertlieb, “Max Steiner and the Historic Music for King Kong,” American Music Preservation, http://www.americanmusicpreservation.com/KingKong1933.htm#hugofriedhofer (accessed November 7, 2016).

2 situation, Steiner borrowed freely from a variety of American vernacular musical sources, including Stephen Foster’s melodies and patriotic Civil War tunes. His use of associative themes helped assure the artistic success of Gone with the Wind’s expressive, sweeping score, which touched audiences on a deeply emotional level. These musical conventions all contributed significantly to the critical and financial success of the film and to its continued status as one of the cinematic masterpieces of the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Steiner’s music strengthens the film’s most important dramatic themes: nostalgia, patriotism, romantic love, individualism, and survival. The film is able to reach audiences in a meaningful way because the emotionally charged dialogue is paired with an effective musical score. The most famous melody from the film, the beautiful Tara theme (“My

Own True Love”), stresses octave leaps that resolve by sequential descent. This musical construction signifies longing and home, and emphasizes the prominent narrative themes of survival and nostalgia. Its effectiveness is amplified by its repetition throughout the film; at the end of Act I, as Scarlett dramatically vows, “As God is my witness, I’ll never go hungry again,” the music swells into a reprise of the symbolic theme, creating one of the most memorable moments in the film.

Audiences past and present easily relate to Gone with the Wind’s universal message of survival. Through Steiner’s treatment of recurring and recognizable thematic music, he reinforces this message and others by reflecting character growth, relationship development, and changes in mood. While considering the historical context of the time of the film’s release, the purpose of this thesis is to analyze how Steiner musically develops his originally composed leitmotifs and his borrowed material throughout Gone with the Wind to strengthen the major narrative themes. The analysis demonstrates that

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Steiner’s lush score contributes to the emotional impact of the film, making Gone with the Wind as widely appealing today as it was at its 1939 premiere.

In the broad scope of history, film is a relatively new art form. Examining how audio and visual techniques work together to achieve success in a film, something that is measured via critical and audience review, is important for film scholars, composers, and production team members. For scholars and non-scholars alike, this study deepens the overall understanding of film as a collaborative art form by discussing Gone with the

Wind’s production chronology, narrative themes, and Steiner’s compositional process. I also argue that music can convey a film’s historical context, enrich dramatic action, and establish setting, mood, and tone for every scene in which it is present, or also absent, as silence itself establishes tone.

Review of Existing Scholarship

Film music specialists have published a wealth of scholarship discussing film history and the film scoring process. Studies that proved invaluable to my research include those by Kate Daubney, Claudia Gorbman, Kathryn Kalinak, David Neumeyer,

Tony Thomas, and James Wierzbicki.2 Their publications—many of which are considered groundbreaking—provide varied and detailed analyses of film music collaboration and composition techniques, and I refer to their work frequently.

2 Kate Daubney, Max Steiner’s “Now, Voyager:” A Film Score Guide, Film Score Guides 1 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000); Katherine S. Daubney, “The View from the Piano: A Critical Examination and Contextualisation of Film Scores of Max Steiner, 1939-1945” (PhD diss., University of Leeds, 1996); Claudia Gorbman, Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987); Kathryn Marie Kalinak, Settling the Score: Music and the Classic Hollywood Film (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992); David Neumeyer, “The Resonances of Wagnerian Opera and Nineteenth-Century Melodrama in the Film Scores of Max Steiner,” in Wagner and Cinema, ed. Jeongwon Joe and Sander L. Gilman (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010), 111-30; Tony Thomas, ed., Film Score: The View from the Podium (New York: A.S. Barnes, 1979); James E. Wierzbicki, Film Music: A History (New York: Routledge, 2008).

4

The majority of the scholarly output regarding Gone with the Wind and Steiner’s score either lists only the film’s production chronology (for example, Steve Wilson’s The

Making of Gone with the Wind) or addresses the span of Steiner’s entire career and breadth of work (as in Peter Wegele’s Max Steiner: Composing, Casablanca, and the

Golden Age of Film Music).3 Fortunately, these sources generously quote producer David

O. Selznick’s famous memos, ensuring the accuracy of future research. Of particular importance is Nathan Platte’s work on Selznick’s collaborations with prominent

Hollywood composers.4 Platte’s dissertation expertly details Selznick’s working relationship with Steiner throughout the 1930s and 1940s.

There is a significant body of scholarship that discusses the narrative themes found in the film and in Margaret Mitchell’s original novel. However, fewer studies analyze these themes as they pertain to Steiner’s music. Despite their lack of musical discussion, these sources provided valuable insight, in particular, Helen Taylor’s

Scarlett’s Women, and Bruce Vincent Chadwick’s dissertation, “The Reel Civil War.”5 In my research, it was critical to mention the political and social turbulence of the 1930s and to consider its effects on the production and perception of the novel and the film. For this socio-historical analysis, I consulted historical reference material pertaining to the Civil

3 Steve Wilson, The Making of “Gone with the Wind” (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2014); Peter Wegele, Max Steiner: Composing,“Casablanca,” and the Golden Age of Film Music (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014).

4 Nathan Platte, “Musical Collaborations in the Films of David O. Selznick, 1932-1957” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2010).

5 Helen Taylor, Scarlett’s Women: “Gone with the Wind” and Its Female Fans (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989); Bruce Vincent Chadwick, “The Reel Civil War: Mythmaking in America” (PhD diss., Rutgers University, 1998).

5

War, the Great Depression, World War I and II, and the Hollywood studio system of the

1930s.

Existing studies of the film’s music are both narrowly focused and broad. With a few exceptions, there is a lack of extensive analysis of Steiner’s tune borrowing techniques, self-quotation, and collaboration with his orchestrators. There are many scholarly articles written about the singular Tara theme, and an important dissertation discussing the role of music in the interpretation of gender.6 These sources provide in- depth examinations of a few of the most significant musico-dramatic themes, but do not provide a comprehensive analysis of Steiner’s complex scoring style for this film. By contrast, the Scarecrow Press Film Score Guide series edited by Kate Daubney spans more than a dozen films, including Rebecca (1940), Ben-Hur (1959), and Batman (1989), and was instrumental in guiding my research and providing a template for my analysis.7

In addition to published works, a few unpublished sources were instrumental in my research, in particular, Max Steiner’s unpublished autobiography, Notes to You, and two extensive collections housed in university libraries: the Max Steiner Collection at

Brigham Young University, and the David O. Selznick Collection at the University of

Texas at Austin.8 Each collection contains thousands of boxes of materials, including

6 Kelly Joyce Otter, “The Role of Music in the Construction of Gender in Gone with the Wind” (PhD diss., New York University, 2002), 10.

7 David Neumeyer and Nathan Platte, Franz Waxman’s “Rebecca:” A Film Score Guide, Scarecrow Film Score Guides 12 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2012); Roger Hickman, Miklós Rózsa’s “Ben-Hur:” A Film Score Guide, Scarecrow Film Score Guides 10 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2011); Janet K. Halfyard, Danny Elfman’s “Batman:” A Film Score Guide, Scarecrow Film Score Guides 2 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2004).

8 Max Steiner, Notes to You: An Unpublished Autobiography (unpublished biography from 1963- 65, Max Steiner Collection, Arts and Communications Archive, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT); David O. Selznick Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. Hereafter, the Max Steiner Collection is cited as MSC, and the David O. Selznick Collection indicated as HRC.

6 administrative, production, and legal documents, music files, annotated sketches, clippings, and correspondence. The curator of the Max Steiner Collection, Dr. James V.

D’Arc, gave me a copy of an unpublished faculty lecture, “Resources of Gone with the

Wind,” in which professor Janet Bradford discusses the multiple hands involved in the composition of the finished score.9 Platte’s research reinforces Bradford’s findings:

The daunting time constraints and vastness of the film forced Steiner to rely heavily on assistants to complete the most prestigious project of his career. Even the pencil sketch for the film’s main title is not in Steiner’s hand, but rather Hugo Friedhofer’s. The signature on the sketch—“Max Steiner & Co.”—is therefore fitting.10

These holographic sketches are written in shortened format, usually with only three staves per measure.11 The content is organized by reel and part numbers rather than by scene, and contains handwritten instructions to the orchestrators in its margins, written in a variety of different colors to denote authorship.

The David O. Selznick Collection contains multiple folders pertaining to Steiner’s musical themes for Gone with the Wind, as well as the original musical manuscript.12

This bound edition is the studio’s copy of the conductor’s score intended for use in

9 Janet Bradford, “Trivia, Treats, and Ghosts: Resources of GWTW from the Max Steiner Collection at Brigham Young University” (lecture, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, October 2002).

10 Platte, “Musical Collaboration,” 124. For the sake of consistency, and in accordance with the practice of the 1930s, the name “Steiner” is applied hereafter to the collective authorship of the score.

11 Max Steiner, et al., Gone with the Wind holograph sketches, vols. 72a-b, MSS 1547, MSC; Jeannie G. Pool and H. Stephen Wright, A Research Guide to Film and Television Music in the United States (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2011), 36-37; William H. Rosar and Leslie N. Andersen, ed., Union Catalog of Motion Picture Music (Claremont, CA: International Film Music Society, 1991), s.v. “Gone with the Wind.” The Union Catalog specifies the composer and orchestrator for every reel and part of the film.

12 Max Steiner, et al. “Gone with the Wind:” Conductor, Studio Copy, manuscript, box 4016, HRC. Hereafter, this manuscript published referred to as the conductor’s score.

7 recording sessions.13 Each measure typically includes three to four staves and usually adheres to Steiner’s standard hierarchical instrumentation. While no instrument is assigned a permanent position, Steiner gives prominence to the highest voices, placing the melody in the top one or two staves using treble clef, and the countermelody or secondary harmony in the third stave; the bass support is written at the bottom in bass clef.14 Steiner carefully labeled instances of each theme in this conductor’s score—an invaluable primary resource. I obtained a full, digitally scanned copy of this score.

Excluding the film itself, this was my most important resource.

Research Methodology

Film music study lends itself to multiple analytical models based in musicology, cinema studies, psychology, critical theory, aesthetics, and cultural studies.15 According to David Neumeyer, it would be “insufficient to analyze the internal design of a musical cue independently, taking no notice of the music’s expressive, narrative, or other signifying function(s),” or to limit the research methodology to a single approach.16 In general, the work-analysis model applies to my research, as it examines the features, techniques, and characteristics of one specific film and its score.17

The first half of my study is a historical survey of Steiner’s career, the Hollywood studio system in the 1930s, and the production chronology of Gone with the Wind, with a

13 Pool and Wright, Research Guide, 37. According to Pool, this is also referred to as a short score.

14 Daubney, “View from the Piano,” 116.

15 David Neumeyer, introduction to Music and Cinema, ed. James Buhler, Caryl Flinn, and David Neumeyer (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 2000), 4.

16 David Neumeyer, “Film Music Analysis and Pedagogy,” Indiana Theory Review 11 (1991), 15.

17 Ibid., 25.

8 stylistic analysis of Steiner’s compositional techniques, specifically, the leitmotif, and its aesthetic judgments. This includes a socio-historical discussion of significant events pertaining to the film—in particular, the Civil War, the Great Depression, and World War

II—and the psychological effect these events had on American audiences of the 1930s and 1940s.

The rest of my study attempts to answer the question: “What is the purpose of

Steiner’s music in Gone with the Wind?” This required a dramatic analysis of the plot, main characters, important relationships, and narrative themes. I reexamined this analysis with specific regard to the dramatic functionality of music, focusing on film music’s ability to reflect emotion, create atmosphere, localize setting, and evoke stereotypes.18

Using a critical musicological approach, I analyzed the musical properties and their development in Steiner’s score: (1) motivic and melodic features on a small and large scale, (2) traditional harmonic design and tonal relationships, (3) stylistic components of nineteenth-century American music, and (4) treatment of timbre/instrumentation. A strictly theoretical analysis would have ignored the multitude of extramusical factors to be considered. Neumeyer agrees: “film is an inhospitable environment for analytic methods which were designed for concert music.”19 My findings reveal that Steiner’s music in Gone with the Wind serves several purposes, most importantly that the motivic development—as demonstrated by Steiner’s post-Romantic compositional style comprised of leitmotif techniques and tune borrowing—elevates the audience’s emotional response to the strongest narrative themes of the film.

18 Ibid., 15.

19 Ibid., 27.

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Chapter Descriptions

The structure of this study follows the model of several of the film score guides I consulted (specifically the Scarecrow Press Film Guide series), beginning with background information about the composer’s career and composition techniques, followed by a discussion of the film’s production and significant details, and finally an analysis of the musical material. Following this model, Chapter 2 covers Steiner’s life and works. His career breakdown begins with a brief biography spanning his childhood in

Vienna and the musical activity and artistic influences there, his move to New York City and work on Broadway as an arranger and conductor, and finally his relocation to

Hollywood to compose for RKO Pictures, Selznick International, Warner Brothers, and other studios. Twelve of Steiner’s best-known works are discussed relative to their significance to his career and to film as a whole, including Symphony of Six Million

(1932), King Kong (1933), The Informer (1935), Now, Voyager (1942), Casablanca

(1943), Since You Went Away (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), The Adventures of Don Juan

(1949), and A Summer Place (1959), among others. Chapter 2 also defines Steiner’s compositional style and influences, including techniques from the classical model of nineteenth-century European post-Romanticism used by Wagner and Richard Strauss, as well as modern American music from Broadway, Tin Pan Alley, minstrelsy, and Stephen

Foster.

The production chronology and details of Gone with the Wind comprise Chapter

3, beginning with a brief biography of Margaret Mitchell and discussion of the success of her novel. Additional topics examined include Selznick’s outlandish demands for the film, its widely-publicized casting, multiple directors, and Selznick’s personal interaction

10 with Steiner during the shortened scoring schedule. Steiner’s collaboration with other composers (Hugo Friedhofer, Adolph Deutsch, Heinz Roemhold, Joseph Nussbaum,

Franz Waxman, and William Axt) is explained in detail; all were involved in the creation of the final score, asked to compose in the “Steiner style,” and provided original music or revised arrangements and orchestrations during the three-month timeframe allotted by

Selznick. Chapter 3 also details the public response to Gone with the Wind at the official

Atlanta premiere and nationwide, as well as the film’s lasting impact over the past 75 plus years. The chapter ends with an overview of the film’s plot with specific emphasis on its key relationships and the most important narrative themes: nostalgia, patriotism, romantic love, and survival.

In the musical analysis portion of the thesis, Chapters Four, Five, and Six, I analyze the motivic development in Steiner’s score by referencing specific music examples and discussing them within the historical and narrative contexts of the film. I address how character, tone, and emotion are conveyed through specific melodic devices: symbolic intervals, mode modification, rhythmic variation, and melodic interweaving and overlapping. I also discuss the difference between diegetic and non-diegetic music, and the narrative intentions of each type within the film’s context.

The focus of Chapter 4 is borrowed music, primarily patriotic Civil War songs and Stephen Foster songs. A brief biography of Stephen Foster is included, along with an explanation of the “Plantation Myth,” America’s distorted concept that Southern plantation owners were kind to their slaves, that slaves were content in their station, and that the Civil War was fought about states’ rights and with gallantry from both sides.20

20 Chadwick, “The Reel Civil War,” 6.

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This socio-historical discussion is pivotal to the critical analysis of Foster’s nostalgia- infused melodies, and Steiner’s development of them in Gone with the Wind. Similarly, the music analysis of Civil War tunes not written by Foster requires a brief examination of American patriotism in the late 1930s—in particular, the juxtaposition of anxiety and national pride before World War II—and regional patriotism in the South. This is manifested in Steiner’s use of the military tunes “Dixie” and “Battle Hymn of the

Republic,” which captivated the public by summoning pride, fear, and nostalgia.

Chapter 5 examines Steiner’s original music, in particular the three prominent romantic relationships in the film: Ashley and Melanie, representative of tradition and the

Old South; Ashley and Scarlett, reminiscent of a soap opera drama; and Scarlett and

Rhett, two stubborn independents who fail in romance. The leitmotifs for each of these couples are analyzed for their musical and dramatic significance, with an emphasis on

Steiner’s development of them throughout their multiple repetitions. Chapter 6 focuses on

Steiner’s most famous leitmotif from Gone with the Wind, Tara’s theme. Its narrative association with survival draw parallels between the Great Depression and the film’s portrayal of the South during the Civil War, as shown by the fictional Scarlett repeatedly overcoming defeat. Evaluation of her position as a strong female lead character, within the historical context of the Depression and early twentieth-century feminism, demonstrates that Scarlett’s perseverance and independence are what make her inspirational in spite of her flaws. Musico-dramatic analysis of Tara’s theme reinforces this assertion; Steiner’s treatment of the melody at turning points in Scarlett’s life works to elicit emotion from audiences empathizing with the heroine’s struggles.

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In the Golden Age of Hollywood, disregarding the importance of relatable narrative themes and associative music would have meant disaster for an epic drama such as Gone with the Wind, a fact of which David O. Selznick was well aware. Fortunately for Selznick and audiences worldwide, Steiner—reliant on his vast collection of compositional techniques, and in collaboration with other musicians—crafted an expressive score that effectively supported one of the most successful films in history.

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CHAPTER 2

MAX STEINER: LIFE AND WORKS

Max Steiner (1888-1971) was a child prodigy whose career spanned 60 years and took him from Europe to New York City and finally to Hollywood, where his strong work ethic and progressive vision helped redefine film music. His upbringing among famous opera composers, early training and education in Europe, and experience as a musical director and arranger on Broadway primed him for the Hollywood career he never planned to have. In the earliest days of sound film, with the Great Depression gripping America, Steiner moved to Hollywood at the age of 41 to begin a second career, leaving Broadway behind for the “burgeoning world of cinema.”1 Along with several progressive producers, especially David O. Selznick, Steiner convinced Hollywood of the enormous value of original background music to support a film’s narrative and dramatize the action on screen. Steiner worked for almost every major film studio over three decades and was one of the busiest composers in Hollywood, scoring more than 300 films between 1930 and 1963.

It was a wonder [Steiner] was able to live through 1939! That was the year in which he wrote the better part of three hours of music for Gone with the Wind, as well as providing music for 11 other films. He claimed it was only possible by taking pills to keep him awake. It was the price he paid for being a genius at his trade and for having the gift of invention, and the strength, to produce so prodigiously.2

1 Daubney, Now, Voyager, 1.

2 Thomas, Film Score, 74-75.

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Steiner is best remembered for his symphonic scores for classic films of

Hollywood’s Golden Age, including King Kong, Casablanca, and Gone with the Wind, and for pioneering multiple scoring and recording techniques still used in film composition today.

Life in Europe

Steiner’s grandfather and namesake, Maximilian Steiner (1839-1880), was the influential owner of Vienna’s famous Theater an der Wien, at which he produced operettas. Among his many contributions to the Viennese music scene, the elder Steiner was reportedly responsible for persuading Johann Strauss, Jr. to turn to the field of operetta. Max Steiner’s father, Gabor, supervised the building of the Riesenrad, the giant

Ferris wheel on the Prater, and was also an important impresario in the theatrical world.

When Maximilian Raoul Walter Steiner was born in 1888, the family’s “involvement in the cultural life of Vienna was considerable.”3 Steiner was immersed in the arts from an early age, afforded the “luxury of growing up with almost every renowned composer and musician in Vienna as a friend of the family.”4 His first piano, for instance, was a gift from Johann Strauss, Jr.

At the age of six, Steiner began piano lessons with composer Edmund Eysler

(1874-1949) and immediately started experimenting with improvisation, which his father encouraged him to write down. Eyler’s own music influenced Steiner; his songs often incorporated the popular Viennese waltz, a form Steiner would frequently use later in his

3 Ibid., 71.

4 Ibid.

15 film scores.5 In 1900 at the age of 12, Steiner was invited to conduct the Viennese premiere of Gustave Kerker’s American operetta The Belle of New York (Die Schöne von

New York) at his father’s theater, a feat he accomplished so successfully that Kerker himself offered to bring him to the United States as a “boy wonder.”6 Within three years,

Steiner had written his first full-length operetta, a musical comedy entitled Das hübsche

Griechenmädel (The Beautiful Greek Girl), for which he conducted the orchestra himself.

After his father declined to stage it at one of his own theaters (advising that it was “not good”), Steiner took the show to competitor Karl Tuschl at the Orpheum Theatre in the

Josephstadt where it ran for a year.7 In his unpublished autobiography, Notes to You,

Steiner wrote that the “world of theater that was opened to me at an early age was the real thrill of my life, and the source of my inspiration.”8

In 1904 at age 16, Steiner enrolled in the Konservatorium für Musik und darstellende Kunst (Vienna’s Imperial Academy of Music), studying with notable teachers such as Robert Fuchs, Felix Weingartner, and Gustav Mahler.9 Steiner completed his four-year course of study at the Academy in one year, after which he continued studying independently in his spare time from working at his father’s amusement park.10 He later recalled:

5 Daubney, Now, Voyager, 2.

6 Ibid.

7 Thomas, Film Score, 73.

8 Steiner, Notes to You, 13.

9 Daubney, Now, Voyager, 95. In 1909, the Academy became the Königliche und Kaiserliche Akademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst.

10 Steiner, Notes to You, 17.

16

. . . somehow I found time to watch all the rehearsals for the different shows. It was here that I learned my trade of conductor. I became familiar with the sounds of an orchestra and what would be done with it. This was the training [that] many years later was to lead me to Hollywood.11

Due to growing success in his hometown, Steiner received new job offers outside of

Vienna for work throughout Europe, and in 1906 he conducted his operetta Der

Kristallpokal (The Crystal Cup) in Moscow for a six-week run.12 Upon returning home, however, he learned of his father’s bankruptcy and, forced to leave Vienna for financial reasons, accepted an offer to conduct The Merry Widow in England. Although he remained primarily in London between 1907 and 1914, Steiner traveled frequently throughout Europe, returning periodically to Vienna to attend to his father’s financial problems.13

After The Merry Widow, Steiner worked as a theater rehearsal pianist before being hired as musical director for Ivan Caryll’s touring revue The Girls of Gottenburg

(1907), a position at which he excelled so greatly that in 1909 producer George Dance promoted him to the position of musical director for his theater’s production of

Véronique by André Messager.14 Steiner’s growing public recognition, coupled with

Dance’s high esteem, ultimately resulted in his promotion to the position of musical director for all of impresario Edward Moss’s London theaters, including the Hippodrome,

Palladium, the Tivoli, the Holburn, and the Adelphi.15 Later that same year, he was

11 Ibid, 20.

12 Wegele, Max Steiner, 52.

13 Daubney, Now, Voyager, 4.

14 Wegele, Max Steiner, 52.

15 Ibid.

17 appointed music director and composer for John Tiller, founder of multiple dance companies and a legendary figure in the musical theater world.16

Working as a composer, conductor, and arranger for stage musicals, dance troupes, vaudeville acts, and operettas during the following years in Europe helped

Steiner develop a versatility on which he would rely later in his Hollywood career.

According to Daubney,

The range of idioms, forms and contexts in which Steiner was composing and arranging is typical of the diversity of early twentieth-century European theatrical entertainment, and it gives an indication of how adaptable he needed to be . . . judging the different needs for music in the wide range of film genres which he later scored: musicals, melodramas, historical epics, biographies, westerns, crime dramas.17

Steiner’s European period ended in 1914 with the onset of World War I. With the help of his London theater colleagues and Hugh Grosvenor, the Duke of Westminster (a family friend) Steiner immigrated to New York City alone (his wife Beatrice stayed behind) with no property and with only $57 in his pocket.18

New York City and Broadway

Steiner landed in New York City in November 1914 and stayed with his uncle

Alexander “Doc” Steiner before arranging for his own lodgings. Expecting to begin work right away, Steiner recalled that:

For the first few days after my arrival I was unable to see anyone about a job due to the Christmas holidays. As soon as I could I headed for the office of my old producer, Ned Wayburn. Ned had become a producer for Flo Ziegfeld and it was partly on the strength of his cable to me in London offering me a job as a musical director for Ziegfeld that I had the courage to set out for New York. But while I

16 Ibid.

17 Daubney, Now, Voyager, 4.

18 Wegele, Max Steiner, 53.

18

was on the high seas, Ziegfeld had fired him, so when I arrived, he had no job and neither had I.19

Armed with several letters of recommendation, Steiner searched for another connection who would approach Ziegfeld or the Shuberts and other big Broadway producers on his behalf. It came as a surprise to him, however, when he learned that in order to work for one of those theaters, he had to wait six months to become a union member.20 Steiner recalled “no one helped me because of union regulations, which nobody had thought to warn me about.”21

Steiner called 1915 his “Pre-Broadway period.” He was forced to work “a series of odd jobs loosely related to music entertainment,” beginning as a copyist for Tin Pan

Alley publishers Harms Music and Waterson, Berlin and Snyder.22 He carefully selected his acquaintances, loitered at rehearsal halls, and offered to help as an accompanist. In

1915 he played with a ten-piece orchestra at Reisenweber’s Restaurant in Coney Island, a recurring gig that eventually landed him a job with the Roxy chain of cinemas. Impressed by Steiner’s work, Samuel L. Rothafel asked him to lead the 43-piece non-union

19 Charles Francis Leinberger, “An Austrian in Hollywood: Leitmotifs, Thematic Transformation and Key Relationships in Max Steiner’s 1942 Film Score Now, Voyager” (PhD diss., University of Arizona, 1996), 41.

20 George Seltzer, Music Matters: The Performer and the American Federation of Musicians (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1989), 16-17; Eric Arneson, ed., Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working-Class History (New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2007), s.v. “American Federation of Musicians.” Max Steiner’s struggle to enter The American Federation of Musicians union (AFM) throughout 1914 and 1915 was due to union president Joseph Weber’s campaign to keep musicians’ job opportunities limited to U.S. citizens. Weber and the AFM enforced a residency requirement dating back to 1882, when the Musical Mutual Protective Union (which later merged with other unions to form the AFM) required foreign musicians to reside in the United States for at least six months before acquiring eligibility for union membership. This requirement lasted 50 years until Congressional revisions in 1932. Weber and the AFM also continually appealed to the Department of Labor to exclude foreign musicians under the Alien Contract Labor Law of 1885. All of these appeals were unsuccessful, as the Labor Law contained an exception for artists, which Congress upheld, included musicians (until revisions in 1932).

21 Steiner, Notes to You, 63.

22 Daubney, Now, Voyager, 5.

19 orchestra at the Riverside Theater, conducting the orchestra and arranging the program

“to suit whatever the silent feature film demanded to enhance the story line.”23 Steiner was so successful that he was then appointed music director for the Fox theater chain, arranging all of the non-union orchestras that accompanied the studio’s films. According to Edward Leaney, “Only when William Fox [yielded] to union pressure [was] Max accepted as a union member, removing past barriers to employment within the entire musical profession.”24 Although cinema got him into the union, Steiner would not return to film again for over a decade.

From 1916-1929, Steiner conducted “so many musical shows” in New York that he claimed to have “lost count or forgotten some of them.”25 During this time, he

“presid[ed] over the best in musical theatre—the newer strains of Gershwin and Kern, as well as the Victor Herbert operettas that were closer to his own education.”26 He was involved with such a range of Broadway musicals that in the early 1920s he even declined an offer to go to Hollywood with Louis Silvers, Al Jolson’s musical director

(this invitation occurred before Jolson’s 1927 hit The Jazz Singer).27 Notable shows for which Steiner conducted, arranged, orchestrated, or music directed (or some combination thereof) included Ed Wynn’s Carnival (1920, New Amsterdam Theater), The Rose Girl

(1921, Ambassador Theater), Tangerine (1921, The Casino), Ziegfeld’s Follies (1923,

23 Edward A. Leaney, “A Max Steiner Chronology,” Register of the Max Steiner Collection, MSS 1547, MSC, http://files.lib.byu.edu/ead/XML/MSS1547.xml (accessed November 7, 2016).

24 Ibid.

25 Leinberger, “An Austrian in Hollywood,” 41.

26 Gary Marmorstein, Hollywood Rhapsody: Movie Music and its Makers, 1900-1975 (New York: Prentice Hall International, 1997), 74.

27 Ibid.

20

New Amsterdam Theater), Lady, Be Good! (1924, Liberty Theater), Castles in the Air

(1925, Rhode Island and Chicago), and Rio Rita (1927, Ziegfeld Theater). Because of all this conducting activity, he composed little original music, with the exception of the musical Peaches (book and lyrics by Harry Smith), which ran for only two weeks each in

Philadelphia and Baltimore.28

Hollywood

Steiner’s pioneering role in Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s was the result of his work for RKO and for David O. Selznick. Prior to his move to Hollywood, “There was little about Steiner’s career to lead him, or anyone else, to imagine that he would in the next decade become the most productive of all film composers, as well as the most influential.”29 Even Steiner himself noted “I never thought of myself as a composer, but dreamed only of becoming a great conductor.”30 In the early 1930s, when sound scoring became common, movie producers wanted to make a big impact on audiences. According to conductor Larry Blank, “All of the talent came from Broadway. The Hollywood producers, they brought in these [conductors] from New York, and all of them wrote for symphonic-type orchestras. That way, when the music came on screen, it was enormous.”31

Steiner’s connection to Broadway landed him a job as one of the first important movie composers. In 1927, he worked as the musical director and conductor for the stage

28 Wegele, Max Steiner, 55.

29 Thomas, Film Score, 74.

30 Steiner, Notes to You, 16.

31 Al Rudis, “Movie Music’s Trip from Broadway to Hollywood,” Long Beach Press-Telegram, May 14, 2009, http://www.presstelegram.com/general-news/20090514/movie-musics-trip-from-broadway- to-hollywood (accessed November 7, 2016).

21 production of the operetta Rio Rita with popular Broadway song composer and

Hollywood’s RKO Pictures staff composer, Harry Tierney (also the chief composer for the Ziegfeld Follies beginning in 1924). When RKO bought Rio Rita to adapt to film,

Tierney insisted that Steiner join the composing team “to provide the same services he had rendered for the stage version.” 32 Steiner’s creative instrumentation made small orchestras sound larger than they actually were, a technique that William Le Baron, head of RKO production, realized “could be of immense value to the film industry.”33 With the stock market crash the previous month negatively impacting Broadway, coupled with knowing that film was the future, Steiner signed the contract and moved to Hollywood in

November 1929.

RKO Pictures

Rio Rita (1929) was wildly successful and initiated what Richard Barrios calls

“the first age of the filmed Broadway musical.”34 In 1930, Hollywood produced as many film musicals as it could possibly make, close to 100 that year alone. Chasing the success of Rio Rita, Steiner and the rest of the composing team completed the film operetta

Dixiana (1930), a “moonlight-and-Mardi Gras concoction” designed to adhere to the same music formula as their previous hit.35 For his musical arrangements, Steiner received his first screen credits (“Orchestrations by Max Steiner”).36 Dixiana’s release in

32 Thomas, Film Score, 74.

33 Wegele, Max Steiner, 56.

34 Richard Barrios, A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 225.

35 Ibid., 298.

36 Wegele, Max Steiner, 56.

22 the fall of 1930, however, turned out to be the “worst possible time” for an escapist film, and it lost “a great deal of money” for RKO. The following year, only 11 film musicals were produced in Hollywood; due to the low quality of some of these musical films, the economic depression, and a change in public taste; “The bottom fell out of the musical market.”37 Hollywood refocused its attention to dramatic films instead.

Almost unanimously, producers decided that background music could not be used in dramatic films unless the source of the music was shown (known as diegetic music).

As a result, orchestras became dispensable; studios began firing all musicians not under contract, and even attempted to buy out existing ones. As the last remaining member of the RKO music department, Steiner’s job changed several times before the studio finally settled on keeping him on as head of the department, but with no contract, and with the right to dismiss him with only one month’s notice. Although the terms were not ideal,

Steiner repeatedly said in later interviews that staying with RKO, rather than requesting release from the studio and moving back to the East Coast, was the most important decision of his career.38

By accepting RKO’s offer, Steiner’s working conditions changed dramatically: he was provided only a ten-piece orchestra, an average of three hours recording time, and music that was largely preselected. After reappointing composer and orchestrator Roy

Webb (recently terminated by RKO) to work as his assistant, Steiner’s first project—and he was not the studio’s first choice—was to provide the music for Cimarron (1931), a

Western starring Richard Dix and Irene Dunne that had already wrapped filming and was

37 Laurence E. MacDonald, The Invisible Art of Film Music: A Comprehensive History (New York: Ardsley House, 1998), 28.

38 Wegele, Max Steiner, 57.

23 under pressure to add music quickly. According to Steiner, producer William Le Baron asked him, “Could you knock something out for this picture? If we don’t like it, we’ll get someone else to redo it. Just give us enough for the preview.”39 Steiner recalled: “The picture opened. The next morning, the papers came out and reported that the picture was excellent. And what about the music—it said it was the greatest music that was ever written. Their faces dropped, and I got a raise of 50 dollars.”40

The next film Steiner scored was Beau Idol (1931) directed by Edward Griffith, and is significant because it was the first production to use a click-track. The new procedure of recording allowed Steiner to overdub music, making a 20-piece orchestra sound like 60 pieces: Steiner:

. . . recognized immediately [the click track’s] adaptability for scoring as well as for other things than marching [as in Beau Ideal]—such as montages, all fast- moving scenes, trains, horses running, and especially for dances. With this device we could match the movements on the screen with complete accuracy. 41

During the next few years Steiner became increasingly involved with small scoring projects (many uncredited) while working primarily as the music director for film musicals. Hollywood studios held firm their stance regarding background music in dramatic films (that there should be none), while Steiner remained convinced that one day they would change their minds. When RKO hired young producer David O.

Selznick—who was passionate about creating quality films and understanding about the potential of good music to enhance a picture—Steiner found an ally.

39 Ibid.

40 Max Steiner, “Music Director,” in The Real Tinsel, ed. Bernard Rosenberg and Harry Silverstein (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 392.

41 Steiner, Notes to You, 110.

24

In 1932, just one year after Selznick joined RKO, Steiner wrote his first complete original film score for Selznick’s Symphony of Six Million, a melodrama based on a popular novel. After preliminary filming was complete, Selznick was unhappy with the

“shape of the characters, especially the moral dilemma and the transformation of the main character,” which he feared were not believable to an audience, so Steiner composed one reel of music that he designed “to tell the subtext behind the story and to improve the weak parts of the script.”42 When Selznick saw the film with the addition of Steiner’s reel, he was immediately convinced that music could help “reveal and communicate the deeper meanings” of the narrative, and he told Steiner to score the entire thing.43 With the success of the finished film, Steiner’s new technique of underscoring became firmly planted in the film industry. Steiner explained the success of his idea:

The music in this picture . . . is handled like opera music. It matches exactly the mood, the action, and the situation of the scene on screen. If there was a fight, the music assumes that sort of theme; if the players are in a tender love scene, the music corresponds. It is in every foot of the picture, yet so unobtrusively that no one is ever conscious of it.”44

Steiner’s next major collaboration with Selznick was Bird of Paradise (1932), an exotic

South Sea romance with Dolores del Rio and Joel McCrea, for which Steiner received much acclaim. One critic suggested that due to the absence of an Oscar specifically awarded for music (at that time), Steiner should be given a special award from the

Academy for his “musical courage,” as “no one [could] fail to be moved by the musical background.”45

42 Wegele, Max Steiner, 59.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid.

45 Ibid., 59-60.

25

RKO declared bankruptcy in 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression. Several projects already in production were put on hold, and producer Merian C. Cooper—hired the year before for the adventure film The Most Dangerous Game (1932)—was told to use as much pre-existing studio material as possible to produce an inexpensive but surefire box-office hit. In a risk that almost sank the studio, Cooper decided to produce

King Kong, a fantasy story about a giant ape brought from Africa to New York City. He used jungle set pieces and props from The Most Dangerous Game, along with a brand- new stop-motion animation technique, to complete the production. When he viewed the film without its sound or music, RKO President B. B. Kahane was skeptical of its success. Convinced that the film required the “right” music to establish the fantastical atmosphere, Cooper—without Kahane’s permission—told Steiner to spend whatever he needed to bring the story to life. Excited by the musical possibilities—“anything and everything from weird chords and dissonances to pretty melodies”—Steiner spent

$55,000 on a 40-piece orchestra, then a large amount to spend on film music.46 His score features a central chromatic motif for the ape and effectively delineates reality, represented by silence, from the fantasy world, scored with lush music from the Skull

Island scene through the end of the film.

The film was a great success. It set a world record for opening weekend attendance, even in the midst of the Great Depression, and saved RKO from bankruptcy, earning over two million dollars in profits. Most importantly for Steiner, the score firmly

46 Ibid., 60.

26 established his symphonic film music credentials. Decades later, King Kong is now

“deemed film music’s greatest achievement in the early 1930s.”47

Another of Steiner’s acclaimed original scores from this period with RKO was

The Informer (1935), a score “carefully worked out . . . with a distinctive motif for each principal character,” for which Steiner won his first Academy Award.48 According to

Daubney, “[Steiner] expands and develops the techniques he had established for King

Kong [two years earlier], blending extensive thematic characterization . . . and references to the cultural setting of the film.”49 It was one of the rare instances in his career when

Steiner was allowed involvement in the early production stages. John Ford, the film’s director, had “very firm ideas about the extent to which music could be functional within film,” and so involved Steiner during production, rather than in post-production.50 This early collaboration was necessary for a pivotal scene at the end of the film, during which water droplets needed to be synchronized with music. Steiner first worked with the screenwriter and then later created his own water dripping device to achieve the desired musical effect.

A list of Steiner’s credits during his approximately five years with RKO “would suggest that his every hour was spent in writing and conducting music.”51 Despite this great amount of work, and his growing reputation, Steiner left RKO when his salary

47 Larry M. Timm, The Soul of Cinema: An Appreciation of Film Music, 2nd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003), 93.

48 Marmorstein, Hollywood Rhapsody, 71.

49 Daubney, Now, Voyager, 9. Mickey-mousing refers to music synchronized to mimic physical action, as was frequently used in cartoons.

50 Daubney, “The View from the Piano,” 83.

51 Thomas, Film Score, 74.

27 could not be negotiated. David O. Selznick had by this time formed his own production company, Selznick International Pictures. When he offered Steiner a better salary than

RKO could offer, Steiner leaped at the opportunity and became the new head of

Selznick’s music department.

Selznick International and Warner Bros.

According to Daubney, “Selznick’s role was perhaps the most significant in gradually drawing Steiner into composition and away from musical direction.”52 Steiner had come to Hollywood as an arranger, musical director, and conductor, and “yet it took

Selznick’s vision to create film projects which were inspiring to interpret in music.”53

Selznick held firm beliefs about the potential uses of music in film, and just as director

John Ford had done in The Informer, Selznick involved Steiner in the early production stages of his films rather than after filming had finished.

Steiner’s first film for Selznick International Pictures was The Garden of Allah

(1936), for which Steiner used a new “push-pull” track that greatly enhanced the sound quality, and for which he received an Academy Award nomination. After A Star Is Born later that year (the film was not released until the following year, 1937), Steiner was loaned out to Warner Bros. for The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), for which he received yet another Academy Award nomination. Selznick’s poor financial situation and inability to keep Steiner busy with more than a few pictures at a time led to this loan

52 Daubney, “The View from the Piano,” 83.

53 Ibid.

28 arrangement. Steiner then accepted a seven-year contract with Warner Bros., retaining an option to leave and work for Selznick whenever needed.54

At Warner Bros., Steiner had access to a larger orchestra and higher production values than at RKO, and music chief Leo Forbstein himself “ran interference with Jack

Warner and left his composers alone . . . as long as [they] could get the work done.”55 In addition to his primary employment at Warner Bros., Steiner also worked on a short-term basis for other major studios and independent companies throughout his career (even taking a year to work freelance in 1953).56 Beginning with his first of 140 films at

Warner Bros., The Charge of the Light Brigade (starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de

Havilland), Steiner scored an average of eight films a year for the next ten years, each of them requiring at least an hour of music; not until 1957 did his output drop below five films per year. Furthermore, between the years of 1938 and 1955 Steiner was nominated for at least one Oscar every year (except 1951 and 1953). Tony Thomas writes that

Steiner’s level of musical output “came about as the result of his determination not to disappoint the producers who were relying on him, very few of whom had much idea of the skill and labor involved in creating music.”57

Like all of his contemporaries, Steiner frequently recycled his own material; he reworked a fanfare from Tovarich (1937) for Gold Is Where You Find It (1938), and

54 Wegele, Max Steiner, 65.

55 George A. Lazarou, Maximilian Raoul Walter Steiner: Annotated Filmography (1929-1964) (Athens: G. A. Lazarou, 2003), 2.

56 Ibid.

57 Thomas, Film Score, 74-75.

29

Warner Bros. used it as their official signature fanfare for approximately 100 films.58 In spite of Steiner’s repetition and “self-plagiarism,” particularly near the end of his career,

Thomas asserts that Steiner’s “general level of craftsmanship and the consistent understanding of the musical needs of filmic story telling added up to an astonishing total contribution.”59

The year of 1939 marked Steiner’s greatest output as a principal composer. His scores ranged from “comedy western to propaganda vehicle, from social commentary to melodrama, from historical epic to domestic comedy.”60 He scored ten films for Warner

Bros. in that year, and because of his contractual arrangement was loaned out to Selznick to work on what would become his best-known score, Gone with the Wind. The film won

Best Picture, Best Director (Victor Fleming), Best Actress (Vivien Leigh), and six other

Academy Awards out of the 14 for which it was nominated. However, Steiner’s score did not win the Oscar for Best Score. Herbert Stothart won for The Wizard of Oz.61

While working on Gone with the Wind, Selznick also secured Steiner for

Intermezzo (1939), starring Leslie Howard as a classical violinist. Steiner created a score using his own original music and “as much classical music as possible,” which Selznick personally requested.62 In a memo from October 1939, Selznick wrote to Steiner:

58 Wegele, Max Steiner, 65.

59 Tony Thomas, “Max Steiner: Vienna, London, New York, and Finally Hollywood,” Register of the Max Steiner Collection, MSS 1547, MSC, http://files.lib.byu.edu/ead/XML/MSS1547.xml (accessed November 7, 2016).

60 Daubney, “The View from the Piano,” 86.

61 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, “The 12th Academy Awards: 1940,” https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1940 (accessed November 7, 2016).

62 Wegele, Max Steiner, 65.

30

The score on Intermezzo is receiving a great deal of comment and extraordinarily favorable attention, for which I thank and congratulate you . . . The outstanding point that has been commented on by so many, and that has certainly served to make the score so beautiful, is its use of classical music to such a great extent instead of original music hastily written. This is a point on which I have been fighting for years, with little success.63

In addition to working on Intermezzo and Gone with the Wind simultaneously, Steiner was also responsible for the music for Warner Bros.’ Four Wives (1939), released just ten days after the premiere of Gone with the Wind. Steiner’s ability to meet the studio system’s intense demands was “largely founded in the reliability of his relationship with his chief orchestrator, Hugo Friedhofer.”64 According to Mervyn Cooke, “after moving to

Warner Bros. in 1936, Steiner became one of the most prolific of all Hollywood composers, scoring massive assignments . . . with the aid of a team of brilliant orchestrators and copious quantities of Benzedrine.”65

Although Steiner’s workaholism secured his place among the greats of

Hollywood composers, it cost him two marriages and contributed to ongoing health problems for the duration of his career, glaucoma, paranoia, and extreme sleep deprivation, to name a few. Regarding the physical manifestation of studio pressure,

Steiner said:

[There] is a terrific strain on the eyes and the heart, so I would not advise anyone who is not in good physical condition to undertake this vocation, especially as this pressure occurs almost constantly . . . 66 The work is hard and exacting, and when dreaded “release date” is upon us, sleep is a thing unknown . . . I have had

63 Rudy Behlmer, ed., Memo from David O. Selznick (New York: Viking Press, 1972), 217.

64 Daubney, Now, Voyager, 9.

65 Mervyn Cooke, ed., The Hollywood Film Music Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 56.

66 Daubney, Now, Voyager, 9-10.

31

stretches of work for 56 consecutive hours without sleep in order to complete a picture for the booking date.67

After his record year in 1939, Steiner continued full-speed, completing score after score for Warner Bros. films, starring actors such as Gary Cooper, Bette Davis, James Cagney, and Ronald Reagan. In the three years between 1941 and 1944, Steiner composed the next group of what would become classic scores and earned two more Academy Awards.

They Died with Their Boots On (1941) premiered on New Years’ Day, 1942. Starring

Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland in their eighth co-starring film, the picture chronicles and glamorizes General Custer’s career from West Point to the Battle of the Little Big

Horn. Thomas calls the “exquisite” love theme composed for Flynn and Havilland

Steiner’s “love theme par excellence,” particularly in their final scene together, when

Flynn, as Custer, “rides off into history, never to return.”68

Steiner wrote the music for two of his most famous films within one month of each other. In 1942, only nine days after finishing recording for Desperate Journey (a wartime Air Force action film), Steiner was given his first music cue timing sheet for

Now, Voyager, and expected to begin recording just one week later. One of the top love stories in American film, Now, Voyager chronicles the ongoing transformation and love story of Charlotte Vale (played by Bette Davis) in 1940s Boston.69 Steiner spent three weeks recording the complex, lavish score full of leitmotifs and song quotation; it earned him his second Academy Award. Less than a month after completing recording for Now,

67 Wegele, Max Steiner, 15.

68 Thomas, “Max Steiner,” http://files.lib.byu.edu/ead/XML/MSS1547.xml (accessed November 7, 2016).

69 American Film Institute, “AFI’s 100 Years . . . 100 Passions,” http://www.afi.com/100years/passions.aspx (accessed November 7, 2016). Now, Voyager is ranked 23rd.

32

Voyager, Steiner received the music cue timing sheet for Casablanca, and in just nine days was back in the recording studio.

As was customary, Steiner began composing the music for Casablanca after most of the film had already finished shooting. The tune “As Time Goes By” (composed by

Herman Hupfeld in 1931) appeared in several scenes as diegetic music, in this case played by piano and sung. By the time Steiner began composing, he had to work his material around the song. According to his wife Louise,

. . . when [Max] came home one day, he said, ‘They have the lousiest tune, they already have it recorded, and they want me to use it.’ And it went on to become so popular. Of course, Max worked it up beautifully in his score and developed it wonderfully. But he despised it. He was mad when he heard it. But he was stuck because they had already recorded it.70

Casablanca tops AFI’s list as the number-one love story ever filmed.71 In spite of

Steiner’s personal abhorrence of “As Time Goes By,” everyone else loved it, and he received an Oscar nomination for the score (throughout his career, Steiner was nominated

22 times for an Academy Award).

Steiner’s third and final Oscar win was in 1945 for Selznick’s Since You Went

Away (1944), a sentimental drama set in a Midwestern town during World War II. The score contains “more melodic material than any other Steiner score,” except Gone with the Wind, and relies heavily on leitmotifs for its variety of characters: a “bluesy theme” for Hattie McDaniel, a “sprightly” one for Shirley Temple, and even a theme played on contrabassoon for the family bulldog, Soda.72 Steiner relied on recycling previously

70 Wegele, Max Steiner, 94.

71 American Film Institute, “AFI’s 100 Years,” http://www.afi.com/100years/passions.aspx (accessed November 7, 2016).

72 MacDonald, Invisible Art of Film Music, 84.

33 composed material, namely his own waltz from A Star Is Born (1937), and a theme closely resembling “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” popularized by Bing Crosby the previous year (1943).73

In the years after his third Oscar win, Steiner became even busier, occasionally recording scores for two films in the same six-hour recording session. Friedhofer,

Steiner’s main orchestrator, said, “I don’t think anybody had such a workload because

Jack Warner was really hooked on Max.”74 Steiner was in demand and therefore worked on several important films that in addition to being brilliantly scored, eventually became landmarks for non-musical reasons. Mildred Pierce (1945) won Joan Crawford the Oscar for Best Actress, and The Big Sleep (1946) and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) defined Humphrey Bogart’s career.75 In The Big Sleep, “the ultimate ‘private eye’ story,” starring Bogart opposite his new wife, Lauren Bacall:

Steiner ushers in the mystery and mayhem with heavy chordal passages . . . swirling music for chases . . . orchestral flutters for suspense . . . And when the gun smoke clears and Bogie and Baby are looking at each other in that sardonic but enticing way—you know they’re meant for each other because there’s a gorgeous Steiner theme telling you it can’t be any other way.76

In The Treasure of the Sierra Madre two years later, Steiner again used the orchestra masterfully to build excitement and anticipation. However, critics complained the score was too full—“almost a Richard Straussian coloration”—and that the music was Spanish- tinged rather than Mexican flavored, as it should have been.77

73 Ibid.

74 Wegele, Max Steiner, 70.

75 Daubney, “The View from the Piano,” 84.

76 Thomas, “Max Steiner,” http://files.lib.byu.edu/ead/XML/MSS1547.xml (accessed November 7, 2016). 77 Ibid.

34

The Adventures of Don Juan (1949) had a similarly dramatic score, one “of unusually high caliber,” according to Steiner’s orchestrator for the film, Murray Cutter.78

Erich Korngold had begun composition for the film in 1945 at Jack Warner’s request

(Korngold had already scored several Errol Flynn adventure-romance films), but the project was postponed several times over the next two years, and Korngold ultimately suffered a heart attack and retired from film music composition. Therefore, Steiner was brought on to replace him. Despite good reviews and a positive reaction in Europe,

American audiences had grown indifferent to these kinds of films, and Don Juan flopped at the box office. In response, Warner Bros. slashed the budget for future productions of this genre; Steiner had scored “the last of the great [Errol] Flynn swashbucklers,” and

Hollywood was changing.79

The Hollywood studio system disintegrated in the 1950s as a result of the 1948 antitrust lawsuit that prevented studios from monopolizing both distribution and presentation at theaters. In the new system, independent producers “usually owned no lot, no long-term contracts with stars, no staff of writers and technicians. [They] assembled a company for a particular film, disbanded it when the film was finished, and assembled another company for [the] next film.”80

Steiner’s contract with Warner Bros. ended in 1953 and was not renewed, despite his award-winning compositional output throughout his long history in the film industry.

For the next 12 years, he worked as a freelance composer for different studios, including

78 Wegele, Max Steiner, 70.

79 Ibid.

80 Ibid., 71.

35

Twentieth Century Fox, RKO, United Artists, Republic, and also back at Warner Bros.

As the film industry transitioned, Steiner altered his own compositional style to stay relevant. In 1959, he embraced the pop music style of the era, writing a love theme for the teenage drama A Summer Place (1959), which became immensely popular. The pop song—titled simply “Theme from A Summer Place”—was Warner Bros.’ biggest commercial music success in two decades. Percy Faith’s rendition of the song (one of the

30 subsequent recordings made by other artists) was awarded the Grammy for Record of the Year in 1960, winning over other records by Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray

Charles, and Elvis Presley.

After this hit, Steiner’s film assignments declined. Through the 1950s and 1960s the increasing popularity of television lessened movie attendance, and audiences’ tastes favored “less dramatic, more naturalistic” film music rather than the “old fashioned” symphonic style.81 Although he would have preferred more projects, Steiner scored only a few movies a year until his last film, Two on A Guillotine (1965). A “miserable, feeble film,” Steiner’s producer accused him of “ruining it.”82 Thomas commented that, unfortunately, it was “a weak coda to a mighty career.”83 Due to his failing eyesight, made worse by two botched eye surgeries, and the industry’s apparent indifference,

Steiner spent his final years feeling bitter. In one incident, he contacted Twentieth

Century Fox when it announced the filming of The Day Custer Fell (later cancelled), to express his interest in scoring the film; the young person who answered the phone asked

81 Ibid., 73.

82 Thomas, “Max Steiner,” http://files.lib.byu.edu/ead/XML/MSS1547.xml (accessed November 7, 2016).

83 Ibid.

36

Steiner if he had any experience writing music for Westerns. Steiner suffered from and finally succumbed to cancer on December 28, 1971. According to Thomas, “when Max

Steiner died, a link with Old Vienna ceased to be and yet another door on the Old

Hollywood was closed.”84

Steiner’s Compositional Style

Steiner and his contemporaries brought the “great romantic symphony” to

Hollywood.85 Although at the time of his death this style had fallen out of favor, contemporary composers such as John Williams and Howard Shore have revived it into the twenty-first century, re-popularizing the expressively melodious classical model.

Throughout Steiner’s career, when asked to comment on his invention of this model of film music, he replied: “Nonsense. The idea originated with Richard Wagner. Listen to the incidental scoring behind the recitatives in his operas. If Wagner had lived in this century, he would have been the Number One film composer.”86 It was Wagner’s influence combined with Steiner’s musical theater background that ultimately defined his scoring practice.

In the days of silent film, musical accompaniment on piano or organ (and later, orchestral accompaniment in movie palaces) existed to mask projector noise as well as to dramatize the events unfolding on screen. Accompanists played music from the classical repertoire and Tin Pan Alley songbook until the dawn of the “talkies” in the late 1920s when composers provided full scores. Through the pioneering efforts of early sound film

84 Ibid.

85 Wegele, Max Steiner, 75.

86 Thomas, “Max Steiner,” http://files.lib.byu.edu/ead/XML/MSS1547.xml (accessed November 7, 2016).

37 composers like Steiner and Korngold, “the film score began to assume some clearly defined parameters and functions.”87 The classical film score reflects traits of the

European Romanticism of nineteenth-century opera and concert music: lush, symphonic orchestration, an “adherence to functional tonality with highly conventional Germanic- style chromaticism,” and the extensive use of the leitmotif technique made popular by

Wagnerian opera.88 Furthermore, it “adhered to another important cultural value of

Romanticism: that each film carries a newly composed score unique to that film.”89

Steiner and Korngold both came from Europe and favored its musical idiom, as did several influential composers of the post-Romantic tradition, including Wagner,

Mahler, Richard Strauss, Tchaikovsky, and Mussorgsky. Young Steiner and Korngold

“living in the shadows of these composers” were understandably drawn to compose in the same style “characterized by a strong tendency to the programmatic and a belief in the narrative capabilities of music.”90 Frequently confronted by a film’s dramatic challenges, composers such as Steiner, Korngold, and Alfred Newman modeled composers like

Wagner, Puccini, Strauss, and Verdi; these progenitors of dramatic storytelling “had, for the most part, solved almost identical problems in their operas.”91

87 Timothy E. Scheurer, Music and Mythmaking in Film: Genre and the Role of the Composer (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008), 19.

88 Phil Powrie and Robynn Stilwell, ed., Changing Tunes: The Use of Pre-existing Music in Film (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 120.

89 Ibid.

90 Scheurer, Music and Mythmaking, 40.

91 Ibid., 41.

38

Wagnerian Influences

In an interview with a UCLA student in 1967, Steiner explained that he studied

Wagner’s music in his youth and he “learned a lot,” just as he did from the other opera composers: “Wagner was undoubtedly a great composer. There is no question about that.

I just don’t particularly care for his music. I lean towards Tchaikovsky and [Rimsky]

Korsakov. I like French music better.”92 Whether or not he cared for Wagner’s music,

Steiner’s compositional style was heavily influenced by Wagnerian techniques, as evidenced by his use of orchestral underscoring to support and dramatize the film narrative, and his extensive use of leitmotifs to emphasize character traits and scenic mood.

In silent films and talkies, Wagnerian “fragments and motifs . . . rapidly [became] a staple of American film music,” with Wagner’s concept of the “total work of art”

(Gestamtkunstwerk) advocating narrative cinema as “high art.”93 Wagner’s recognition of the orchestra’s new omnipresent role in marrying music and drama—together with his leitmotif technique and insistence on one continuous melody—was revolutionary.94 He consistently drew attention to this role of instrumentation “in the expression of [his] affects,” saying: “Anyone who separates the harmony from the instruments when talking

92 Myrl Schreibman, “On Gone with the Wind, Selznick, and the Art of ‘Mickey-Mousing:’ An Interview with Max Steiner,” Journal of Film and Video 56, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 46.

93 Matthew Wilson Smith, “American Valkyries: Richard Wagner, D. W. Griffith, and the Birth of Classical Cinema,” Modernism/Modernity 15, no. 2 (April 2008): 231.

94 Hilda Meldrum Brown, Leitmotiv and Drama: Wagner, Brecht, and the Limits of “Epic” Theatre (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 41.

39 about my music is doing me as great an injustice as someone who separates my music from my text, my song from my words.”95

Steiner’s original scores, in line with this Wagnerian ideology, caught the attention of Hollywood studios because of their musical contribution to the dramatic impact of a film.96 According to Daubney, Cimarron (1930) was Hollywood’s first sound-era film to include non-diegetic music (underscoring music that occurs when the source of the music is not shown), “the placement of which foreshadows the later widely used Hollywood technique of emphasizing emotional, unspoken elements of the narrative.”97 Steiner embraced the Wagnerian school of thought that had surrounded him during his formal education and training in Europe, and he was committed to the use of originally composed non-diegetic symphonic music. Although it took a few years for other Hollywood composers and producers to agree with Steiner, Selznick, who was

“extremely sensitive musically” and always the progressive, gave Steiner his full support:

“Music should fit the precise action, mood and even words in a screen play, and obviously should be especially composed.”98 Steiner’s scores for RKO’s Bird of Paradise and the break-through film King Kong the following year “single-handedly illustrated to other filmmakers of the time the incredible effect a custom score can have on the impact

95 F. E. Kirby, Wagner’s Themes: A Study in Musical Expression (Warren, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2004), 210.

96 Timm, Soul of Cinema, 93.

97 Kate Daubney and Janet B. Bradford, “Steiner, Max,” Grove Music Online.

98 Wierzbicki, Film Music, 129.

40 of a film.” 99 This solidly established the classical model that Hollywood and international film music would follow for the next several decades.

Film Scoring Techniques

According to Neumeyer, a film score can be categorized into “three basic types of music: several themes of motives, passages which develop those motives, and stereotyped action or connotative music.”100 Steiner’s breadth of work is consistent with this classification. The umbrella of “stereotyped action” includes one of Steiner’s signature techniques: “Mickey-Mousing.” Given this label from its regular use in cartoons, mickey-mousing “involved musical gestures directly imitating the physical actions to which they were synchronized.”101 Steiner was both praised and criticized for his “slavish adherence” to this scoring approach.102 In an interview at the end of his career, Steiner commented on the practice:

I always laugh. “Mickey Mousing.” It is so darn silly. You think soldiers marching. What are you going to do? The music going one way and the image another? It would drive you nuts. It needs a march. It has to be with marching feet. So if you call it “Mickey Mousing,” it’s fine with me . . . Some [composers] don’t know how to do it and it becomes very obnoxious.103

When scoring his films, Steiner also incorporated recognizable public domain music into his compositions. Beyond the practical reason for using pre-existing material simply to meet a deadline, tune borrowing is one of the most effective ways to elicit an emotional response from an audience. Melodic recognition and association can initiate or reinforce

99 Timm, Soul of Cinema, 93.

100 Neumeyer, “Film Music Analysis,” 12.

101 Cooke, Hollywood Film Music Reader, 56.

102 Ibid.

103 Schreibman, “On Gone with the Wind,” 43.

41 a composer’s intended reaction for the audience, whether patriotic, romantic, comedic, nostalgic, or otherwise. In The Informer (1935), for instance, Steiner quoted the melodies of the Irish-themed songs “Danny Boy,” “Rose of Tralee,” “The Wearing of the Green,” and “Minstrel Boy” to “enhance the Irish flavor.”104 In Casablanca (1943), he made extensive non-diegetic use of the popular song “As Time Goes By” to reinforce the romantic relationship between Rick and Ilsa (played by Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid

Bergman). Steiner also interpolated snippets of “La Marseillaise” to represent the Allies, and “Deutschland über alles” and “Die Wacht am Rhein” for the Nazis, each example designed to represent conflicting waves of patriotism.105 The defining traits of popular songs (“periodic phrase structure, diatonic harmonies, homophonic part-writing, syllabic text-setting, and set forms, particularly the strophic form”) are what make the style easy to learn, remember, repeat, and recognize.106 American patriotic tunes and Stephen

Foster’s popular parlor songs and minstrel show songs (some of which later took on the status of folk song) closely follow this model. Steiner frequently borrowed from Foster’s songbook and other similar tunes to compose for his vast body of work, especially for his

Westerns, Civil War epics, and World War I and II dramas.

The use of the leitmotif was one of the most important contributions to film scoring imparted by Wagner and the post-Romantic music tradition, as it provided composers a “shorthand method” for developing character, enhancing drama, and eliciting emotion.107 The technique served as “one of the most potent weapons in

104 MacDonald, Invisible Art of Film Music, 37.

105 Ibid., 85-86.

106 Kirby, Wagner’s Themes, 208.

107 Scheurer, Music and Mythmaking, 41.

42

[Wagner’s] quiver towards the achievement of his radical goals.”108 Arnold Schoenberg explains their importance:

[Leitmotifs] are intervals and rhythms, combined to produce a memorable shape or contour which usually implies an inherent harmony . . . everything depends on its use. Whether a motive is simple or complex, whether it consists of few or many features its primary form does not determine the final impression of the piece. Everything depends upon its treatment and development.”109

In essays published 1910-1916, Clarence E. Sinn, an accompanist for silent films, closely examined Wagner’s use of “scenic, or descriptive music” as film underscoring; he foretold the key connection linking American film and Wagnerian music-drama, claiming that the motif structure “may prove the ideal form of film music.”110 In nearly every one of his films, Steiner embraced this technique: “Leading melodies—that’s what it really means. I write that way . . . Anyway [it] seems to have been successful.”111 Steiner’s leitmotifs are typically four to eight measures in length and occur in their entirety when a character is first introduced, a “musical identification tag”112 At pivotal moments throughout the film, these motives are typically transformed in accordance with the narrative, and appear as shorter two-measure fragments. Explaining where he learned the technique, Steiner said, “[Wagner and] Puccini did the same darn thing. All of the opera composers always carried their melodies, and it came back and so forth. It is hard to explain unless someone is a musician.”113

108 Brown, Leitmotiv and Drama, 48.

109 Scheurer, Music and Mythmaking, 41.

110 Smith, “American Valkyries,” 224, 228.

111 Schreibman, “On Gone with the Wind,” 46.

112 Leinberger, “An Austrian in Hollywood,” 47.

113 Schreibman, “On Gone with the Wind,” 46.

43

As influential an impact as Wagner and his operas had, Steiner’s scores are not operatic in nature; rather, “it is better to say that Steiner balanced Wagnerian and post-

Wagnerian conceptions of opera with underscoring methods derived from melodrama and operetta,” as well as from the Broadway tradition in America.114 Daubney suggests that

Steiner “found the logical heir to musical theater in film.”115 Whereas Hollywood studios feared adding non-diegetic music to film in the early 1930s, Steiner recognized the connection between musical theater and film, and unobtrusively established a balanced scoring technique: “Hollywood scoring gave [Steiner] a chance to stay with what he knew, developing a language of film coming from his theatrical vocabulary of melody and dramatic gesture, yet without the confinements of fitting a melody to a lyric.”116

Steiner’s European background had informed him of the importance of proper orchestration at an early age. However, it wasn’t until he lived in New York in the 1920s working with conductors and composers such as operetta composer Victor Herbert, that he learned how to achieve a full symphonic sound with a smaller number of instruments.

When Hollywood studios in the 1930s started making budget cuts, this ability was particularly valuable. Whether working with small or large ensembles, Steiner skillfully applied his knowledge of orchestration to reinforce his associative themes, allowing his music to “speak in its language of emotions and expressions.117

Steiner bridged the musical style gap from nineteenth-century opera to the twentieth-century symphonic film score, setting an example for future symphonic

114 Neumeyer, “The Resonances of Wagnerian Opera,” 116.

115 Daubney, Now, Voyager, 11.

116 Ibid.

117 Ibid.

44 composers such as John Williams and Danny Elfman. Williams’s neoromantic scores are full of character motifs that function as a “symphonic whole,” and Elfman “uses the melodic line to control the harmonic movement rather than vice versa” as in classical harmony.118 Without Wagner’s far-reaching influence, these modern scores (and

Steiner’s) would be “simply unimaginable.”119 Audiences spanning every generation are drawn to the expressivity of the narrative symphonic score, from contemporary

Hollywood composers, to Steiner and his Golden Age contemporaries, and extending back more than a hundred years to Wagner’s post-Romantic operas. In a pamphlet issued by Fox West Coast Theaters in 1940 (shortly after the premiere of Gone with the Wind),

Bruno David Ussher wrote of Steiner:

[He] has earned his position by the remarkable and consistent qualities of his film scores in which dramatic fidelity of expression, the fitness of general musical ideas is accompanied by a fresh and versatile sense of tonal beauty where beauty is appropriate.120

This beauty is prominently displayed in Steiner’s longest film score: the historical mural

Gone with the Wind.

118 Smith, “American Valkyries,” 222; Halfyard, Danny Elfman’s “Batman,” 115.

119 Smith, “American Valkyries,” 222.

120 Bruno David Ussher, “Cinemusic and its Meaning: Max Steiner Establishes Another Film Music Record: His Score for Gone with the Wind Described and Illustrated with Motifs,” in Gone with the Wind as Book and Film, ed. Richard Harwell (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1983), 161. The pamphlet is an expansion of Ussher’s review in the Hollywood Spectator, December 23, 1939, in which he said of Steiner’s music: “here is a score which blows greater life into a great motion picture.”

45

CHAPTER 3

THE PRODUCTION OF GONE WITH THE WIND

When Margaret Mitchell’s immediately best-selling novel Gone with the Wind was published in 1936, producer David O. Selznick’s new company, Selznick

International Pictures, was only a year old. At only 34 years old himself, Selznick was

“the most exciting and promising producer in Hollywood.”1 According to Platte: “music played an important role in Selznick’s films and the producer played an important role in the music. It was, perhaps, the music Selznick held most dear.”2 Because of Steiner’s stature among Hollywood film composers, he was Selznick’s logical choice for the epic

Civil War drama, Gone with the Wind.

The success of the film was unprecedented but not unexpected, largely due to the success of the novel upon which it was based. Both novel and film have withstood the test of time, still popular more than 75 years after their introduction. Atlanta and Southern society, in particular, remain intimately connected with the Gone with the Wind phenomenon. From 1936 to the present, the mythology of Scarlett O’Hara’s antebellum life creates for Southerners and Southern-sympathizers a “collective memory of the Old

South and the Confederacy that romanticize[s] the past.”3

1 Wilson, Making of “Gone with the Wind,” 2. Hereafter abbreviated as Making of GWTW.

2 Platte, “Musical Collaboration,” 37.

3 Alexandra Sowers, “The Different Faces of Scarlett: Media Coverage of Differing Views Concerning the Atlanta Premiere of Gone with the Wind and the Gone with the Wind Phenomenon,” The Atlanta Review of Journalism History 8 (September 2009), 130.

46

Margaret Mitchell’s Novel

Publishers Weekly called Gone with the Wind “very possibly the greatest

American novel.”4 Macmillan, the publisher, could not print enough copies to satisfy public demand, as the book was America’s fastest-selling novel to that time (1936). Only a month after its publication, Selznick purchased the rights for a record $50,000. The next three years of the film’s production was “the subject of intense national curiosity,” yet author Margaret Mitchell “refused to have anything to do with it,” never once setting foot in Hollywood.5 According to Helen Taylor, Mitchell:

. . . felt both humble and self-effacing, and also extremely proud and possessive about her creation: on the one hand, refusing to allow interviews or biographical articles and denying cooperation with the film’s producer; on the other, writing long, angry letters to people who commented on her and her book, and taking a keen and quite manipulative interest in the progress of the film, casting of stars and accuracy of accent and setting.”6

Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949) was raised in a Southern family proud of its Confederate lineage and Georgia roots. “Peggy” grew up attending parades honoring Atlanta’s fallen

Confederate soldiers, listening to war stories, and singing Civil War songs. In a radio broadcast, she said of her upbringing: “I heard everything in the world except that the

Confederates lost the war.”7 A natural storyteller from an early age, Mitchell’s education was supported at home, particularly by her mother. In a letter of 1936 to historian Henry

Steele Commager, Mitchell recalled her mother’s insistence that she use her education as

4 Timm, Soul of Cinema, 110.

5 Claudia Roth Pierpont, Passionate Minds: Women Rewriting the World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), 99.

6 Taylor, Scarlett’s Women, 45.

7 Finis Farr, Margaret Mitchell of Atlanta: The Author of “Gone with the Wind” (New York: William Morrow, 1965), 30.

47 a means of survival: “for God’s sake, go to school and learn something that will stay with you. The strength of women’s hands isn’t worth anything but what they’ve got in their heads will carry them as far as they need to go.”8 In the same letter, Mitchell described an early conversation with her mother as they drove down the road to Jonesboro:

. . . the “road to Tara” . . . showed me the old ruins of houses where fine and wealthy people had once lived . . . she talked about the world those people had lived in, such a secure world, and how it had exploded beneath them. And she told me that my own world was going to explode under me, some day, and God help me if I didn’t have some weapon to meet the new world.9

This weapon—Mitchell’s education and her writing—ensured her success, when 30 years after this conversation, her novel of the mythical Old South sold millions of copies and won the Pulitzer Prize (1937).

Mitchell believed her own life paralleled that of Scarlett O’Hara. According to

Taylor, “Scarlett was, like Peggy Mitchell, torn between very different definitions of

Southern womanhood, and felt herself uncomfortable with the attitudes of her time to femininity.”10 Several characters in Gone with the Wind are reminiscent of people she knew: Rhett’s “unpredictable, passionate, and violent behavior” mirrors that of Mitchell’s first husband, Red Upshaw; Melanie is a model for Mitchell’s Atlanta contemporaries; and Ellen parallels Mitchell’s own mother, Maybelle. She even found her own father,

Eugene, in a state of “distraught near-madness” after she returned home from a trip, just as Scarlett finds her father when she arrives home from Atlanta.11

8 Margaret Mitchell to Henry Steele Commager, July 10, 1936, in Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone with the Wind” Letters, 1936-1949, ed. Richard Harwell (New York: Macmillan, 1976), 38. Mitchell was six years old at the time of this conversation.

9 Ibid.

10 Taylor, Scarlett’s Women, 48.

11 Ibid.,

48

Mitchell was influenced throughout her childhood by “Plantation Myth writers”— anti-black storytellers glorifying the Cavalier Old South—who indirectly contributed to the many historical inaccuracies in her novel. When confronted about these errors,

Mitchell denied them, saying she “went to infinite pains” to ensure historical accuracy.12

Nearly all of her research, however, had been written or retold by a southern reporter or author, “products of the Moonlight and Magnolias school of history in the late 19th century . . . [who] trumpeted the virtues of the Old South.”13 According to Chadwick,

Mitchell did not simply want to glorify the Plantation Myth in Gone with the Wind—she could not avoid doing so. Her entire background suggests that if she ever wrote a book about the Civil War era it would turn out to be based on all the southern myths about the Old South, slavery, the war, reconstruction and the KKK.14

When she spoke at the 1939 Atlanta premiere of Gone with the Wind, Mitchell said,

“This has been a great emotional experience for me. To me it was a great thrill. I feel it has been a great thing for Georgia and the South to see the Confederates come back.”15

The picture of rural Georgia that Mitchell portrayed in her novel was the perfect backdrop for a Hollywood epic drama, despite her biased distortion of historical events and her misrepresentation of the life of the people.

Selznick International Pictures and Max Steiner

David O. Selznick grew up in the film industry working for his father, Lewis J.

Selznick, who had entered the movie business in 1913. Selznick branched out from his father’s company, the World Film Corporation, eventually “ascending rapidly through the

12 Margaret Mitchell to Harry Slattery, October 3, 1936, in GWTW Letters, Harwell, 68-69.

13 Chadwick, “Reel Civil War,” 301.

14 Ibid., 297.

15 Meyer Berger, “Atlanta Is Won by Film of South,” New York Times (December 16, 1939), 1.

49 ranks at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.”16 He left MGM in 1928 to work in other studios, first at Paramount (1928-1931), then at RKO as Head of Production (1931-1933). In 1930 he married Irene Mayer, daughter of Louis B. Mayer (head of MGM), and in 1933 he returned to MGM to work for his father-in-law (1933-1935). Selznick fulfilled his dream of owning a production company when in 1935, he formed Selznick International

Pictures with close friend John Hay “Jock” Whitney, proponent of the “new, improved

Technicolor Process No. 4,” or “three-strip Technicolor.”17 Unlike his father, Selznick chose to produce “fewer, but more expensive films, that he could guide and mold through every step of production.”18 The risky circumstances of producing these prestige films placed overwhelming pressure on Selznick. Each of his films had to be a financial success to balance the massive production investment. According to Platte, “This strain, coupled with Selznick’s innate determination and ambitions, expressed itself in many ways, including a veritably inhuman work schedule that kept Selznick perpetually connected to a film’s ongoing process.”19

Like Steiner, Selznick regularly used Benzedrine to combat exhaustion from his

“round-the-clock activities.”20 His unrelenting practice of writing (in the form of letters, teletypes, memoranda, telegrams, and informal lists and notes) documents the times, revealing “an astonishing prolificacy [that] reflects Selznick’s intense engagement with

16 Platte, “Musical Collaboration,” 28.

17 Wilson, Making of GWTW, 1.

18 Ibid., 29.

19 Platte, “Musical Collaboration,” 30.

20 Ibid.

50 each production,” particularly in the role of the music.21 Although he had no formal musical training, Selznick nevertheless “held so strong a sway over the music in his films that it could even overshadow the musicians involved.”22 Selznick and Steiner agreed that the purpose of music in a film was to enhance the mood of each scene so inconspicuously that the audience was never aware they were hearing it.

In March of 1939, Selznick secured Steiner for his latest project, a Civil War epic requiring an extensive original score. According to Platte, Steiner felt “trapped by prison picture assignments” at Warner Bros. and was “unhappy playing second fiddle to

Korngold,” to the extent that he practically begged Jack Warner for permission to work on Gone with the Wind.23

It is absolutely necessary that I do a top picture of the type of . . . Gone with the Wind with their vast opportunity for music . . . One cannot win Academy awards with Oklahoma Kid, etc . . . Please do not misunderstand me . . . I haven’t slept for days, and it is all I can [do to] try and get Nazi Spy finished in time. Really, Mr. Warner, I’m counting on you . . . Will you please give your consent and tell . . . Mr. Selznick . . . should he find it necessary to get someone else, I would never get over it [?]”24

Steiner managed to finish Nazi Spy by his deadline, and was loaned by Warner to work on Gone with the Wind. Selznick wrote to Henry Ginsberg (Vice President and General

Manager of Selznick International Pictures) regarding the enormity of Steiner’s task:

. . . the scoring job on the picture is, if only because of its length, exactly twice as big an undertaking as any other picture, and . . . no matter how much we speed up Max, obviously we can’t overcome what will be his natural desire to do the

21 Ibid., 31

22 Nathan Platte, “Conducting the Composer: David O. Selznick and the Hollywood Film Score,” in Music, Sound and Filmmakers: Sonic Style in Cinema, ed. James Eugene Wierzbicki (New York: Routledge, 2012), 123.

23 Platte, “Musical Collaboration,” 124.

24 Wegele, Max Steiner, 66.

51

greatest score ever written, and I don’t even think that we should try to overcome this—so that this also means extra time. 25

Selznick’s demands on Steiner during Gone with the Wind strained their personal relationship. Selznick’s film scores were “group projects enforced by hierarchical relationships;” even the contract stated that “any creative decision made by the composer might be rejected, overruled, or adjusted by superiors,” and the composer was “not in charge.”26 Fortunately for Steiner, his musical expertise gave him the advantage of persuasion (and at times, deception) in the face Selznick’s interference. Selznick’s scoring notes to the composing team (never exceeding four pages in any of his previous films) were uniquely detailed and lengthy for Gone with the Wind. On November 6,

1939, he sent 13 pages of notes to Steiner, followed by another 12 pages the next day!27

In a memo sent one month before the Atlanta premiere, Selznick expressed his concern of overusing the Mammy theme, and asked that Steiner and music director Lou Forbes make a chart showing the use of all the themes reel by reel, for fear of repetition or too close a use. Although this chart may never have been prepared, Selznick’s request “demonstrated unusual sensitivity to music’s affect and structural balance within the film.”28

Because Steiner was working on multiple other scores simultaneously, Selznick

“took drastic measures to keep the composer under pressure” for Gone with the Wind.29

25 Susan Myrick, White Columns in Hollywood: Reports from the GWTW Sets (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1982), 216.

26 Platte, “Musical Collaboration,” 25.

27 Platte, “Conducting the Composer,” 129.

28 Ibid.

29 Wegele, Max Steiner, 66.

52

He first asked Franz Waxman to complete the score in case Steiner failed to meet the deadline. Selznick then asked Herbert Stothart (under contract with MGM) to make himself available to correct and/or finish the score if necessary. This information regarding the Stothart “insurance” score got back to Steiner (via some “loose talking” over drinks one Saturday night), immediately spurring Steiner “to faster and greater efforts.”30 Unsurprisingly, Steiner finished the score on time. Initially he worked with

Hugo Friedhofer, his usual orchestrator, but he was eventually forced to call in additional arrangers to meet the deadline. Friedhofer later recalled:

Gone with the Wind . . . was a very heroic project . . . because of the pressure . . . Max finally decided that we’d better call in some other people to orchestrate. And he put me in the job to supervise these guys, and writing some of the score— based on his material, of course.31

Friedhofer scored the scene when Scarlett shoots the Yankee deserter, and also the famous seduction scene when Rhett picks up Scarlett and carries her upstairs. Adolph

Deutsch scored the siege of Atlanta, Heinz Roemheld the burning of Atlanta, and Joseph

Nussbaum covered the band arrangements for the period songs at the station. In addition to these ghostwriters (uncredited arrangers and orchestrators) contributing in the Steiner style, a few cues by Franz Waxman and one by William Axt were selected from the

MGM library from their use in previous films, Waxman’s from His Brother’s Wife

(1936), and Axt’s from David Copperfield (1935). One of Steiner’s own compositions

(“Prayer in Despair”), previously used in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938), was repurposed for the scene showing the O’Hara family at home in evening prayer.

30 Gavin Lambert, GWTW: The Making of “Gone with the Wind” (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1973), 143.

31 Wegele, Max Steiner, 66.

53

Conscious self-quotation, borrowing from earlier films, and relying on other arrangers for help was typical of Steiner, and “no wonder with such tight deadlines,” according to Janet Bradford.32 The contributing musicians all “had very close, loyal relationships . . . and a sense of fun,” evidenced by correspondence in the margins of the holographic score; in addition to serious instructions, Steiner, the “punster,” wrote jokes to the orchestrators, frequently in German, and Bradford claims Steiner’s personality

“jumps off the page at you.”33

Production and Premiere

Selznick acquired the rights to the novel in July 1936, yet filming did not start until December 1938. During those two years, a widely publicized “Search for Scarlett” engulfed the media. Thousands of fans of the novel sent letters and votes to the newspapers and to Selznick International Pictures for the perfect actress to play Scarlett

O’Hara, suggesting Katherine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, and Bette Davis for the famous role. Selznick’s East Coast story editor and chief talent scout, Katherine “Kay” Brown, suggested hiring an unknown actress to play Scarlett: “If we have a completely new person audiences will be more generally satisfied that she is their conception.”34

According to Selznick, “seventy-five million people would want my scalp if I chose the wrong Scarlett . . . I had no alternative to sticking to it and looking everywhere.”35 He

32 Bradford, “Trivia, Treats, and Ghosts.” Bradford catalogued the holographic score for Gone with the Wind for the Union Catalog of Motion Picture Music in the early 1990s.

33 Ibid.

34 Katherine Brown to Mrs. John R. Marsh (Margaret Mitchell), October 13, 1936, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Margaret Herrick Library, Special Collections, George Cukor Collection.

35 Behlmer, Memo, 152.

54 agreed with Brown’s proposal and enlisted the help of journalist Russell Birdwell to publicize open auditions throughout major cities in the southern states. Brown and

Selznick’s director for the film, George Cukor, traveled nationwide, interviewing 1,400 women for the role and auditioning 400 of them. They spent $92,000 to screen-test 90 potential Scarletts and no one seemed right for the part.36

Selznick was forced to begin filming in December 1938 before the role of Scarlett was cast. “The Burning of Atlanta” scene was filmed in one take by burning preexistent sets on the backlot of Selznick International, and using stand-ins for Scarlett and Rhett.

Selznick’s brother Myron, one of Hollywood’s most prominent agents, was present for the event. He brought his newest client, British actress Vivien Leigh, to the set, telling his brother, “David, I want you to meet Scarlett O’Hara.” 37 The rest is history.

Clark Gable, the fan favorite to play Rhett Butler (over Gary Cooper, Errol Flynn, and Ronald Colman) almost was not cast. Although he was Selznick’s first choice for the role, Gable’s contract with MGM prevented him from working with Selznick

International, and he feared he would fail to live up to the public’s expectations.

Eventually, after months of negotiations between Selznick and Selznick’s father-in-law

Louis B. Mayer, MGM agreed to loan out Gable to Selznick, and to become the film’s distributor. MGM provided $1,250,000 (nearly half the film’s total budget), access to studio equipment, costumes, and other resources in exchange for half the profits from the film’s distribution for seven years and 25 percent thereafter.38

36 Michael Fell, ed., “American Icons Special Edition: Gone with the Wind 75th Anniversary Issue,” TV Guide Magazine, January 2016, 35.

37 Wilson, Making of GWTW, 77.

38 Ibid., 56.

55

Selznick ran into problems with screen adaptation. The novel was over 1,000 pages long and spanned several decades during the most divisive conflict in the country’s history. Selznick hired one of Hollywood’s best screenwriters, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Sidney Howard, to handle the adaptation. Selznick preferred that the entire script remain true to the novel: “The ideal script . . . would be one that did not contain a single word of original dialogue, and that was 100% Margaret Mitchell, however much we juxtaposed it.”39 Howard worked on the screenplay (among other film projects for

Selznick) for two years, but when the script was still too long Selznick hired more than a dozen other writers to help complete it.

George Cukor, longtime collaborator with Selznick, had been hired as the film’s director in 1937, and worked with Selznick for months in preproduction. Only 18 days into filming, however, Cukor left the picture due to artistic differences regarding the film’s tone, and because Selznick viewed Cukor as “too slow.”40 Although he resigned in

March 1939, three reels of Cukor’s work made it into the final film, and he worked in secret with Vivien Leigh and Olivia de Havilland on their characters.41 Three days after

Cukor’s departure, Victor Fleming left his assignment on The Wizard of Oz to take over as director for Gone with the Wind. Fleming reshot some of Cukor’s scenes and worked

93 days filming quickly and efficiently, to Selznick’s delight.42 Due to exhaustion from the rigorous filming schedule, Fleming collapsed on-set and was forced to take a ten-day

39 Ibid., 50.

40 Fell, “American Icons,” 43.

41 Ibid.

42 Wilson, Making of GWTW, 124.

56 hiatus to rest, during which time MGM veteran director Sam Wood stepped in.43 Filming wrapped on October 12, 1939 when Fleming re-shot the opening porch scene with

Scarlett and the Tarleton twins. The morning of shooting, David O. Selznick brought flowers to Vivien Leigh—they are the flowers Scarlett is holding during this scene in the completed film.

On September 9, 1939, before the final re-shoots were completed (several close- ups of Scarlett and others), final edits made, and Steiner’s music added, Selznick and the closest members of his production team surprised an audience at the Fox Theater in

Riverside, California, with a secret pre-screening. Believing they were there to see the new Gary Cooper film, Beau Geste, the audience was told that instead they were to see a three-hour-and-forty-three-minute film, and that they could not use the telephone or be readmitted to the theater if they left early. When the title Gone with the Wind scrolled across the screen, the audience cheered wildly. At the end of the night guests completed questionnaires, and Selznick and editor Hal Kern took into consideration the surprisingly articulate responses as they finalized the film for the Atlanta premiere.44

The Gone with the Wind premiere in Atlanta began on December 13, 1939, a

“three-day whirlwind of events, galas, and parades that still leaves industry insiders in awe.”45 Georgia Governor Ed Rivers declared the premiere a state holiday, and Mayor

Hartsfield of Atlanta declared a three-day holiday for the city. On December 14, the night before the formal premiere, the stars of the cast, followed by “various officials and

43 Ibid., 173.

44 Wilson, Making of GWTW, 248.

45 Fell, “American Icons,” 67.

57 dignitaries” paraded through downtown Atlanta viewed by an estimated 300,000 spectators. The cavalcade arrived at the Georgian Terrace hotel, greeted by the 100-piece

Georgia State Girls Military Band. After the Confederate flag was raised, Mayor

Hartsfield, Selznick, and Clark Gable spoke to the crowd before entering the grand ballroom of the hotel for the press reception.46 The night of the premiere, “100,000

Atlantans braved freezing temperatures to watch the celebrity motorcade,” their destination the Loew’s Grand Theatre.47 The next day, New York Times writer Meyer

Berger wrote, “Peachtree Street was dressed for the evening as though it expected the return of a victorious army of Confederate ghosts.”48 The theater had been renovated with classic Greek columns to resemble Tara, the film’s antebellum plantation house, and in addition to the movie’s stars, the guests of honor were four Civil War veterans. The audience was “spellbound as the film’s overture began, their silent reverence interrupted only by the occasional cheer or rebel yell.”49

After the premiere, tickets went on sale to the Atlanta public and broke all previous records, a trend that continued as the film opened in other cities across the country. The excessive premiere had helped establish the film’s reputation “as a larger- than-life epic that demanded the attention of the nation.”50 Film historian Ben

Mankiewicz commented:

46 Wilson, Making of GWTW, 254.

47 Fell, “American Icons,” 68.

48 Berger, “Atlanta Is Won by Film of South,” 13.

49 Fell, “American Icons,” 68.

50 Ibid.

58

There’s something when you watch Gone with the Wind. Perhaps nothing gives you a better idea of how important movies were to Americans right before World War II. What a big deal they were, what they could do, how they could transport you in time and place. There are so few big events left. These movies were so grand, they were on such a big scale. But [Gone with the Wind] is as grand a scale as a movie can be.51

Although the media coverage of the premiere was mostly positive, a few negative views

“brought to light the harsh realities faced by blacks in the South, as well as the region’s continued struggle for economic parity since Reconstruction.”52 Because Atlanta was a racially segregated city in 1939, Hattie McDaniel, Butterfly McQueen, Oscar Polk, and

Eddie Anderson, who all played important roles in the film, were not invited to attend the premiere, much to Selznick’s frustration. An African American student wrote Selznick to express his concern: “Not only are we excluded from the Preview, but there is wholesale talk of forcing us to the back during the parade so that we may not hinder other people who want to see their favorite Movie People, just as we.”53 Unfortunately, Selznick succumbed to the pressure of his consultants for the premiere, concluding that rather than offend an enormous potential audience of white Atlanta fans, “it may be best to play safe” and remain segregated.54 Selznick responded to the student, “I hope you understand that the feelings of myself and our company toward the Negro race are the friendliest possible,” and he instructed to his publicity team that in the promotion of the film in the

South “any courtesies we can extend to Negroes should be most carefully handled.”55

51 Ibid.

52 Sowers, “The Different Faces of Scarlett,” 114.

53 Robert Willis to David O. Selznick, November 1939, in Making of GWTW, Wilson, 252.

54 Wilson, Making of GWTW, 253.

55 Ibid., 252.

59

Black civic groups disapproved of Gone with the Wind when it opened. They picketed the Chicago and Washington D.C. premieres, and even unsuccessfully attempted to have the movie banned in Canton, Ohio.56 Many African American audiences took offense to the depiction of slaves as “happy in their subservient roles,” but commended the film for eliminating offensive dialog and scenes present in the novel.57 At the

Academy Awards, Hattie McDaniel received the award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Mammy—the first African American to win an Oscar.

Lasting Impact

In hindsight, the movie “could not miss.”58 Gone with the Wind was based on a best-selling novel, featured a star-studded cast, and was “one of the first great technicolor dramas;” it is no wonder it became one of the most successful films in American history, breaking box office records and winning nine Oscars of the 14 for which it was nominated.59 Selznick spent the remainder of his career attempting to recreate the commercial success and artistry of Gone with the Wind. Although he never would, his name is “still synonymous with guts, ambition, extravagant production values, incredible attention to detail, and the highest standard of quality in film production.”60

More than 75 years after its premiere, Gone with the Wind continues to captivate audiences. The film has had ten full-scale theatrical reissues since its 1939 premiere.

56 Chadwick, “The Reel Civil War,” 317.

57 Wilson, Making of GWTW, 278.

58 Chadwick, “The Reel Civil War,” 277.

59 Ibid.

60 Wilson, Making of GWTW, 279.

60

When Turner Broadcasting System acquired the MGM library of films in 1986, they commissioned a “full, meticulous restoration of the picture and sound . . . with striking results” for the film’s 50th anniversary (1989).61 The restored version is frequently shown on television, and there is no shortage of references to the film’s plot and characters in other movies and television programs. One of the most famous of these references is the unforgettable “Went with the Wind” parody from the Carol Burnett Show in 1976.

“Between the artistry of Burnett and fashion designer Bob Mackie,” according to Jesse

Rhodes, “it’s a comedic tour de force.”62 Carol Burnett as Miss Starlett greets her beau in her Civil War-torn home, and in an attempt to “work him for a little cash” dresses up in a hastily made dress constructed from her green velvet curtains . . . including the curtain rod!63 Her grand entrance down the staircase, curtain rod resting across her shoulders, is

“one of the most memorable entrances in television history.”64

Regarding Steiner’s score for Gone with the Wind, there is no complete recording of the music outside of the film itself. Selznick wanted to record and sell a soundtrack at the time of the premiere, but this was not customary practice in 1939. Steiner felt that recording the entire score “would be totally impractical and unmusical because some of the melodies occur in incomplete or rearranged ways—sometimes as often as 20 times

61 Rudy Behlmer, liner notes to “Gone with the Wind:” Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, Max Steiner (Rhino Movie Music/Turner 8122 72822-2, compact disc, released 1997).

62 Jesse Rhodes, “Carol Burnett – We Just Can’t Resist Her!” Smithsonian.com, May 14, 2009, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/carol-burnettwe-just-cant-resist-her- 50924199/?no-ist (accessed November 7, 2016).

63 Ibid.

64 Ibid.

61 during the picture,” and he saw no need for such repetition.65 In 1941 Steiner released a folio of the film’s themes as piano reductions to fulfill the public’s interest in the music.

Years later, still believing that no full re-recording of the film’s score was warranted,

Steiner created a 30-minute suite of the film’s largest themes, which was recorded in

1954. Twenty years later (three years after Steiner’s death in 1971), conductor Charles

Gerhardt and the National Philharmonic Orchestra presented a longer symphony “derived from the more operatic and inevitably fragmented score.”66 In his liner notes for this recording, Rudy Behlmer explains: “The objective was to offer a longer, more inclusive and permanent memento of the original film that would stand on its own and . . . present a substantial work in the form of a one-movement symphony or symphonic poem based on the music.”67 This 44-minute condensed version of the score is “probably the most authentic of the several re-recordings available.”68

Plot

Classified as a Civil War epic drama, Gone with the Wind follows the life of fiery southern belle Scarlett O’Hara, beginning at her plantation home, called Tara, just before the start of the Civil War, and continuing through the end of the war into the

Reconstruction period. In the first scene, the teenage Scarlett sits on her front porch entertained by two beaux, the Tarleton twins. Secretly in love with Ashley Wilkes of

65 Rudy Behlmer, liner notes to Max Steiner’s Classic Film Score “Gone with the Wind,” Charles Gerhardt with the National Philharmonic Orchestra (RCA Victor ARLI-0452, LP album, released 1974).

66 Peter Franklin, “The Boy on the Train, or Bad Symphonies and Good Movies: The Revealing Error of the ‘Symphonic Score,’” in Beyond the Soundtrack: Representing Music in Cinema, ed. Daniel Goldmark, Lawrence Kramer, and Richard Leppert (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007), 19. 67 Behlmer, liner notes to GWTW, LP album.

68 Jon Burlingame, Sound and Vision: Sixty Years of Motion Picture Soundtracks (New York: Billboard, 2000), 169-70.

62 neighboring plantation, Twelve Oaks, Scarlett despairs when she learns of Ashley’s engagement to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton. At the Wilkes family barbecue the next day, Scarlett declares her love to Ashley, hoping he will abandon his marriage plans with

Melanie. News of the outbreak of the Civil War reaches Twelve Oaks just as Ashley denies Scarlett’s advances—a conversation overheard by Rhett Butler, visiting from

Charleston. Scarlett, in vengeance, marries Melanie’s brother Charles instead. She is soon widowed and moves to Atlanta to live with Melanie, now her sister-in-law. She attends a fundraising bazaar in honor of the Confederate soldiers and again encounters Rhett, who is honored there for his success in blockade running. Against tradition, Scarlett abandons her period of mourning when Rhett bids on her as a dance partner.

During the following months, Rhett brings presents from Europe to Scarlett.

When Ashley takes his leave from the war at Christmas, he asks Scarlett to stay with

Melanie, now pregnant, and Scarlett obliges out of love for him. Scarlett delivers

Melanie’s baby with the help of her maid, Prissy, and then the group piles into Rhett’s wagon and flees Atlanta, burning from General Sherman’s army. Halfway home to Tara,

Rhett abandons the women to join the retreating Confederate army for their last stand, and kisses Scarlett passionately before he leaves. Furious, Scarlett takes control of the wagon and continues home, where she finds Twelve Oaks burned and in ruins. Tara is barely standing, her mother has died, causing her father to go mad, and the plantation has no money, no slaves, and no food. In the final scene of Act I, Scarlett digs up a radish from the barren ground and eats it raw, choking as she tearfully declares to the sky “As

God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.”

63

In the opening scene of Act II, Scarlett has forced her sisters and the remaining house slaves to work outside in the fields. The war ends, and Scarlett realizes she can’t afford the taxes on Tara. When she turns to Ashley for help, he confesses that he loves her but will not be unfaithful Melanie, and admits he is unable to help with Tara’s taxes.

Scarlett resorts to asking Rhett for the money, pretending everything at Tara is fine as she greets him in a dress made from her green velvet drapes. Charmed but not fooled by her airs, Rhett admits he is unable to access his money while in a Yankee prison. In her final, desperate effort to save Tara, Scarlett lies to Frank Kennedy—longtime beau of her sister

Suellen and now a successful post-war merchant—and convinces him to marry her. She uses his money to save Tara, then starts a lumber business in his store. After Scarlett is attacked by scavengers in a shanty town one night, Frank, Ashley, and a few others go to

“clear out” her attackers. Rhett tries to warn the men of a Yankee ambush awaiting them, and returns from the raid with an injured Ashley and news that Frank has been killed.

After Frank’s funeral, Rhett visits a drunken Scarlett and proposes to her, saying that marriage should be fun. She admits she does not love him but accepts his proposal anyway, and they take an elaborate honeymoon to New Orleans. A year later, their child

“Bonnie Blue” is born, but Rhett despairs that is wife is still in love with Ashley. After an argument one night, an inebriated Rhett grabs Scarlett and violently carries her upstairs.

The next morning, Rhett apologizes for his ungentlemanly behavior and leaves for

London with Bonnie. When he returns a few months later to find a pregnant Scarlett, he is indifferent to her and accusatory about Ashley, angering her to slap him. She misses, falls down the stairs, and miscarries. After Scarlett recovers, she and Rhett reconcile for

Bonnie’s sake, just as Bonnie falls off her pony to her death while practicing a jump.

64

Melanie convinces the devastated Rhett to consent to Bonnie’s burial, then collapses of exhaustion from her new pregnancy. On her deathbed, Melanie asks Scarlett to take care of Ashley, who is inconsolable from the loss of his wife and unborn child. Scarlett finally recognizes that she’s wasted years pining for Ashely and that it’s Rhett she loves. She rushes home to tell him, but he claims it is too late. When Scarlett asks what will become of her after he leaves, Rhett replies, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” and walks out. Sobbing and alone, Scarlett thinks of Tara. She decides to return home and find a way to win back Rhett, resolving to think about it tomorrow, for, “After all, tomorrow is another day.”

According to Wilson, Gone with the Wind “is both adored and reviled. The controversies that attended the production of Gone with the Wind remain, and the film continues to be a powerful touchstone for questions of race, gender, violence, and regionalism in America.”69 These presently relevant issues are also prominently displayed in the film’s music. The score features a multitude of Stephen Foster tunes and other American folk music, reflecting Steiner’s predisposition to composing with borrowed material, and Selznick’s preference for classical music above originally composed music. The use of this pre-existing music, interwoven with Steiner’s leitmotifs, heightens the story’s narrative themes of nostalgia, patriotism, romantic love, and survival, enriching the film and establishing the perfect regional tone as audiences watch

Scarlett’s story unfold.

69 Wilson, Making of GWTW, 279.

65

CHAPTER 4

MOTIVIC DEVELOPMENT IN STEINER’S USE OF BORROWED MUSIC

Margaret Mitchell, a talented amateur musician, included many references to music in Gone with the Wind, mentioning 22 song titles in her book. Several of the main characters sing written lyrics, including Scarlett and Rhett. From Irish tunes and Negro spirituals to sentimental and patriotic songs, Mitchell emphasizes the importance of music in the Civil War era by including it in her novel. It is no wonder, therefore, that

Selznick, already a proponent for the use of preexistent, recognizable music in his films, urged Steiner to include some of these songs and others in his score for Gone with the

Wind.

Steiner felt that incorporating too many familiar songs would distract from the narrative rather than support it. Nevertheless, he agreed with Selznick that including the correct balance of preexistent music was a smart decision. It saved precious time by replacing the need for specially composed original music, and when inserted carefully so as not to distract from the story, it could elicit a desired emotional response from viewers.

According to Jessica Green, “Through music’s development of specific leitmotifs, themes, and cues, the calculated use of film music in conjunction with the other channels of information helps to create the narrative and control the way that the audience interprets a film.”1 In the case of Gone with the Wind, Max Steiner effectively uses songs

1 Jessica Green, “Understanding the Score: Film Music Communicating to and Influencing the Audience,” Journal of Aesthetic Education 44, no. 4 (Winter 2010): 82.

66 that already contain emotional associations to capitalize on the audience’s “other channels of information,” establishing tone and emphasizing nostalgia. Some are sung a cappella by actors, other songs are included in brief snippets only once, and still others are manipulated almost beyond recognition. These songs augment the action on-screen by prompting the viewers first to consider (subconsciously) the context by which they became familiar with the songs, and then transfer that association to the scene in the film—all while oblivious to this thought process itself.

Steiner’s use of pre-existing material differs from his use of original music in several ways, most significantly in its repetition. With original music, particularly in the case of leitmotifs, repetition is necessary to establish power of association and to direct viewer empathy. According to Karlin and Wright, over the course of a film:

[Theme] music becomes more and more closely associated with the characters and their emotions. When the audience hears that theme later in the film, they remember the characters’ (and their own) emotions and can empathize with them more easily; the musical repetition carries with it a powerful accumulation of emotions from earlier scenes.2

For a pre-existing melody, however, such repetition is not necessarily required, as from its first occurrence, it already carries the emotional associations it could take an original melody multiple repetitions to accrue. The majority of the borrowed material in Gone with the Wind is not repeated frequently, yet the recognizable tunes successfully convey their significance. In some instances, Steiner uses a melody so briefly or buries it so far beneath the orchestral texture that it is barely recognized. Contrastingly, some songs enter in their original form and at full volume by the entire orchestra to inspire immediate, strong emotion. Others have been deconstructed melodically, rhythmically, or

2 Fred Karlin and Rayburn Wright, On the Track: A Guide to Contemporary Film Scoring, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2004), 195.

67 harmonically to reflect a specific tone or to convey irony. This development draws from the viewer’s previous knowledge of the original form of the music, requiring the ear to acknowledge any musical adjustments, interpret them accordingly, and then associate the appropriate emotions. By all of these varying treatments (and others), Steiner develops and manipulates the pre-existing songs in Gone with the Wind to achieve the same goal as with his original leitmotifs: to enhance and support the narrative.

The composer on which Steiner relied most heavily for this material was Stephen

Foster. According to Ken Emerson, “Foster is so absorbed in the air that we breathe and in the airs that we hum, in our blood and in our assumptions, that we seldom if ever think of him.”3 This is exactly what Steiner and Selznick hoped for when incorporating

Foster’s and other composers’ identifiable melodies into the score: that Gone With the

Wind’s viewers would recognize the music and make an emotional connection from their predetermined feelings about it to the characters and events of the film.

Stephen Foster and Nostalgia

Stephen C. Foster “resists traditional biography,” as his brief life and musical career are full of gaps, speculation, and question marks.4 His music can be divided roughly into two categories, parlor songs and minstrel show songs, and in the 1850s his was “the first significant body” of songs that were “identifiably American.”5 Although he never lived in the South, his most recognizable songs focus on “southern” themes. These account for only 23 of his 287 authenticated songs, and although they provided 90% of

3 Ken Emerson, Doo-dah!: Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), 16.

4 William W. Austin, “Susanna,” “Jeanie,” and “The Old Folks at Home:” The Songs of Stephen C. Foster from His Time to Ours, 2nd ed. (Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1987), ix.

5 Deane L. Root, “Foster, Stephen C.,” Grove Music Online.

68 his income, the majority of his works were “ballads of sentiment” that focused on longing for an absent loved one or for a place.6 Emerson remarks that Foster was “among the first white boys to do what white boys [do]—mimicking black music, or what they think is black music and black style.”7 Foster wrote from his own northern experience rather than from a southern rural perspective, and he relied heavily on parlor poetic imagery and themes of longing for family and home. Even in his minstrel songs, these conventions are what appeal “across all boundaries of ethnicity, race, national origin, economic level and class.”8 Although he “enjoyed no great personal celebrity” during his short life, Foster’s songs live on in American culture.9

Born on America’s fiftieth birthday, July 4, 1826 in Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania

(a village near Pittsburgh founded by his father), Stephen was the ninth child to his parents. He began composing at an early age, although his musical training and formal academic education were sparse. Foster worked as an office clerk in Pittsburgh and

Cincinnati for four years while sporadically publishing songs. When he married Jane

McDowell in 1850, already having published more than a dozen pieces (including the instantly famous hit “Oh! Susanna”), Foster committed himself to a career in songwriting and signed with New York music publisher Firth, Pond & Co.10 Although he earned a

“modest but comfortable income” from royalties, he struggled to manage his money wisely, and as a result experienced financial problems for his short 14-year professional

6 Ibid.

7 Emerson, Doo-dah!, 15.

8 Root, “Foster, Stephen C.,” Grove Music Online.

9 Austin, “Susanna,” xv.

10 Richard Jackson, Stephen Foster Song Book (New York: Dover Publications, 1974), v.

69 career.11 He fell ill in early 1864 and soon after accidentally injured himself, leading to his early death at the age of 37.

According to Emerson, “Foster is at the heart of the tangled, tortuous interchange between whites and blacks that both dishonors America and yet distinguishes its culture worldwide.”12 Most nineteenth-midcentury minstrel song composers and publishers of blackface songs presented upbeat, comic, yet derisively racist content sung from a slave’s perspective: “darkies perennially ready to sing, Massa to be pleased, heels to be kicked up, lovers to be pursued.”13 Foster, however, frequently emphasized nostalgia and sorrow, elements of “sentimentalized plantation distress” that featured an anti-slavery tonality even in songs mourning the loss of the plantation lifestyle.14 Despite his use of minstrel conventions such as dialect in his early work (he abandoned the practice in the early 1850s), Foster’s characters are dignified and compassionate, expressing what he deemed “a traditional set of [human] feelings.”15 Foster’s audiences ignored his sympathetic portrayal of African Americans, however, focusing instead on his imagery and idealizing these plantation songs as “representative of America.”16

For nearly a century, many of the best-known composers in America relied on the

Southern image popularized by Foster “to provide them with inspiration for sentimental

11 Ibid.

12 Emerson, Doo-dah!, 16.

13 Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 193.

14 Ibid., 194.

15 Austin, “Susanna,” 308; Lott, Love and Theft, 194; Steven Saunders and Deane L. Root, The Music of Stephen Foster: A Critical Edition, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990), 1:xxxv.

16 Austin, “Susanna,” 282.

70 lyrics.”17 In the imaginations of Hollywood filmmakers and audiences, Foster’s songs and other music written between the Civil War and World War II consistently supported this “mythological region still steeped in its antebellum past where blacks were a servant race.”18 Chadwick labels this historical distortion the “Plantation Myth,” the belief that:

. . . pre-war southerners were good to their slaves, cared for them and liked them . . . southern men dashed off to fight bravely for the Lost Cause, knights in armor defending a good and decent way of life, misunderstood in the North. [The Plantation Myth] . . . taught Americans that the war had no real winners or losers and that no one started it . . . [and] was not fought over slavery but states’ rights and that both sides, the blue and the gray, fought gallantly for their countries.19

Chadwick argues that white Americans romanticized actual historical events, looking

“longingly into the past” to block out the horrors of the Civil War and to allow nostalgia to adjust the truth.20

Dozens of Civil War-era films popularized sanitized versions of past events that favored tales of romance, adventure, and the chivalrous underdog over the darker reality.

The Birth of A Nation (1915), a silent film based on Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman, featured “obvious racist and reactionary content” that was opposed by blacks and liberal whites (inciting riots, public demonstrations, and protests), but was powerful and seemingly authentic to white supremacist audiences who focused instead on the “heroism and poignancy of the Southern cause.”21 Like Gone with the Wind, The Birth of a Nation

17 Karen L. Cox, Dreaming of Dixie: How the South Was Created in American Popular Culture (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 33.

18 Ibid.

19 Chadwick, “The Reel Civil War,” 6.

20 Ibid., 7.

21 Gerald Wood, “From The Clansman and Birth of a Nation to Gone with the Wind,” in Recasting: “Gone with the Wind” in American Culture, ed. Darden Asbury Pyron (Miami, FL: University Presses of Florida, 1983), 124; Martin Miller Marks, Music and the Silent Film: Contexts and Case Studies, 1895-1924 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 147.

71 features pre-existent music in its score. The film’s composer, Joseph Carl Breil, underscored the first Southern scene with Foster’s best known song, “Old Folks at

Home” to depict the loss of the “quaint” plantation lifestyle in “acutely nostalgic terms.”22 According to lyricist Jack Yellen, “nostalgia gives a song a quality that nothing else can give it;” the South was an undeniably successful muse for writers of nostalgic songs—songs that “Hollywood produced and Americans consumed.”23 Capitalizing on his knowledge of American audiences and their predisposition to sentimentalize the

“moonlight and magnolia” days of the Civil War, Steiner injects moments of musical nostalgia at exactly fitting moments in Gone with the Wind. Ten of Foster’s songs are interwoven diegetically and non-diegetically, from the familiar “Massa’s in de Cold

Ground” and “Ring, Ring de Banjo,” to the lesser known “Katy Bell.” Steiner’s inclusion of Foster’s tunes establishes setting and tone, and enhances the audience’s response, guiding their emotions through a nostalgic lens.

22 Marks, Music and the Silent Film, 7-9, 143; Siva Vaidhyanathan, Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 104; Seymour Stern, D. W. Griffith’s 100th Anniversary: “The Birth of a Nation,” ed. Ira H. Gallen (Victoria: FriesenPress, 2014), 572-74.The musical score for The Birth of a Nation was written to be performed live by 40-piece orchestra plus vocalists in synchronization with showings of the film. No complete written manuscript of the original 1915 score exists. Snippets of music cues written for piano and various instruments quote works by Schubert, Dvořák, Schumann, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Wagner, and Foster, and include Breil’s original material and leitmotifs (composed with the supervision and help of director D.W. Griffith). An alternate score by Carli D. Elinor was used for the 1915 Los Angeles premiere at Clune’s Auditorium and in West Coast showings. In 1930, film producer Harry E. Aitken released a sound-print re-issue of the film, complete with full synchronized musical score, sound effects, and prologue interview with director D.W. Griffith (three reels of original footage was eliminated from this version).

23 Cox, Dreaming of Dixie, 33; Jack Burton, “The Honor Roll of Popular Songwriters,” Billboard, November 18, 1950, 37-38. Jack Yellen (1892-1991) was a Tin Pan Alley lyricist, Broadway composer, and Hollywood screenwriter. His hit songs include “Alabama Jubilee” (1915), “Are You From Dixie” (1915), “Down by the O-Hi-O” (1921), “Ain’t She Sweet” (1927), and his most famous song, “Happy Days Are Here Again” (1930).

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“Katy Bell” and Katie Scarlett

In 1862, just two years before his death, Foster met writer George Cooper by chance encounter in the back-room bar of a grocery store, and the two quickly became songwriting partners.24 “Katy Bell” (1863), a charming love song, was one of at least a dozen Foster-Cooper collaborations (music and lyrics, respectively). Biographer H. V.

Milligan states: “Even in these miserable days when [Foster] was drawing deeper and deeper into the shadow, now and then the pure ray of his earlier inspiration shines out in a melody as fresh and innocent as the clear voice of a child.”25 The sweet melody of “Katy

Bell” features a sequential eighth note pattern with a smoothly arching contour, the four- measure phrase repeated twice in every verse (see Figure 4.1).26

Figure 4.1. Foster & Cooper, “Katy Bell,” verse 1 excerpt.

Beginning on scale degree 3 (E), the alternating melodic thirds and fourths frolic up then down the scale with youthful charm (measures 5-7). The melody’s strong beats

(1, 2, 3, and 4) harmonize a third above their succeeding deemphasized upbeats, creating a sense of graceful lift that emphasizes the sweetness of the tune. The momentum of the

24 Austin, “Susanna,” 185.

25 Ibid., 214.

26 Saunders and Root, The Music of Stephen C. Foster, 2:300

73 even melody is interrupted by a fermata (measure 7) and immediately followed by a cheerful dotted rhythm, a jaunty shift that deviates from the previous sequential motion and descends pentatonically (measure 8).

Steiner frequently uses “Katy Bell” during the first 30 minutes of the film to capture Scarlett’s youthful, pre-war vigor. As the blissfully naïve “Katie” Scarlett (her full Irish name) flirts with the Tarleton twins in the first scene, the simple, carefree melody conveys her disinterest in the impending war. Steiner underscores this lighthearted conversation with continuous statements of “Katy Bell” played by celeste, flute, harp, and strings, the light instrumentation a reflection of the scenic tone. Steiner retains Foster’s original phrase form and rhythmic structure in two back-to-back statements of the verse (each an eight-bar phrase, first in B♭, then in E♭), then sets up a musical shift to parallel a significant narrative moment. In preparation, Steiner chromatically alters the original tune while keeping its contour intact (see Figure 4.2).27

The ending melodic phrase (measure 59) deviates from its normal pentatonic contour, smoothly passing through scale degree 4 (A) on its stepwise descent to 1 (E, measure 60), rhythmically delayed from its usual landing on beat 4 (see Figure 4.1, measure 8). Following Foster’s model, the predominant f#m7 in measure 59 should cadence to the dominant B7 on beat 3 and resolve to the tonic E on beat 4, the scalar melody descending to a perfect authentic cadence. Instead, Steiner prolongs the predominant, finally cadencing unexpectedly in A minor (measure 60), a transition

27 Steiner, GWTW conductor’s score, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin, 20-22. “Katy Bell” is spelled “Katie Bell” here. Measures 56-58 do not contain written accompaniment, only a melody with the handwritten text “filled up” scribbled beneath. Hereafter, all figures that denote a “reel” and “part” are author’s transcriptions (fair use) of the studio copy of Steiner’s manuscript (the conductor’s score), from the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin (abbreviated HRC).

74 achieved by pivoting on melodic note, E, to shift from E major to C major/A minor. This gravely signals the moment the Tarleton twins share with Scarlett the news of her beloved Ashley’s engagement to Melanie. The sudden change in tonality and the disappearance of the “Katy Bell” melody unmistakably communicates Scarlett’s change in demeanor, her carefree attitude abruptly replaced with dread.

Figure 4.2. “Katie Bell,” Reel 1, Part 3.

“Katy Bell” noticeably appears again as Scarlett charms men at the Twelve Oaks barbecue, immaturely attempting to make Ashley jealous of her many suitors.

Representing Scarlett’s liveliness and lack of adult responsibilities before the war, the weightless “Katy Bell” melody disappears after she marries Charles Hamilton and the war begins, symbolizing the end of Scarlett’s childhood as she confronts her new, harsher reality.

Twelve Oaks Barbecue Medley: Plantation Songs

Steiner uses three of Foster’s songs as a wordless medley of atmospheric underscoring for the barbecue at Twelve Oaks, beginning as the Wilkes receive their

75 guests on the front porch. String orchestra and banjo establish the rural Georgia pre-war setting in three popular tunes: “Lou’siana Belle,” “Dolly Day,” and “Ring de Banjo.”

Foster’s first minstrel song, “Lou’siana Belle” (1847), introduces the scene with a lively polka beat. The polka was brought to the United States in 1844, inciting

“Polkamania” and becoming America’s newest popular dance, particularly for young people looking to separate themselves from the older waltzing generation.28 Foster and his contemporaries frequently used the 2/4 beat of the polka and its oom-pah rhythm in their minstrel songs.29 “Lou’siana Belle” features these conventions, and contains a simple melody typical of Foster’s early minstrel songs, one that is comprised of small intervals and much repetition, making it memorable and easy to sing (see Figure 4.3).30

Figure 4.3. Foster, “Lou’siana Belle,” verse 1.

Due to its regional and historical specificity, Steiner is able to use the tune to indicate geographic setting, historical context, and atmospheric mood: carefree, pre-war life on a rural plantation, in this scene suggesting a cheerful dance environment for the

28 Richard Powers, “Polka (ii.),” Grove Music Online.

29 Emerson, Doo-dah!, 105.

30 Saunders and Root, Music of Stephen C. Foster, 1:xxxiii, 1:17.

76 party.31 As the camera reveals the picturesque Twelve Oaks plantation, the song is showcased as transitional material to set the scene: full strings excitedly play the first verse of “Lou’siana Belle” in unison (see Figure 4.4). Here, the song has been transposed to F major (to resolve a half cadence from the previous scene, ending on a C dominant- seventh chord), and rhythmically altered due to the absence of sung lyrics. The melody in the first measure has been changed from Foster’s two eighth notes and two sixteenth notes on the word “Lou’-si-ana’s” (see Figure 4.3, measure 9) to one eighth note and four sixteenth notes (see Figure 4.4, measure 1). The initial pick-up note in Foster’s original

(see Figure 4.3, measure 8) is eliminated in Steiner’s version.32 The rest of the melody remains intact throughout verse 1, the chorus, and the concluding symphony.33

Figure 4.4. “Lou’siana Belle,” Reel 2, Part 4.

When dialogue between Gerald O’Hara and John Wilkes begins on the front porch, another Foster tune, “Dolly Day,” enters as subtle banjo underscoring. The shift in

31 David Allen Helvering, “Functions of Dialogue Underscoring in American Feature Film” (PhD diss., University of Iowa, 2007), 159.

32 Steiner, GWTW conductor’s score, 54. The pick-up note was originally included but later crossed out by red pencil.

33 Saunders and Root, Music of Stephen C. Foster, 1:17-19. The symphony is the instrumental prelude and postlude in Foster’s original publication, as well as the interlude occurring at the end of each chorus and before the next verse.

77 volume allows the dialogue to come to the forefront, and the change from strings to banjo suggests, perhaps, that a live band is playing the popular song from inside the house.

“Dolly Day” (1850) was one of a set of four songs published as “Plantation

Melodies” for famous minstrel performer Edwin Pearce Christy.34 Although the minstrel love song is written in dialect, it shares characteristics of Foster’s parlor songs and is

Scots-flavored in its use of melodic sixths and the “Scotch snap” rhythm, a stressed sixteenth note followed by an unstressed dotted eighth note (see Figure 4.5).35 Irish pentatonic and hexatonic melodies, as well as the folk jigs and reels popular in the minstrel shows, inspired the use of these compositional devices in Foster’s songs (and

Foster himself was of Scots-Irish heritage). According to Charles Hamm, these conventions are “characteristic of many traditional Anglo-Celtic tunes [and are] imitated in many nineteenth-century minstrel songs.”36

Figure 4.5. Foster, “Dolly Day,” chorus.

34 Ibid., 78-89. According to the original title pages, the other three songs in this set were “Oh, Lemuel!” “Gwine to Run All Night” (also known as “De Camptown Races”), and “Angelina Baker.”

35 Ibid., 1:80-81. David Johnson, “Scotch Snap,” Grove Music Online. According to Johnson, the Scotch snap (or Lombard rhythm) is “a melodic figuration consisting of a stressed semiquaver followed by an unstressed dotted quaver, usually applied to melodies that fall or rise by step.”

36 Charles Hamm, Putting Popular Music in Its Place (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 359.

78

In “Dolly Day” (see Figure 4.5), the Scotch snap occurs at the beginning of the chorus on the word “Dolly” (measure 25) creating a sharp rhythmic effect that draws attention to the lyric by prolonging its unstressed final syllable. The melody then descends a sixth to the word “Day” (measure 25, C# to E) and ascends by sixth in the following measure (F# to D), a pattern that is repeated in the second phrase of the chorus

(measures 29-30). Reminiscent of Thomas Moore’s “The Last Rose of Summer” and other Irish melodies of that style, these unexpected leaps (typically of sixths or octaves) highlight “flights of feeling and imagination” prominent in Foster’s nostalgic tunes.37

Steiner relies on these two Scotch-Irish devices in the chorus of “Dolly Day” to emphasize the Irish-ness of Gerald O’Hara as he arrives at the barbecue. Rather than use

Gerald’s own leitmotif (a jaunty, Celtic theme in 6/8), Steiner preserves the antebellum setting by incorporating a popular minstrel song played by banjo—suitable for a rural plantation barbecue—while subtly nodding to O’Hara’s Irish lineage. The chorus occurs briefly (played twice in only 15 seconds), and in its original key of A major (see Figure

4.6).38 He begins the chorus directly on the Scotch snap (measure 25), eliminating the two pick-up notes from Foster’s original (Figure 4.5, measures 24-25).

Figure 4.6. “Dolly Day,” Reel 2, Part 4.

37 Richard Crawford, America’s Musical Life: A History (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), 248. Thomas Moore wrote the poem “The Last Rose of Summer” and set the lyrics to a traditional Irish tune, “The Young Man’s Dream.” John Andrew Stevenson wrote the original piano accompaniment in volume 5 of Thomas Moore’s A Selection of Irish Melodies published in December 1813.

38 David O. Selznick, et al., Gone with the Wind, DVD (Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 1999); Steiner, GWTW conductor’s score, 55. In Steiner’s score, the melody is written an octave higher, beginning on C#6. It is transposed down an octave here for clarity.

79

After Gerald’s dialogue with John and India Wilkes, the third song of the medley,

“Ring, Ring de Banjo,” returns the medley to F major (where it began with “Lou’siana

Belle”). Written in 1851, the plantation song tells of a slave who finds solace in playing music, is freed by his owner, and then returns to kill his former “Massa.”39 One of

Foster’s more popular tunes, the simple melody embodies the analysis of Foster’s early minstrel songs described by Saunders and Root, moving “principally by step and . . . restricted in range (often limited to notes of the pentatonic scale) . . . [with] phrase structures [that] are clear-cut (see Figure 4.7).40 Additionally, “four-measure phrases of jaunty rhythm typically move toward an unexpected, and often disarming, mid-phrase pause or syncopation,” as in measure 10 “dreary,” measure 14 “weary,” measure 18

“Susanna,” and measure 22 “piano,” with a fermata on the unstressed final syllable.41

Figure 4.7. Foster, “Ring, Ring de Banjo,” verse 1.

39 Saunders and Root, Music of Stephen C. Foster, 1:164. On its original title page, the title reads “Ring de Banjo” instead of “Ring, Ring de Banjo.”

40 Ibid., 1:xxxiii, 1:165-66.

41 Ibid.

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In this introductory barbecue scene of Gone with the Wind, Foster’s original lyrics have no application to the dialogue. Rather, the song underscores India Wilkes’ conversation with her father before the O’Hara daughters arrive, and Wilkes reminds

India to “remember her duties as hostess,” in spite of her annoyance at receiving Scarlett.

Steiner includes this easily recognizable song, therefore, as descriptive music to aid in scenic continuity (see Figure 4.8).42

Figure 4.8. “Ring, Ring de Banjo,” Reel 2, Part 4.

As the focus shifts from the Wilkes’ conversation to Scarlett descending from the wagon, the lively “Lou’siana Belle” reprises in its earlier form (verse, chorus, symphony), again played by string orchestra. The medley concludes at the fine of the symphony, having successfully reinforced the cheerful plantation atmosphere of pre-war

Georgia. It is fitting that this youthful polka returns to accompany the vivacious Scarlett as she walks into the house greeting the other guests, then ends abruptly when she spots

Ashley coming down the stairs. Here, the previously twangy strings suddenly become delicate (marked grazioso in the score) and Steiner abandons Foster’s songs in favor of

42 Steiner, GWTW conductor’s score, 55. In Steiner’s score, the entire verse is included, measures 32-48. Since measures 32-40 are repeated exactly in measures 40-48, only the first half of the song quotation is included here.

81 an elegantly descending figure played by strings.43 This type of shift in non-diegetic orchestration, according to Helvering, signifies a “pronounced structural event . . . that clearly provides the dividing point between the two major narrative sections of the scene.”44 Ashley, the object of Scarlett’s affection, is revealed to the audience for the first time, a pivotal moment that Steiner musically represents by suddenly, yet seamlessly transitioning from a medley of jolly minstrel songs into lush, symphonic underscoring.

“Massa’s in de Cold Ground” and Scarlett’s Husbands

“Massa’s in de Cold Ground” (1852) was one of the plantation melodies that earned Foster’s publisher, Firth, Pond, & Co., and his widow the largest amount in royalties.45 Foster’s lyrics in dialect describe slaves mourning the death of their “Massa,” the slaves so grief-stricken they are unable to work. According to Foster’s brother,

Morrison, the song is about Foster’s invalid father (the “Massa”) and is a sincere expression of the composer’s compounded feelings of guilt and grief.46 Regardless of

Foster’s intent, the song became associated with staged shows of Harriet Beecher

Stowe’s anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851-52), conveying through irony the slaves’ joy at the death of their master.47 It is this interpretation that is used in Gone with the Wind as Scarlett begrudgingly mourns her first husband, Charles.

43 Steiner, GWTW conductor’s score, 56.

44 Helvering, “Functions of Dialogue,” 69.

45 Austin, “Susanna,” 175; Saunders and Root, Music of Stephen C. Foster, 1:473. In 1867, the Oliver Ditson Company re-issued the song with a second “Cold” added to the title to reflect the final lyrics of the chorus, “Massa’s in de Cold, Cold Ground.”

46 Emerson, Doo-dah!, 185.

47 Lewis Clarke, Narratives of the Sufferings of Lewis and Milton Clarke (Boston, MA: Bela Marsh, 1846), 113. Escaped slave Lewis Clarke, in a testimony from 1846, states that slaves publicly wept for their owners only for show: “When any stranger is present we have to love [the master] very much.”

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“Massa’s in de Cold Ground” more closely resembles a genteel parlor ballad than a lively plantation song in its structure and melodic contour, a prime example of Foster’s transitioning compositional style from 1851-53 (see Figure 4.9).48 Melodic octave leaps

(measure 29-30, “a-weeping”), a slow tempo (marked poco lento in the original publication), and the depiction of grief are conventions used in Foster’s parlor ballads.49

Here, they unite with gestures found in his early plantation songs, specifically phrase repetition, minstrel dialect, and pentatonic motion, wherein the melody is constructed using only scales degrees 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6, as in measures 29-32.

Figure 4.9. Foster, “Massa’s in de Cold Ground,” chorus.

Steiner uses the “Massa” melody ironically, underscoring the newly widowed

Scarlett as she tries on a brightly colored hat during her period of mourning. Its orchestration is reminiscent of a music box, the delicate high treble piano octaves and strings, accompanied by harp and vibraphone, paralleling Scarlett’s lack of care about losing her husband (see Figure 4.10).

Clarke explains that slaves grew happier the sicker their master became, and that after the master’s death they laid on his grave the heaviest stone they could find “so as to fasten him down as strong as possible.”

48 Saunders and Root, Music of Stephen C. Foster, 1:xxxv, 1:217.

49 Ibid., 1:xxxiii-xxxv.

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Figure 4.10. “Massa’s in de Cold Ground,” Reel 4, Part 3.

Steiner’s quotation begins at the end of Foster’s original chorus (Figure 4.9, measure 29) as Scarlett dresses in her plain black bonnet. The final phrase, “Massa’s in de cold, cold ground” (see Figure 4.9, measures 31-32) repeats three times in Steiner’s version, with overlapping statements by piano and strings (see Figure 4.10, measures 8-

10). By the third statement (measure 10), Scarlett discards her widow’s bonnet and tries on her purple feathered hat, musically mirrored by a fancier triplet figure replacing the usual rhythm. As Scarlett’s vanity clouds her sense, the piano melody chromatically deviates from the tonic (measure 11). Mammy walks in at this moment and Scarlett is caught—strings deceptively cadence to A minor instead of the tonic C, and the altered melody ends unresolved (measure 11). The song’s original mournful lyrics and sentimental melody are just as sincere as Scarlett’s black clothing.

Much later in the film Ashley and Rhett stumble into the house singing “Massa’s in de Cold Ground” and pretending to be drunk to hide Ashley’s injury from Yankee officers. Scarlett finds out later in the scene that her second husband, Frank Kennedy, has been shot and killed. Not coincidentally, “Massa” occurs at the death of both of Scarlett’s

84 husbands, neither of whom she loved, nor cared if they lived. Steiner may not have intended to highlight Scarlett’s indifference or heartlessness in either case; a kinder implication suggests that both deaths represented the loss of her former lifestyle, “Massa” symbolizing the Old South.

Other Quotations of Foster’s Songs

In addition to Rhett and Ashley’s sung rendition of “Massa’s in de Cold Ground,”

Steiner includes a few other diegetic instances of Foster’s songs. “My Old Kentucky

Home” (1853) is sung a cappella by Scarlett’s slave, Prissy, as she slowly strolls to Aunt

Pittypat’s house having failed to retrieve the doctor to deliver Melanie’s baby. The nostalgic lyrics express slaves’ yearning for their “merry, happy, and bright” days on the plantation; in the film’s context, it foreshadows the end of the war and the loss of the antebellum lifestyle (see Figure 4.11).50 Steiner includes only four unaccompanied measures of the third verse. These two phrases allude to “end times:” the end of

Melanie’s pregnancy, the end of Scarlett’s stay in Atlanta (as Sherman’s army marches on the city), and the end of the war. Transposed down from the original G major to F major (see Figure 4.12), Prissy sings an altered pick-up phrase in measure 1, adding a passing tone and the word “just.” 51 By lowering the key, adding the informal “just” lyric, and injecting a passing tone for ease of singing, Steiner emphasizes Prissy’s unconcerned attitude as she returns home. Her casualness is further illuminated by the absence of orchestral support beneath her singing voice. Scarlett, aware of the impending collapse of

50 Ibid., 1:239.

51 Steiner, GWTW conductors score, 168; Selznick, GWTW DVD, 1:13:54. Steiner’s score does not contain a complete transcription of this song, only the first two and a half measures, after which the score is marked “etc.” No lyrics or measure numbers are included, and some of the handwritten notes are barely legible.

85 her world, is infuriated by Prissy’s apparent indifference. The lazy rendition of the song catapults her into a rage, conveying to the audience the heaviness of her situation.

Figure 4.11. Foster, “My Old Kentucky Home, Good-night,” verse 3 excerpt.

Figure 4.12. “My Old Kentucky Home,” Reel 8, Part 1.

Steiner diegetically incorporates another brief Foster cue much later in the film— his most famous song, “Old Folks at Home” (also known as “Swanee River”).52

Reminiscent of nostalgic Irish melodies, “Old Folks” is the “prime example of a sentimental song.”53 Written in AAʹAAʹBAʹ form (one of Foster’s form variants for his parlor ballads), and sung in dialect, the lyrics reflect a slave’s longing for “home,” the nostalgic symbol for the Old South, specifically, plantation life. Richard Crawford argues that, “For all the song’s repetitiveness, the composer’s craftsmanship (or inspiration) gives the repeated phrase extraordinary life. The key lies in the way Foster coordinates rhythm with melodic intervals” (see Figure 4.13).54

52 Saunders and Root, Music of Stephen C. Foster, 1:191, 1:471. The original title page reads “written and composed by E. P. Christy.” Foster suggested, then later regretted, that Christy’s name appear as the composer. Their arrangement was cancelled in 1852 at Foster’s request.

53 Crawford, America’s Musical Life, 215.

54 Ibid.; Saunders and Root, The Music of Stephen C. Foster, 1:192.

86

Figure 4.13. Foster, “Old Folks at Home,” verse 1 excerpt.

In measure 10, the octave leap D-D ending on the weak beat 2 “lifts the phrase” to set up the eighth-dotted-quarter rhythm of “ribber”—a Scotch snap that has been transformed into a nostalgic device by being “slowed down to the characteristic tempo of the parlor ballad.”55 Foster emphasizes the pentatonic contour by moving downward on

“far, far away” (measures 11-12), thereby “filling the gap” created by the octave leap, and symbolically representing the singer’s isolation from home.56 The conventions used in this opening A phrase (measures 9-12) are repeated almost identically in the next phrase (Aʹ), beginning at measure 13.

In its diegetic appearance in Gone with the Wind, “Old Folks” adopts a mixed meaning due to its narrative context and musical adaptation. As Scarlett and Mammy walk through the crowd of carpetbaggers in post-war Atlanta, they pass a circle of performers dancing to an upbeat, wordless soft-shoe rendition of “Old Folks,” visibly accompanied by harmonica and bones percussion, as well as handclaps. The rural instruments, the informality of the street performance, and the sprightly tempo

(contrasted with the song’s usual moderato) establish the joyful tone of the

55 Crawford, America’s Musical Life, 215; Susan Key, “Sound and Sentimentality: Nostalgia in the Songs of Stephen Foster,” American Music 13, no. 2 (Summer, 1995): 158.

56 Crawford, America’s Musical Life, 215.

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Reconstruction era from the carpetbaggers’ point of view, ironically coloring the song’s original meaning—these people do not long for home. Scarlett and Mammy, however, struggle through the crowds, disgusted by these newcomers encroaching on their southern territory. The unsung lyrics reflect Scarlett and Mammy’s longing for their pre-war way of life, but Steiner’s musical changes—the substitution of liveliness for sentimentality— contradict the characters’ weariness. There is no written music for “Old Folks” in

Steiner’s conductor’s score, only a handwritten note in the margins specifying instrumentation.57 The song is performed in C major, a step down from the original key

(D Major), and begins in the B section mid-phrase.58 It plays continuously through the several repetitions of the A section, briefly pausing as Scarlett and Mammy push through the crowd.

“Old Folks at Home” is also included as part of a medley of three Foster songs used for intermission music (between Acts I and II), along with “Jeanie with the Light

Brown Hair” (1854) and “Beautiful Dreamer” (1862). One other Foster song is used in the score, “Under the Willow She’s Sleeping” (1860), used sparsely in scenes at Tara. In accordance with other occurrences of Foster tunes throughout the film, these brief quotations establish tone and setting. Foster’s melodies signify the “moonlight and magnolia” days of the Old South, so in Steiner’s use of the well-known and well-loved tunes, he emphasizes the importance of the time period, musically supporting the narrative. Whether used symbolically or ironically, Foster’s songs deepen the role of the film’s music as an emotional purveyor of the on-screen action.

57 Steiner, GWTW conductor’s score, 78.

58 Selznick, GWTW DVD, 2:19:40.

88

Just as Steiner developed Foster’s songs, he likewise adjusted well-known songs written by other composers. Although this was done most realistically to save time in composition, Steiner’s incorporation of borrowed tunes heightened the emotional stakes of Selznick’s poignant film, particularly in songs with patriotic associations. These songs shared the nostalgia of the Foster melodies, and also conveyed a sense of unity, nationalism, and morale that was inherently meaningful to audiences of the 1940s.

“Dixie” and Nationalism

In 1939, compounded with the rampant anxiety created from the past decade of the Great Depression, Americans feared involvement in World War II. In Gone with the

Wind, Ashley Wilkes “repeatedly insists that the end of the war would also bring ‘the end of our world,’” indirectly voicing anxiety about whether the United States and the rest of free Europe could withstand Nazi invasion.59 Men “could envision themselves as the dead or wounded Confederate soldiers,” while women “saw themselves as the overly tense Melanie and Scarlett, [wives] of soldiers, waiting for the dead and wounded lists to be handed out.”60 Although it highlighted these constant fears, Gone with the Wind also provided much needed escapism for audiences: “Revisiting the ‘land of Cavaliers and

Cotton Fields’ allow[ed] for an imaginary negotiation of the harsh social realities no one could turn their eyes away from in 1939.”61 Head of Hollywood’s censorship office, Will

Hays, said of Hollywood in the 1930s:

No medium has contributed more greatly than the film to the maintenance of the national morale during a period featured by revolution, riot, and political turmoil

59 Elisabeth Bronfen, Specters of War: Hollywood’s Engagement with Military Conflict (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012), 25.

60 Chadwick, “Reel Civil War,” 339.

61 Bronfen, Specters of War, 25.

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in other countries . . . It has been the mission of the screen, without ignoring the serious social problems of the day, to reflect aspiration, optimism, and kindly humor in its entertainment.62

No film did this better than Gone with the Wind. Nationally and regionally significant patriotic songs weaved into the score bolstered American devotion and nostalgia, the most famous of these: the lively Southern anthem, “Dixie” (1859). In the film’s foreword, a sentimentalized version of “Dixie” sung by a wordless choir underscores the words on screen as they scroll across a sunset backdrop:

There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South . . . Here in this pretty world Gallantry took its last bow . . . Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave . . . Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered . . . a Civilization gone with the wind.63

Steiner’s recontextualized “Dixie” ballad, according to Royal S. Brown, “evokes in the listener an entire political mythology” even before the first scene.64 This nostalgic use validates its status as one of the most culturally important songs of the South, yet deviates far from its original meaning.

Written by Daniel Decatur Emmett (1815-1904), “Dixie” is the most famous of the nineteenth century minstrel songs. According to James A. Davis, “from its creation there was no intention for canonical status or any form of patriotic association.”65

62 Chadwick, “Reel Civil War,” 334.

63 Selznick, GWTW DVD, 6:04-6:44. This is a perfect example of the Plantation Myth.

64 Royal S. Brown, Overtones and Undertones: Reading Film Music (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994), 52.

65 James A. Davis, “Hearing History: ‘Dixie,’ ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic,’ and Civil War Music in the History Classroom,” in Music and History: Bridging the Disciplines, ed. Jeffrey H. Jackson and Stanley C. Pelkey (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2005), 211.

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Emmett, one of the most successful songwriters of minstrelsy, wrote “(I Wish I Was In)

Dixie’s Land” for Bryant’s Minstrels in New York City:

I wish I was in de land ob cotton, Old times dar am not forgotten Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land. In Dixie Land whar I was born in, Early on one frosty mornin’, Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.

Den I wish I was Dixie, Hooray! Hooray! In Dixie Land I’ll take my stand, To lib and die in Dixie, Away, Away, Away down south in Dixie, Away, Away, Away down south in Dixie.66

Designed as blackface entertainment for Northern audiences, the “blatantly racist environment” of the song’s origin—coupled with its joyful exclamations and lyric repetition—fostered its immediate and rapid spread nationwide, especially to the

Southern states in the secessionist movement.67 When it was played at Jefferson Davis’ inauguration as President of the Confederacy, “Dixie” became the unofficial national anthem of the South. Confederate band arrangements for fife and drum popularized the tune among soldiers; regiments played the song at “almost any opportunity,” inspiring

66 Daniel Decatur Emmett, “Dixie’s Land” in The Civil War Songbook, ed. Richard Crawford (New York: Dover Publications, 1977): 13-16, verse 1 and chorus.

67 Davis, “Hearing History,” 206, 211; Hans Nathan and Daniel Decatur Emmett, “Dixie,” The Musical Quarterly 35, no. 1 (January, 1949): 77-78. Emmett waited a year to copyright “Dixie” and publish with Firth, Pond, & Co. Between its 1859 premiere and its official publication in 1860, variations of the song circulated around the country, widening its popularity but causing authorship conflicts for Emmett (as many musicians who helped spread the song claimed ownership prior to its publication). In this 1949 article, a statement from Emmett is included after Nathan’s primary discussion, hence the dual authorship.

91 several regional parodies and patriotic text adaptations to support “the Southern cause.”68

Despite its sacred status in the Confederacy, however, the scope of “Dixie” was far- reaching. In the North, the Union Army played the song with alternate lyrics until 1863, and on April 10, 1865 (the day after General Robert E. Lee’s surrender), President

Abraham Lincoln requested to hear the song at an assembly at the White House, saying “I thought ‘Dixie’ one of the best tunes I ever heard.”69

Controversy has surrounded “Dixie” since its inception, particularly in its authorship, and its connection to slavery. By the time of Emmett’s death in 1904, 37 white male composers had claimed the song.70 Additionally, community lore from

Emmett’s hometown of Mount Vernon, Ohio suggests that the composer heard the song from a neighboring African American family of musicians, the Snowdens.71 While the

Snowdens did not claim authorship, they alleged that Emmett borrowed their musical ideas (minstrel songs were often crafted from the “oratory of black America”) to the extent that their gravestones read “They Taught ‘Dixie’ to Dan Emmett.”72

68 Davis, “Hearing History,” 206, 212-13. Of the many song parodies written to celebrate the Southern secession and the war, Confederate General Albert Pike was responsible for the most popular verses: “Southrons, hear your country call you! Up, lest worse than death befall you!” and “To arms! To arms! And conquer peace for Dixie!”

69 Nathan and Emmett, “Dixie,” 80, 83; Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939), 4:207-8.

70 Howard L. Sacks and Judith Rose Sacks, Way Up North in Dixie: A Black Family’s Claim to the Confederate Anthem (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 3.

71 Ibid., 54-56, 78; Lorle Porter, Politics & Peril: Mount Vernon, Ohio in the Nineteenth Century (Zanesville, OH: New Concord Press, 2005), 37, 54. The Snowden family included Thomas and Ellen (former slaves) and their seven children. Thomas and Ellen were the first documented black couple to be married in Knox County, Ohio.

72 Sacks, Way Up North in Dixie, ix-x, xviii, 160-62. The gravesite marks Ben and Lew, two of the Snowden children. The Sackses argue that “Dixie” came from the parents’ repertory (Thomas and Ellen), as Ben and Lew would have been young children when Emmett heard the song.

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The song has incited strong, conflicting responses over its lifetime, lauded by some for arousing Southern pride, and protested by others for its glorification of racial oppression. “For good or ill,” according to the Sackses, “[‘Dixie’] expresses something of

America’s changing character and consciousness . . . it thrills some and humiliates others.

Largely because of its rich variety of meanings, ‘Dixie’ refuses to lie peacefully in that trunk of Victorian sheet music forever consigned to the attic.”73 Scholars agree that the song’s initial and long-term popularity—despite the racial underpinnings and historical implications of its original lyrics—stems from its musical qualities, “modest and unpretentious though [they] may be.”74 Hans Nathan elaborates:

It was not alone the words of the chorus that so inspired the Confederate soldiers. When the tune was performed like a military quickstep with hurried metallic accents, while its “angular” intervals sounded like bugle calls, it quickened their pulse, obscured their reasoning, and made them insensitive to the strain and pain of battle. “Dixie” became the battle hymn of the Confederate Armies. And still in our own time, when it is played in the South hats and rebel yells rise into the air.”75

Played cheerfully up-tempo (originally marked allegro), the simple melodic line “could hardly be of more outspoken major tonality than it is” (see Figure 4.14).76 Components of melodic simplicity contribute to the popularity and appeal of the tune: (1) sixteenth-note scalar figures (measures 3 and 6) ascend to emphasize the tonic downbeat of the next measure; (2) pitch repetition on prominent beats (measure 4, G in a C major triad, and measure 5, A in an F major triad) emphasizes the structural harmony (I and IV,

73 Ibid., 5.

74 Nathan and Emmett, “Dixie,” 212.

75 Ibid., 81-82.

76 Ibid., 65.

93 respectively); and (3) triadic arpeggiation, with roots of the chord occurring on prominent beats (measures 2, 7, 8, 9, and 10), accentuates the major tonality.77

Figure 4.14. Emmett, “Dixie’s Land,” verse 1 excerpt.

In Gone with the Wind, Steiner uses “Dixie” in its original form to serve a patriotic function: a bombastic call to war incited by a rebel yell at the Twelve Oaks barbecue. Men cheer wildly, kissing their ladies goodbye and rushing to enlist in the

Confederate Army, as the lively and nationalistic “Dixie” underscores, amplified by snare drums and cymbals. Steiner musically emphasizes the importance of the war in this spirited rendition of the song, conveying the excitement of the soldiers. “Dixie” never again appears in such a wholly patriotic sense; its use in this scene represents the high point of the South before its collapse, a downfall that Steiner musically parallels by incorporating increasingly deteriorated variations of the song throughout the war.

“Dixie” appears diegetically at the Atlanta Examiner’s office when the lists of the soldiers killed and wounded at Gettysburg are distributed through the crowd. Ominous rumbling music underscores as families wait for the lists and then identify their dead

77 John Spitzer, “Oh! Susanna: Oral Transmission and Tune Transformation,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 47, no. 1 (Spring, 1994): 126-28; Crawford, The Civil War Songbook, 14. “Dixie” begins with one and a half measures of introductory material prior to the start of the lyrics.

94 loved ones. An elderly woman approaches her uniformed husband, the conductor of the band, and looks up to him mournfully, implying that their son has been killed in battle.

The conductor straightens, turns to his band of uniformed children and elderly men, and they begin “Dixie” as cheerfully as in a parade. The camera focuses on a boy playing a flute, tears streaming while he plays the lively tune. Steiner features the song here paradoxically, intact and in its original up-tempo form to emphasize the heartbreak of the scene. Furthermore, because the musicians performing the music can be seen weeping as they play, the audience’s empathetic despair is amplified, a strikingly successful use of diegetic music. This scene and the next (Ashley’s arrival home for Christmas leave) are underscored almost continuously by this and other Civil War-era songs, including “When

Johnny Comes Marching Home,” “When This Cruel War is Over,” and the secondary anthem of the South, “Bonnie Blue Flag.” Each song transitions seamlessly into the next, and the brass band is shown occasionally to imply continuous diegetic music.

In its next several occurrences “Dixie” is deconstructed to mirror the decline of the South. For the burning of Atlanta scene, Heinz Roemheld, composing in the “Steiner style,” skillfully wove together threatening variations of two of the best known patriotic songs: “Dixie” and “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Published as a poem by Julia Ward

Howe in 1862, “Battle Hymn of the Republic” originated as “Say, Bummers, Will You

Meet Us,” a camp meeting song attributed to William Steffe. The Men of the

Massachusetts Volunteer Militia parodied the catchy tune for Sergeant John Brown, and as it spread through their ranks, others adopted it for marching and to honor abolitionist

John Brown. When Howe heard the resulting “John Brown’s Body” in 1861, she wrote new lyrics that gained immediate popularity, changing “John Brown’s body lies a-

95 mouldering in the grave,” to “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the

Lord.”78 Whereas “John Brown’s Body” spread because of its repetitive lyrics well-suited for marching, Howe’s poetic version gained its mass popularity through publication in periodicals and sheet music, its extravagant lyrics more appropriate for upper-class consumers than for soldiers.79

“Battle Hymn of the Republic” achieved patriotic status in the North (largely due to prior association with the abolitionist movement), and is now viewed as a

“quintessential work embodying the beliefs and ideals of the Union during the Civil

War.”80 The tune’s melodic, rhythmic, and structural repetition supports its patriotic association. Its original martial design is reflected in its strophic form, the repetitive syllabic setting of the chorus (“Glory! Glory Hallelujah!”), and the repeated dotted rhythms that imply a “walking beat” (see Figure 4.15).81 The melody is easy to sing, comprised of repeated notes in the implied root chord (B♭) and the use of passing tones

(E♭ and C) to smoothly transition between the tonic pitches. Like “Dixie,” it simulates a militant bugle call with its triadic arpeggiation (measure 5).

Figure 4.15. Howe, “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” verse 1 excerpt.

78 Davis, “Hearing History,” 206.

79 Ibid., 205-8.

80 Ibid., 211.

81 Ibid., 207; Crawford, The Civil War Songbook, 6.

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In the “Fire Segment” of Gone with the Wind, Roemheld alternates minor-mode variations of “Dixie” and “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” each containing accentuated moments of harmonic dissonance to convey the peril of the scene as the Union Army overtakes Atlanta.82 According to Brown, “dissonance often gets used in film music, much the way the minor mode does, to create an affective backing for more ominous situations . . . [it] exploits musically generated feelings such as order and disorder, stability and instability.”83 As Rhett’s wagon hurriedly flees Atlanta, aggressive brass quotations of “Dixie” and “Battle Hymn” represent danger. Played presto in D minor, these militant statements cut through the dense orchestral texture with forceful dynamics

(sforzandos, ffff, and frequent crescendos), underscoring the battle in the city and characterizing the panic felt by the escapees (see Figure 4.16). Reflective of the transposition to D minor, the third scale degree (measure 35, F) is lowered to arpeggiate a minor triad. Halfway through the opening phrase, the usual leap of a fourth is modified to a leap of a tritone to emphasize fear (measure 37, F, into measure 38, B♮), and then sustained far beyond its usual rhythmic length. Approaching this dissonant pitch (B♮) by weak intervallic motion robs the audience of musical stability, as it divides the scale in half and defies resolution.84 In the repetition of this phrase, the trajectory of the tritone is interrupted by non-diatonic appoggiatura (measure 42, C#), delaying the arrival to B♮ and thereby complicating the already unstable passage.

82 Steiner, GWTW conductor’s score, 188-200. Reel 9, Part 2, “Fire Segment” includes “The Escape,” “Dixie,” and “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

83 Brown, Overtones and Undertones, 7-8.

84 Ibid., 7.

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Figure 4.16. “Fire Segment,” Reel 9, Part 2.

Howe’s original opening phrase of “Battle Hymn” begins on scale degree 5 in the tonic key of B♭, and diatonically outlines a (I) major triad (see Figure 4.15). In the anxiety-ridden burning of Atlanta, however, the “Battle Hymn” melody does not tonicize

(I) in the written key of D minor, but rather a G half-diminished-seventh chord (ivø7)

(measures 44-47). The next phrase intensifies by moving up a step, first tonicizing A major (V) in measures 48-49, then A half-diminished-seven (v ø7) in measures 50-51. In both of these quotations, Roemheld retains enough of the original melody for the audience to recognize it, but chromatically lowers certain pitches (therefore collapsing expected intervals) to stress the ominous tone of the scene. Table 1 compares the original opening phrase of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” (Howe) to the two chromatically altered statements used in the “Fire Segment” (measures 44-51), and demonstrates the subtle yet significant intervallic differences between the three distinct phrases.85

85 Table 1 is compiled from Howe, “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” mm. 4-6; and Steiner, GWTW conductor’s score, “Fire Segment,” Reel 9, Part 2, mm. 44-51, HRC. For clarity, melodic notes that occur multiple times in a row are not included more than once in the table. “Steps” indicate the intervallic

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Table 1. Intervallic Relationships in “Battle Hymn of the Republic”

Howe, “Battle Hymn,” mm. 4-6 Scale 5 4 3 5 8(1ʹ) 2 3 2 8 (1ʹ) degree Steps W H m3 P4 W W W W Roemheld, “Fire Segment,” mm. 44-47, Gø7 Scale ♭ 4 ♭ ♭ ♭ 8(1ʹ) 2 8(1ʹ) ♭ degree 5 3 5 7 7 Steps H W m3 m3 W W W W Roemheld, “Fire Segment,” measures 48-51, A Major and Aø7 Scale 5 4 3 5 8(1ʹ) 2 ♭3 2 8(1ʹ) degree Steps W H m3 P4 W H H W

In Roemheld’s first statement (measures 44-47), every pitch is flattened (except scale degree 4) either by half-step or whole step, thereby altering the intervallic relationships between the first notes of the phrase and depressing the tone. The second half of this statement retains the same intervallic contour as the original (W-W-W-W), but it begins a whole step down from its usual 8 (1ʹ), emphasizing the instability of ♭7 instead of the resolute tonic. The inverse occurs in Roemheld’s second statement

(measures 48-51), as the melody is preserved in its first half, but altered in the second half with a lowered third. This results in a change from the original W-W-W-W to W-H-

H-W, the deviation from the usual major mode representing the danger and uncertainty the scene.

distance between the scale degree written above, and the scale degree immediately to its right. For example, in the top left corner, it is one whole step (W) from scale degree 5 to 4, one half-step (H) from scale degree 4 to 3, etc. (“m3” designates a minor third, “P4” a perfect fourth).

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These and similarly modified statements of “Dixie” underscore Rhett, Scarlett, and the others as they fight off scavengers and looters, narrowly avoid an explosion, and escape moments before the only available road becomes engulfed in flames. Roemheld’s various departures from the expected tonal order of patriotic melodies, in particular the shifts from major- to minor-mode, “psychologically and aesthecially speaking . . . create a sense of loss and anxiety” that epitomize the peril of the escape.86

Timpani and “death gongs” begin the next scene as Rhett and Scarlett, exhausted from their escape, caravan in their wagon among evacuees and defeated soldiers.87 A man riding horseback collapses onto the ground, accented by a sforzando entrance by cellos and violas playing a tragic ballad statement of “Dixie” (see Figure 4.17). Rhett tells

Scarlett, “Take a good look, my dear. It’s a historic moment—you can tell your grandchildren how you watched the Old South disappear one night.” Steiner emphasizes the narrative weight of this moment in the suddenness with which he begins “Dixie;” its three opening pitches are eliminated, resulting in the statement starting on a weak, unexpected beat (measure 2). In comparison to the originally up-tempo, cheerful “Dixie,”

Steiner’s quotation here musically symbolizes the fall of the South. A chromatically descending bass line drives unexpected harmonic shifts, resulting in a wandering tonal center that expresses the despair of the scene.88 The rhythmic integrity of the tune remains intact, albeit played at a languishing tempo to parallel the trudging pace of the

86 Brown, Overtones and Undertones, 3.

87 Steiner, GWTW conductor’s score, 201. “Death gong” is written twice in measure 1.

88 In Figure 4.17, roman numerals on the strong beats of each measures indicate the most prominent tonal center for that particular measure. There are several chord changes on the weaker beats (throughout measures 3-4, for example). While these chords and their movement are important in their contribution to the overall harmonic dissonance, they are not assigned roman numerals here, as the downbeats are the primary concern of the musical discussion.

100 men. Using the original melodic arc to ensure audience recognition, Steiner tonicizes G♭ major, then changes modes to the parallel minor, G♭m (enharmonically F♯m).

Figure 4.17. “Country Road,” Reel 10, Part 1.

In the approach to measure 4, Steiner keeps the expected interval of a fourth, but lowers it from 3 and 6 to ♭3 to ♭6 (B♭♭ and E♭♭, or A and D). The resulting subdominant chord (iv, C♭m) pivots to function as the submediant (vi, Bm) in the new tonal center of

D major, a distant augmented fifth away from the point of origin in G♭. In measures 4-5, the tonic-leading tone movement (D-C♯) defies the original “Dixie” melody, which features whole step movement (not half-step). The repeated Ds of measure 4 abandon their usual function as scale degree 6 (and therefore any harmonic implication of the predominant (ii) chord in A major). The expected scalar ascent of 6-7-8 (1ʹ)-2-3 is replaced with 1-2-3-4-5 through measure 5, barely supported by a collapsed, unstable

101 half-diminished-seventh chord in its second inversion. Preceded by a predominant Em7

(ii7), this iiø7 chord seems to function as the dominant, setting up a cadence to a new tonic, A major, but Steiner suddenly shifts modes to the parallel D minor instead

(measure 6). The remaining “Dixie” melody (measures 6-8) mournfully arpeggiates an F major triad, its unsung lyrics “look away, look away” floating above bleak, minor chords.

The quotation ends unresolved as an A minor chord (v7) is overlapped with the next snippet of Steiner’s borrowed music, “Ye Cavaliers of Dixie.” The ambiguity of this passage, manifested by displaced melodies and rootless, dissonant movement through varying modalities, represents the uncertain future of the South at this point in the war, and Rhett’s and Scarlett’s sadness and disbelief as they witness the disintegration of their world.

“Dixie” reappears in similarly melancholic statements in the aftermath of the war, each time nostalgically conveying the loss of the antebellum lifestyle and the defeat of heroic men. After the war ends, Melanie and Scarlett host traveling soldiers at Tara. On the front steps of the house, Melanie’s son, Beau, now a toddler, embraces a ragged man who happily insists to Melanie that he doesn’t mind Beau, as “it’s good to see a youngster again.” Underscoring this meeting of young innocence and old weariness is gentle violin-flute variation of “Dixie” restored to its major tonality (see Figure 4.18).

Figure 4.18. “Dixie,” Reel 12, Part 2A.

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Slowed to the tempo of a lullaby, this appearance of “Dixie” adopts a hopeful tone as the lightest-voiced instruments delicately play the original melody. Articulation changes such as slurs (especially on scalar eighth-note ascents, measures 89 and 92) and tenutos (on repeated notes, measures 90-91) dreamily elongate the choppy accents of the original tune. In measure 95, the penultimate phrase of “Dixie” smoothly transitions into the Tara theme, rather than cadence and end. After multiple distortions of this significant tune, Steiner’s treatment here suggests that even in the midst of defeat, hope is not lost for the future generation. With this underlying message, it is fitting that this is the last significant statement of “Dixie” in the film.

The powerfully associative melody of “Dixie,” even without its lyrics, stirs an emotional blend of nostalgia and patriotism (particularly for Southern audiences) on which Steiner heavily relied. Its combined non-diegetic use with “Battle Hymn of the

Republic” and other patriotic tunes elsewhere in the film, according to James Buhler,

“grants insight into what must otherwise remain unseen and unsaid: psychology, mood, motivation.”89 In Selznick’s famous “pullback shot,” for instance, Scarlett searches for

Dr. Meade through the field of wounded Confederate soldiers, underscored by Steiner’s dramatic minor-mode medley of “Dixie,” “Maryland, My Maryland,” “The Old Folks at

Home,” and “Taps.” Steiner’s modification of these well-known major-mode patriotic melodies emphasizes the destruction and tragedy of what Scarlett sees—emotionally impactful for 1930s audiences collectively fearful of America’s fast-approaching

89 James Buhler, “Analytical and Interpretive Approaches to Film Music (II): Analysing Interactions of Music and Film,” in Film Music: Critical Approaches, ed. Kevin J. Donnelly (New York: Continuum, 2001), 47.

103 involvement in World War II, and nostalgically recalling the “lost cause” of the

Confederacy.

Equally effective is Steiner’s diegtic use of borrowed material. Together with

Selznick’s direction, Steiner created an immersive atmosphere of the Civil War and

Reconstruction by showing the audience a Confederate band play period-appropriate instruments and a carpetbagger joyfully sing “Marching Through Georgia” on his way to

Tara. In other instances, Steiner showcased important events in the film’s timeline not by overtly drawing attention to the music, but by subtly layering and deconstructing these melodies beneath thicker orchestral textures, as in the brief, mutated statement of

“Yankee Doodle” when the O’Hara’s former overseer, Wilkerson (now a Yankee- sympathizer), arrives to collect the taxes on Tara. Steiner successfully applied both of these compositional techniques throughout the film to establish the tone of a scene and to elicit the appropriate emotional response.

Superficially, Steiner used pre-existent music in his score for Gone with the Wind to save precious time and complete the music within Selznick’s brutal twelve-week deadline. By borrowing intact melodies from Foster and the American patriotic songbook for his most prominent musical references, as well as other folk songs, hymns, Negro spirituals, and European music, Steiner not only met the deadline, but helped to construct the musical atmosphere of the Old South, prompting the audience to reflect with nostalgia. In his development of these associative songs—some across the span of the entire film—Steiner generates a musical journey that parallels that of a character or narrative theme, thereby strengthening the storyline and significantly impacting the audience’s overall emotional experience. In the instance of “Dixie,” whose melody

104 occurs multiple times throughout the score, Steiner transforms the material from its original state and achieves this ultimate goal. In the following chapter, this goal is explored in regard to Steiner’s original music, specifically the leitmotifs that represent the principal characters and their relationships.

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CHAPTER 5

MOTIVIC DEVELOPMENT IN STEINER’S USE OF ORIGINAL MUSIC: ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS

Steiner’s compositional style was heavily influenced by post-Romantic composer

Richard Wagner, as is evidenced by his use of orchestral underscoring to support and dramatize the film narrative, and his extensive use of leitmotifs to emphasize character traits and scenic mood. In addition to the songs he borrowed for use in Gone with the

Wind, Steiner also wrote 11 original leitmotifs and 16 additional thematic melodies to represent specific characters, relationships, and settings. The principal characters with an individual leitmotif include Scarlett O’Hara, Rhett Butler, Melanie (Hamilton) Wilkes,

Gerald O’Hara, the Tarleton twins, Belle Watling, Bonnie, and Mammy. Two of the leitmotifs represent prominent romantic relationships: Melanie and Ashley, and Scarlett and Ashley. The film’s most famous leitmotif is associated with a place: the Tara plantation, Scarlett’s home in rural Georgia.

Steiner weaves each of these recurring melodies into the score to develop the characters, enhance the narrative, and elicit emotion. Their effectiveness stems from their repetition. According to Karlin and Wright, “The reason repetition of a theme is so valuable is that the music develops tremendous emotional power through the cumulative reaction of an audience over the course of the film.”1 This associative power of Steiner’s leitmotifs significantly contributes to the effectiveness of the score, and therefore the

1 Karlin and Wright, On the Track, 195.

106 film, because audiences experience stronger empathetic responses with the leitmotifs than they would without them. This chapter delves into Steiner’s original leitmotifs for Gone with the Wind and their various developments:

The notes of the motif can be changed; the rhythmic values of the notes can be varied (eighth notes morphed into quarter notes or even whole notes, for instance) . . . Shifts in harmony will reveal the different emotional implications of the motif; and orchestration will have an effect as well.2

Developing a motive outlines for viewers the emotional trajectory of a character’s journey, the growth of a relationship, or changing feelings for a place. Steiner uses several scoring techniques to develop themes, including, but not limited to: (1) melodic layering, (2) symbolic instrumentation, (3) distinctive rhythmic figures, (4) varying dynamics and tempi, (5) shifting tonal centers, and (6) intervallic modification. When used consistently throughout a score, the combination of any of these alteration methods helps to connect music to the narrative.

The following music analysis considers these motivic developments in conjunction with their associated narrative themes: love, survival, and nostalgia. The three most prominent romantic relationships (Melanie and Ashley, Scarlett and Ashley, and Scarlett and Rhett) each have an assigned leitmotif that explores an aspect of love distinct from the other two. Additionally, these themes comment on the important narrative themes unrelated to love. Readers and audiences past and present can relate to these relationships and each one’s universal themes. By analyzing each leitmotif in its original form (at its first complete appearance), and then studying Steiner’s methods of thematic development at significant moments in the storyline, we can reach a deeper level of understanding of the effectiveness of film scoring.

2 Ibid., 199, 201.

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Melanie and Ashley

Melanie is the picture of the genteel, southern woman; modest and soft-spoken, she fosters unwavering trust in her husband and in the goodness of others to a fault. Her delicate physical manner, although elegant and feminine, proves problematic throughout her life, and ultimately leads to her death. Ashley is the archetypal southern gentleman.

Soft-spoken like Melanie, he is an experienced soldier and well-bred son of a plantation owner. Honor dictates his life choices, a trait that plagues him when he repeatedly resists

Scarlett’s temptation.

The two marry at the onset of the Civil War, and the film spans the entirety of their marriage, culminating in Melanie’s death in one of the final scenes. During the war, they persevere through separation, and in its aftermath, they suffer poverty and loss.

Individually and as a couple, Ashley and Melanie represent the Old South and its lost causes. In their honor, gallantry, and “Southern belle-ism,” the two childhood sweethearts are “true products” of their region’s ideologies, and both struggle deeply when their world is shaken by the war.3 They are strengthened only by their loyalty to one another, their partnership a stable representation of the past for which they desperately grieve.

This nostalgia is musically expressed in a graceful leitmotif reflective of the tenderness of their relationship. Labeled in the score simply as “Love Theme,” Melanie and Ashley’s leitmotif evokes their longing for one another and for their lost way of life. Because they do not share many scenes together, their leitmotif frequently appears when one of them thinks about the other.

3 Taylor, Scarlett’s Women, 112.

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Ashley is first introduced at the Twelve Oaks barbecue gallantly descending the staircase of his plantation home to meet Scarlett. Although music underscores his entrance, it is not specific to Ashley—he does not have his own leitmotif. His two shared love themes (with Melanie and with Scarlett) surround him throughout the film, but his lack of independent melody demonstrates his lack of importance as an independent character. By contrast, Melanie has her own leitmotif in addition to her love theme with

Ashley. Moments after Ashley greets Scarlett, he introduces her to Melanie. Her leitmotif begins as she gracefully turns her head to the camera for the first time (see Figure 5.1).

Figure 5.1. “Melanie,” Reel 3, Part 1.

The melody, “as warm and compassionate as the character herself,” is lifted intact from another leitmotif used in Steiner’s score for The Fountain (1934, RKO).4 Played here by violin, the melody floats simply between the prominent beats of each measure, delicately ornamented as it repeatedly outlines descending major seconds. This internal repetition, coupled with the harmonic accompaniment contentedly grounded in the tonic, expresses Melanie’s unwavering goodness. Steiner uses the theme throughout the film, culminating in Melanie’s death where it is accompanied by a “heavenly choir” and

“designed to break every heart in the audience.”5

4 William Pratt, Scarlett Fever: The Ultimate Pictorial Treasury of “Gone with the Wind” (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1977), 214.

5 Ibid.

109

Moments later, Ashley and Melanie’s Love theme is introduced as the couple overlooks the grounds and their guests at Twelve Oaks. In their first private conversation, they discuss the beauty and elegance of their southern plantation lifestyle, underscored by their romantic leitmotif (see Figure 5.2).

Figure 5.2. “Love Theme,” Reel 3, Part 2.

Written in D major, the theme features an elegant melody that expresses the loving devotion of the couple’s relationship, and evokes the grace and beauty of the antebellum life that ended with the war. Every measure of the lilting 12/8 motif features a three-note pick-up into the downbeat of the next measure, establishing rhythmic predictability that makes the theme easy to recall. The opening two phrases are structured as a symmetrical period (measures 1-2). The antecedent and consequent phrases each feature the same short-short-short-long-long rhythm and gracefully arcing contour: rising by two whole steps and a minor third, then descending a perfect fourth. The symmetry of the period denotes balance, and allows for easy recollection in later appearances. As it begins in this scene, Ashley affectionately asks Melanie, “Happy?” to which she

110 adoringly replies “So happy.”6 The third phrase of the theme reinforces their fondness of each other through a descending sequence of suspensions (measures 3-4). Ashley tells her, “You love Twelve Oaks as I do,” as the second half of the theme continues, similarly constructed in its phrase form, but featuring chromaticism and dissonance that foreshadow the future ruin of Twelve Oaks. Played by violins, the melody soars to its melodic peak in measure 7, as Melanie says, “I love it as more than a house. It’s a whole world that wants only to be graceful and beautiful.” Ashley responds, “It’s so unaware that it may not last forever,” his final word precisely synchronized with the perfect authentic cadence into measure 8.

Despite the musical finality of this moment, Melanie continues their conversation, noticing Ashley’s fear of the impending war. She softly tells him, “We don’t have to be afraid—for us,” as the Love theme’s coda begins. The melody adopts the same three-note pick-up figure as each of the previous phrases (measure 9). The ascending minor third of the opening, however, is stretched to a major third here, landing on the downbeat of the coda on scale degree 3 (measure 10). In syncopated dotted rhythms, the melody alternates repeated augmented fifths. However, this interval actually functions as its consonant enharmonic: a minor sixth that characteristically expresses nostalgia, loss, and uncertainty.7 In musical support of this thematic longing, a harp gracefully plays an arpeggiated diminished chord beneath the melody. Melanie continues, “No war can come between our world, Ashley. Whatever comes, I’ll love you, just as I do now, until I die.”

6 Sidney Howard, Gone with the Wind, final shooting script (January 24, 1939), in Daily Script, www.dailyscript.com/scripts/Gone_With_the_Wind.pdf (accessed November 12, 2016), 25. Hereafter, this document is abbreviated GWTW script.

7 Deryck Cooke, The Language of Music (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 89-90.

111

Underscoring her lovingly assuring words, the final three notes of the melody form an appoggiatura that emphasizes scale degree 4 over the tonic harmony before resolving by descent to scale degree 3 (measures 10-11). This 4-3 melodic ending brings to mind the voice leading in a hymn by imitating the final “Amen” of a plagal cadence. Although the harmonic resolution here is not a plagal cadence, the melody adopts a virtuous aural connotation that signifies Melanie’s righteousness, Ashley’s honor, and the sincerity of their love for one another. The Love theme decrescendos as Ashley gently kisses

Melanie’s hand, and the scene ends.

This first occurrence of the leitmotif thematically links Steiner’s beautiful melody to the Old South, stirring feelings of nostalgia for the “good old days” even before they’ve been lost. The complete Love theme never appears again after this scene, signifying that after the war, Twelve Oaks and the Old South will never again return to the way things were on this last perfect day of the barbecue. It does occur, however, in fragmented phrases that evoke the same sense of nostalgia as expressed in this first scene, albeit with greater thematic association later in the film.

The couple’s next significant interaction occurs in Atlanta while Ashley visits on

Christmas leave from the war. After dinner at Aunt Pittypat’s house, Melanie takes

Ashley’s arm and he escorts her upstairs by candlelight, underscored by their Love theme

(see Figure 5.3). Consistent with scoring stereotypes, Steiner assigns feminine solo violin to Melanie’s dialogue, and masculine solo cello to Ashley’s, and uses melodic layering to illustrate their conversation.8 Throughout their dialogue, the cello remains melodically stable in its statement of the leitmotif. The violin, at the top of its range, echoes the

8 Otter, “Construction of Gender,” 6, 144.

112 contour of the cello melody, but alters its starting pitches and a few intervals to signify the raised pitch of Melanie’s voice as she meekly asks Ashley to care for the tunic she made him. In measures 51-52, for example, the violin statements begin a whole step (plus two octaves) above the preceding cello statements. Additionally, the leap to the third beat of measure 52 is expanded to a fifth so that as the melody changes directions and descends, it lands on the tonic pitch, G (in unison with the cello’s next phrase). Ashley assures Melanie he will take care of his gift—“I promise”—as the two instruments sequentially descend together (measure 53).

Figure 5.3. “Love Theme,” Reel 6, Part 4A.

Melanie and Ashley say goodnight to Scarlett, who watches unhappily from the bottom of the staircase as the couple retreats to their bedroom. The camera focuses on the jealous Scarlett as additional strings enter (measure 54), rapidly imitating the sequential descent of measure 53, then landing onto a sustained morendo chord to end the scene.

113

Later, after the escape from Atlanta, Scarlett, Prissy, Melanie, and Melanie’s new baby (Beau) arrive at Twelve Oaks in ruins. The Love theme begins, reminiscent of its first occurrence at the barbecue (see Figure 5.4).

Figure 5.4. “Love Theme,” Reel 10, Part 3.

The elongated pick-up notes (measure 11) represent Melanie’s weakness as she slowly raises her head from the bed of the wagon, eager to see her home. Instead, she sees a gravestone marked “John Wilkes, 1864.” The harmony unexpectedly changes modes to the parallel minor (measure 14), reflecting Melanie’s sudden shift from hope to grief. As she and Scarlett survey the damage, solo cello plays a chromatic variant of the melody that ends via retardation by first delaying, and then ascending to its final pitch

(measure 15). Resolving in the opposite direction of its usual contour, this woefully altered line symbolizes Melanie’s realization that her world has been turned upside-down.

The leitmotif fades into another after this fragmented statement, not to return until Act II when Ashley and Melanie are reunited.

After the war, Melanie, Scarlett, and Melanie charitably care for Confederate soldiers at Tara. Melanie, wondering when Ashley will return home, suddenly notices a stranger approaching Tara. A low pedal tone and sparse triplet figures create suspense as all three women nervously try to identify the man (see Figure 5.5). Just as Wagner

114 frequently used short “death rhythms” scored for timpani in foreboding moments, Steiner incorporates short triplet figures here (also played by timpani) to emphasize the women’s apprehension (measures 37 and 39).9 Low strings, piano and poco agitato, enter the texture with anxiously hurried statements of the Love theme’s two opening phrases.

Rushed and chromatically altered, the theme is barely recognizable, as is the unidentifiable stranger fast approaching the house.

Figure 5.5. “Love Theme,” Reel 13, Part 1.

Melanie suddenly gasps and runs toward the man, recognizing him as Ashley returning home from the war. A symphonic Hollywood build-up ensues as the two characters run toward each other, arms outstretched. After eight measures of chromatically ascending chords, sprinting eighth-note-triplets and quintuplets, and a massive crescendo, Ashley and Melanie reach one another. The Love theme explodes at full volume, tutti, in its original state as they embrace. Scarlett and Mammy watch from a distance (see Figure 5.6). When Scarlett tries to run to Ashley, Mammy restrains her,

9 Kirby, Wagner’s Themes, 50, 207, 211.

115 saying “He’s her husban’, ain’ he?”10 The intervallic shape of the Love theme instantly collapses (measure 51 into measure 52, across the bar line). Scarlett succumbs to Mammy as the leitmotif sadly ascends across the span of a minor third and ends unfinished.

Figure 5.6. “Love Theme,” Reel 13, Part 1.

On her deathbed at the end of the film, Melanie tells Scarlett her last wishes, asking her to take care of Ashley. Steiner layers Melanie’s leitmotif with the Love theme, rhythmically adjusting the latter to fit the structure of more dominant Melanie theme (see

Figure 5.7). In accordance with the prior instrumentation, the Love theme is played by low strings, while Melanie’s leitmotif is played by the highest. The Love theme’s rhythm is either compressed (measure 21) or elongated (measure 22) as necessary to align closely with Melanie’s leitmotif, such that the harmonic structure of both themes remains unified.

In measure 23, the third phrase of the Love theme begins its sequential descent of suspensions, lasting for two measures here instead of one. Instead of the short-short- short-long-short rhythm found in its unaltered form, the final note of each sequential 5- note phrase is lengthened from an eighth note to a dotted quarter, giving equal rhythmic value to the final two notes of each phrase (short-short-short-long-long). The coda phrase appears (in the pick-up to measure 27) as Melanie asks Scarlett to promise that she’ll “be kind to Captain Butler . . . he loves you so,” its alternating minor sixths prolonging the tragedy of the scene. In an angelic cadence featuring the 4-3 appoggiatura, Scarlett says

10 Howard, GWTW script, 142.

116

“goodnight.” The violins continue to sustain through the end of the scene, but Melanie’s leitmotif makes one final statement after this cadence.

Figure 5.7. “Love Theme,” Reel 23, Part 2.

Played by violins and solo cello, it begins with its original shape (measure 31), then descends by a third to state its final phrase (measure 32). Here, rather than restate its opening motif as usual, the strings imitate the minor sixth descent from the Love theme’s coda. They do not resolve by 4-3 appoggiatura, but by ascending to the tonic pitch, effectively providing melodic closure and ending the scene. After Melanie’s death, the

Love theme occurs briefly in two fragments, underscoring Ashley as he grieves and contemplates how he will continue to live without Melanie. It disappears as Ashley runs into Melanie’s room for her final moments, and the Love theme dies with her.

117

Steiner effectively uses the Love theme to convey the beauty and grace of the

South, and of the characters whom it represents. Melanie’s virtue and Ashley’s honor distinguish them as admirable characters, especially when compared to the film’s other seriously flawed characters. Unfortunately, Melanie and Ashley’s best qualities also lead to their unhappiness—because they are fixed in their goodness, they are unable to embrace survival tactics such as manipulation and dishonesty (as Scarlett and Rhett can), and as a result, cannot cope with their post-war reality. Without one another, they are doomed, a fact Ashley admits when Melanie dies: “she is the only dream I ever had.”

Steiner manifests their importance to one another by asserting the romantic Love theme in their most meaningful moments together. Because of these uplifting associations, however, the couple’s moments of loss are tragically intensified. In the Love theme’s multiple developments throughout the score, the melodic layering and carefully selected instrumentation evoke romance and virtue, nostalgia and heartbreak. When the sentimental Love theme intertwines with Melanie’s elegantly simple leitmotif as Melanie dies, the musical expressivity is unmatched by any other character’s theme.

Ashley and Scarlett

Scarlett O’Hara is Melanie’s exact opposite in every way. The single unifying element between the two women is their mutual love for Ashley, although Melanie’s love is far more grounded than Scarlett’s long-term infatuation. A fierce, independent woman who generally heeds no one’s advice but her own, Scarlett’s actions are predominantly self-serving, to her ultimate detriment. From the first moments of the film to nearly the final scene, Scarlett obsesses over Ashley, desperately trying to pry an admission of love from him at their every encounter. The few times he does admit he loves her—always for

118 her fire and passion—he quickly follows by saying his feelings of love don’t matter because a relationship with her would be impractical and he wishes to remain loyal to

Melanie. Their private interactions never end happily, and are full of arguing, physical pushing and pulling, and impulsive embracing inevitably followed with regret.

Ashley’s sense of honor, gallantry, and fidelity represents the ideologies of the

Old South. During and after the war, when Scarlett yearns for the ease of her old life,

Ashley provides solace. As Scarlett matures and the war ends, however, she realizes

Ashley’s helplessness, his way of life having died along with the Confederacy. Far from helpless herself, Scarlett frequently uses her relationship with Ashley to escape the harshness of her post-war reality. Both characters love one another superficially for what the other represents: to Scarlett, Ashley is her long-lost charmed life in the Old South, and to Ashley, Scarlett embodies the “passion for life” he’ll never have.

Ashley is surprisingly absent for most of the film despite being at the forefront of

Scarlett’s thoughts. When he is present, he is frequently seated, hunched, silent, or

“moving evasively away from Scarlett,” in stark opposition to the engaging, physically confident Rhett.11 In the 1930s, readers of Mitchell’s novel and viewers of the film almost unanimously found Ashley “wishy-washy,” a “moral coward [with] no charm” who ruined Scarlett’s life by not being straight with her from the beginning.12 Audiences also admitted, however, that Scarlett was a “spectacular emotional failure” unable to understand all the important people in her life, her impressive business sense and

11 Taylor, Scarlett’s Women, 111.

12 Ibid., 110.

119 practicality powerless to fix her “catastrophic relations with others.”13 Leslie Howard’s lackluster performance in the film may have contributed to the unfavorable viewer response, and Mitchell even complained that he created “a much weaker character than she had written.”14 Steiner’s love theme for Ashley and Scarlett, however, is anything but lackluster.

The underscoring for the couple represents a variety of emotions, including longing, infatuation, disloyalty, resentment, and jealousy. Their love theme—marked

“Ashley” in the conductor’s score—appears in their private scenes, and when Scarlett fantasizes about Ashley in his absence. Its narrative associations change, however, after the turning point in Ashley and Scarlett’s relationship in the Paddock scene. Before this significant interaction, the leitmotif represents Scarlett’s obsession with Ashley, her jealousy of Melanie, and Ashley’s temptation. After the Paddock scene (approximately halfway through the film), the musical longing of Ashley’s theme is recontextualized to symbolize the nostalgia of the “good old days,” and Ashley and Scarlett each become a reminder to the other person of the Old South. The tension-filled theme also becomes an indicator of Rhett’s jealousy of Scarlett’s favor for Ashley, frequently appearing in fragments during Rhett and Scarlett’s private scenes.

The Ashley leitmotif is a lamenting, minor-mode descending figure comprised of mostly half-steps (see Figure 5.8). Typically played with the richness of the string section, the melody and its harmonizing subordinate melodies feature romantically tense suspensions and other dissonances in nearly every measure. In Wagnerian opera, this is

13 Ibid., 107.

14 Harwell, “GWTW” as Book and Film, 170.

120 known as the “sob.”15 The theme’s constant need for musical resolution mirrors the intensity of the longing between Ashley and Scarlett, and Scarlett’s perpetual state of sorrow every time Ashley rejects her.16 Its opening phrase of five notes serves as the head motif, which Steiner uses throughout the film as a fragment of the more complete theme.

Most of the leitmotifs in Gone with the Wind are introduced unabridged when their associated character first appears, so as to establish an audio-visual connection for viewers. Steiner diverges from this practice for Ashley’s theme, however, when he introduces the leitmotif before the character is revealed. In the first scene of the film,

Scarlett learns of Ashley’s engagement to Melanie. She is visibly upset when she hears this news from the Tarleton twins, and as she walks away, she says aloud to herself, “It can’t be true. Ashley loves me!” Without any prior exposition about the nature of Ashley and Scarlett’s relationship, Steiner communicates to audiences, through traditional scoring techniques, the depth of Scarlett’s yearning for Ashley (see Figure 5.8).

Concealed within the orchestral texture, cellos enter with Ashley’s theme, lamenting in its chromatic descent. In the third phrase (measure 70), the melody is assumed by the violins, expressing Scarlett’s distress more insistently. High strings are associated with Scarlett throughout the entire film, their tessitura representing her femininity, and their prominence within the orchestral texture indicating her importance as the film’s central character. Scarlett’s lamenting is interrupted (measure 72) when

Mammy shouts to her from the window. With contrasting instrumentation, tempo, and

15 Kirby, Wagner’s Themes, 201. According to Kirby, “Wagner has characterized sorrow, suffering, even longing—again in accordance with tradition—by themes that consist of phrases, mostly in the minor and with much chromaticism . . . with emphasis on the descending semitone.”

16 Leinberger, “An Austrian in Hollywood,” 90.

121 melodic construction, woodwinds play the opening two phrases of Mammy’s pentatonic leitmotif (measures 73-74). Played at a cheerful tempo, the syncopation at the beginning each of Mammy’s phrases (sixteenth-eighth-sixteenth) is reminiscent of minstrelsy, in which the rhythmic energy of syncopation was used to indicate black characters.17 The camera cuts to Scarlett running down the path away from the house, as Ashley’s theme underscores in a varied rhythm (measure 75); instead of even quarter notes, the rhythm adopts a short-long-short template into which the melody’s chromatic descent and suspensions fit, serving as Mickey-Mousing within the style of the motif. Mammy’s theme interrupts again (measure 77), and her subsequent dialogue with Scarlett ends the scene.

Figure 5.8. “Ashley” and “Mammy,” Reel 1, Part 3.

17 Crawford, America’s Musical Life, 488, 535.

122

The fragmented introduction to Ashley’s theme foreshadows the complete version to be revealed twenty minutes later at the Twelve Oaks barbecue. During Ashley and

Scarlett’s first private encounter, Scarlett blurts out “Ashley, I love you!” as strings gently sigh the opening phrase of Ashley’s leitmotif (see Figure 5.9). Scarlett tenderly confesses her feelings during the first four phrases (measures 7-14).

Figure 5.9. “Ashley,” Reel 4, Part 1.

In this passage (measures 7-14), the lower strings harmonize in contrary motion with the violin melody, ascending chromatically using an inversion of the theme. This results in gradually decreasing intervallic space between the upper and lower voices, and deepens the musical tension. In certain instances, as in measure 10, the secondary voices imitate the arc of the head motif by descending stepwise as the violins sustain. On beat 3, the viola compresses a chromatic descent into a triplet, and uses the resulting rhythmic

123 momentum to propel the leitmotif into the next phrase (this also occurs in measure 8 as a scalar descent, and in measure 12 as a scalar ascent). The continuous widening and narrowing of the intervallic space creates major seconds (that occur as a result of suspension, as in measures 10 and 14), as well as minor thirds and diminished chords; all contribute to the scene’s longing tone, their recurring dissonances creating a constant level of romantic tension.18

Ashley interjects throughout, politely attempting to redirect the conversation. This is reflected musically in the dual functionality of measures 13-14: it is the concluding phrase of the symmetrical statement of the theme, and it is also the beginning phrase of a three-phrase descending melodic sequence wherein Ashley suppresses his feelings, and attempts to do the same to Scarlett (measures 13-18). This proves unsuccessful, as his avoidance merely impassions her. She persists, coyly suggesting, “Oh, you do care, don’t you,” and the underscoring fades out almost entirely in anticipation of his response

(measures 17-20). Ashley responds, “Yes, I care,” and as Scarlett delights in his answer, the melody soars into a new key, restating the head motif (measures 21-24). She tilts her head back, preparing to be kissed, but Ashley walks away, saying “can’t we go away and forget we ever said these things,” and then “I’m going to marry Melanie.” This sends

Scarlett into a confused rage, abruptly transitioning the underscoring out of Ashley’s theme (measure 24) and into a heavily chromatic swirl of non-thematic background material. Their exchange escalates, culminating when Scarlett slaps Ashley across the face. The chaotic underscoring freezes, fixed on a subito piano minor triad sustained by horns, as Ashley, the picture of a military gentleman, does not say a word, and walks out.

18 Leinberger, “An Austrian in Hollywood,” 134.

124

This first scene reveals the unrelenting emotional conflict between Ashley and

Scarlett that will occupy their entire relationship and most of the film. Their longing for one another is complicated by Ashley’s unwavering faithfulness to Melanie and Scarlett’s jealousy, a struggle that frequently erupts in a demonstrative display of emotion. In their next interaction at Christmas, for instance, Ashley has come home from the war and

Scarlett presents him with a gift she’s made, a sash to match the tunic Melanie made for him. As Scarlett ties the sash around Ashley’s waist, their love theme plays exactly as it did at Twelve Oaks. This exact repetition signifies that Scarlett’s feelings for Ashley remain unchanged in spite of his initial rejection of her. Just as at Twelve Oaks, Scarlett’s intentions are interrupted by Ashley’s thoughts of Melanie. When he asks Scarlett to look after his wife in his absence, Melanie’s leitmotif appears (see Figure 5.10).

Figure 5.10. “Ashley,” Reel 6, Part 4A.

The violins abandon Ashley’s theme and move to Melanie’s theme, demonstrating her prominence over Scarlett in Ashley’s mind. Now relegated to the secondary strings, Ashley’s theme rhythmically expands to half notes and outlines its characteristic lamenting descent—melodically expanded to whole steps in all but one interval—while begrudgingly harmonizing with Melanie’s melody in consonant intervals

(perfect fifths and a perfect fourth). Scarlett’s hopeful demeanor sinks, disappointed that

Ashley is thinking about Melanie. As he stands to leave, Scarlett erupts into tears and

125 begs him to stay, their leitmotif re-entering appassionato. Scarlett wraps her arms around his neck and kisses him passionately. She declares her love, mirroring their encounter at

Twelve Oaks. Ashley says nothing but goodbye as the leitmotif draws to a close, a distant bugle call summoning him back to the war.

After Scarlett’s escape from Atlanta, she discovers Twelve Oaks in ruins. The love theme’s opening two phrases underscore as she surveys the damage, glad that

Ashley is not there to see it (see Figure 5.11).

Figure 5.11. “Ashley,” Reel 10, Part 3.

The melody’s descending, half-step contour establishes the tragic tone of the scene, its suspension nostalgically reminding audiences of the lost, happier days at

Twelve Oaks (measures 16-17). After these two phrases, the melody suddenly changes directions and ascends chromatically (measure 18) as Scarlett hears a noise from around a dark corner: a cow. This brief, fragmented leitmotif recurs throughout the film to emphasize Ashley’s centrality in Scarlett’s thoughts.

The Paddock scene of Act II is one of the defining moments of Ashley and

Scarlett’s relationship. Steiner expresses the full range of emotions Ashley and Scarlett experience by developing their leitmotif in multiple ways: shifting tonality, dramatizing tempos and dynamics, and thickening and thinning the orchestration. The scene begins in the paddock at Tara, where Ashley has been chopping wood. He calls himself a coward and despairs in his new reality, so Scarlett proposes they run away together. Their love

126 theme underscores as she lists every reason why they should escape, crescendoing as he asks “Do you think I could go off and leave Melanie and the baby?” (see Figure 5.12).19

Both characters begin to lose emotional control, paralleled by an accelerando sequential chromatic ascent that emphasizes the rising tension (measures 56-59) and leads into a reprisal of their theme (measure 60). Ashley promises to be more help to Scarlett at Tara, dashing her hopes of their escape as their leitmotif fades away (measure 63).

Figure 5.12. “Ashley,” Reel 13, Part 2.

Scarlett begs Ashley to take her away, and when he refuses, bound by honor to

Melanie, she turns from him in despair. As she gives up the fight, the violin melody, representing her will, fades slowly to a standstill (see Figure 5.13). According to the script, this is “the first time Ashley has seen any weakness in her.”20 In a symbolic musical gesture, the cello takes control of the melody as Ashley comforts Scarlett, urging her not to cry (measures 69-72). Scarlett’s violin melody changes direction (measure 72) as she looks up at Ashley longingly. The low strings continue with the primary melody as

Steiner reasserts the violins in the texture, ascending chromatically in a dramatic crescendo to the downbeat of measure 76, when, overcome by their physical closeness and the emotional moment, the couple embraces passionately. Here, the tonality shifts to major chord as the violins retake the melody, euphorically declaring the love theme in

19 Howard, GWTW script, 146.

20 Ibid.

127 expanded form, its usual chromatic intervals modified to the diatonic intervallic shape of a major scale (measures 76-77).

Figure 5.13. “Ashley,” Reel 13, Part 2.

Scarlett giggles with disbelieving joy, repeatedly exclaiming “You do love me!” while the violins giddily restate measure 77 in exact repetition (measure 78). In the next phrase (measure 79), the violins remain rapturously fixated on C♯ and B, while Ashley panics. Just as he succumbs to his true feelings and admits he loves Scarlett, the cellos ascend stepwise (measure 79-80), catapulting the theme into a reprise (measure 81-84); the violins break free of their C♯–B repetition and soar into the restatement of the theme.

After just two phrases, Ashley tells Scarlett: “A moment ago I could have forgotten the

128 best wife a man ever had. But, Scarlett, I’m not going to forget her.”21 Scarlett’s hope are instantly dashed, and the rich orchestral texture dissipates. She is frozen in disbelief, paralleled by the violins as they sustain through two measures and then disappointedly drop an octave (measures 84-85). Simultaneously, the cellos play the first three notes of the head motif (beginning on G♭), rhythmically elongated to reflect the dissolution of the couple’s momentary happiness. Ashley turns away from Scarlett as the underscoring continues, now featuring Melanie and Ashley’s love theme (measures 86-87). By end of their remaining dialogue, Scarlett gives up her fight for Ashley. As she walks away,

Ashley hangs his head—after one final statement of their theme’s head motif, restored to its lamenting, minor mode, the scene ends. After this, Ashley and Scarlett’s relationship is forever altered, as is Steiner’s use of their leitmotif.

Ashley and Scarlett only embrace two other times in the film after the Paddock scene: once at the lumber mill (where they are caught by onlookers), and again after

Melanie’s death. At the lumber mill the leitmotif is included nearly in full while Ashley and Scarlett pine for the old days at Twelve Oaks, longing more for the lost Old South than for one another. Aside from this nostalgic appearance of their theme, every other occurrence features Rhett in the scene. By weaving fragments of the Ashley theme into

Rhett’s underscoring (especially after Rhett and Scarlett are married), Steiner stresses

Rhett’s jealousy of Scarlett’s obsession with Ashley.

After the birth of their daughter, Bonnie, Scarlett tells Rhett she hopes they have no more children, and Rhett discovers Scarlett’s secret photo of Ashley. Steiner uses a fragment of Ashley’s theme while Rhett matter-of-factly predicts Scarlett’s future, telling

21 Ibid., 147.

129 her she is wasting her time loving Ashley by “throwing away happiness with both hands—and reaching out for something that will never make [her] happy.”22 Later, after

Scarlett is caught embracing Ashley at the lumber mill, Rhett drunkenly confronts her about her harbored feelings for Ashley. He clasps Scarlett’s head in both hands, threatening to crush her skull and block out her thoughts of Ashley, while Ashley’s leitmotif subtly creeps in: a literal representation of Rhett acknowledging Scarlett’s thoughts of Ashley. Rhett carries Scarlett up the staircase, and as the scene fades to black, the head motif of Ashley’s theme underscores ominously, implying that Rhett intends to assert his dominance. At the end of the film, Scarlett rushes to Ashley’s side after saying her final goodbye to a dying Melanie. The love theme does not begin, however, until

Rhett sees Scarlett run to another man for comfort instead of to her own husband.

Dejected, his face falls and he walks out hurriedly, fueled by his jealousy and unnoticed by Scarlett.

In Ashley and Scarlett’s final scene together, Melanie and Ashley’s love theme underscores as Scarlett recognizes the full extent of Ashley’s uselessness in her life, realizing that Ashley’s “sheepish repressed desire” for her is what she’s mistaken for love all this time.23 When Scarlett finally understands that she’ll never mean more to Ashley than “that Watling woman” (Belle) means to Rhett, the Ashley leitmotif enters. Here,

Steiner’s use of the theme draws a parallel between the two relationships: they are superficial, purely physical, and lack romantic intent, a reality unrecognized by Scarlett until this point. It simultaneously relieves Scarlett’s jealousy of Rhett’s relationship with

22 Ibid., 208.

23 Taylor, Scarlett’s Women, 152.

130

Belle, while discrediting her own relationship with Ashley. The leitmotif fades out and transitions back into Melanie and Ashley’s love theme, as Scarlett admits that she doesn’t care about all of the time she’s wasted on Ashley: “somehow it doesn’t matter.”24 She rushes home to Rhett, who coolly tells Scarlett, “So she’s dead? That makes it nice for you, doesn’t it?” Ashley’s leitmotif makes its final appearance in this moment, no longer a symbol of Ashley and Scarlett’s longing, but of Rhett’s jealousy and anger.

Steiner fully supports the complex trajectory of Ashley and Scarlett’s relationship in their leitmotif. By using traditional, symphonic scoring techniques to build tension, he highlights the passionate longing Scarlett and Ashley feel for one another until their turning point in the Paddock scene, and then adjusts his use of the theme to emphasize their mutual longing for their old way of life. Additionally, Steiner effectively conveys

Rhett’s jealousy by inserting fragments of the theme into Rhett’s scenes with Scarlett.

Just as Scarlett admits in Melanie’s death scene (“I’ve loved something that doesn’t really exist”), Rhett’s anger is founded in Scarlett’s imagined feelings for Ashley, his envy worsened by each occurrence of Ashley’s leitmotif. Musically distinctive, the theme effectively emphasizes the fundamental shifts in Ashley and Scarlett’s relationship and in

Rhett’s perception of their relationship, ultimately resulting in Scarlett’s misfortune.

Scarlett and Rhett

Throughout Gone with the Wind, viewers follow Scarlett from her carefree plantation life, through the Civil War and rebuilding years, and finally to the moment when she’s lost everyone dear to her. Only by the dashing, forceful Rhett Butler—the absolute antithesis of Ashley Wilkes—is the fiercely independent heroine intellectually

24 Howard, GWTW script, 248.

131 outmatched, physically overtaken, and ultimately emotionally overcome. Although

Scarlett’s obsession with Ashley permeates the narrative, she appears alone with Rhett in roughly three times as many scenes as with Ashley.

In both the film and the novel, Rhett’s insight of women troubles Scarlett from the moment she first sees him, saying “he looks as if—as if he knows what I look like without my shimmy.”25 Much later, in the scene just before he violently carries her up the staircase of their home, Scarlett acknowledges that Rhett “had always read her and he was the one man in the world from whom she would like to hide her real thoughts.”26 His

“disconcerting habit of seeing through her” is the source of his power over her.27

Eventually, this is what makes her love him. Rhett adopts Scarlett as a pet for his own amusement, but loves her for the traits they share: she frequently ignores public opinion and societal expectations, she runs a successful business by thinking like a man, and she

“[uses her] sexuality to survive and prosper.”28 Because of these commonalities, Rhett escapes the “inconvenience and boredom of conventional Southern belle qualities and timidities.”29

As a couple, Rhett and Scarlett do not have their own love theme, as Scarlett and

Ashley do. Rather, Steiner alternates their strong individual themes like dialogue in a scene to emphasize each character’s independence. In several of their early interactions,

Steiner also uses silence to emphasize Scarlett and Rhett’s absence of romantic feelings

25 Ibid., 23.

26 Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind (New York: MacMillan, 1936), 924.

27 Ibid., 871.

28 Taylor, Scarlett’s Women, 118.

29 Ibid.

132 for one another—even during Rhett’s proposal of marriage. The lack of underscoring highlights their blunt dialogue, and demonstrates through the absence of romantic music their preoccupation with matters disassociated with love. Occasionally this silence is replaced by “neutral” underscoring such as popular dance music, borrowed material, and non-thematic original music.

The first time their individual leitmotifs interact is at McDonough Road after the

Escape from Atlanta, and it is also the first time they kiss—this is not a coincidence.

Because the characters are overpowered by a variety of emotions, Steiner chromatically alters their individual themes as they overlap. The resulting tension and dissonance exhibits each character’s forcefulness, suggesting to the audience that perhaps the two should not be in a relationship. During their honeymoon, their leitmotifs interact lovingly for the only time in the film. Scarlett has a nightmare and Rhett comforts her, promising to bring her home to Tara. This event marks a musical turning point in their relationship, signified narratively by their new marriage. In their scenes together thereafter, their individual leitmotifs appear sporadically and in fragments, usually separated by silence or by outside material, such as another character’s leitmotif. A musical amalgamation of their individual themes, Bonnie’s theme appears in a few of Rhett and Scarlett’s scenes together, symbolic of the child that is the result of their union. Steiner achieves the same goal with Rhett and Scarlett as he does with the other two couples, albeit without a love theme; rather, his use of silence and thematic alternation for Rhett and Scarlett effectively shows the progression of their relationship.

At the Twelve Oaks barbecue early in the film, Steiner provides the musical exposition for all of Scarlett’s husbands in a sequence spanning just three and a half

133 minutes (from 19:10 to 22:37). First, after meeting Melanie, Scarlett flirts with Charles

Hamilton to the tune of her childhood theme “Katy Bell.” Next, she chats with Frank

Kennedy, underscored by the Scarlett theme in its first appearance. The presence of her adult theme while she is still musically associated with “Katie Bell” foreshadows her future second marriage. Scarlett’s adult leitmotif shares musical qualities with her childhood theme: (1) arching melodic contour, (2) wide range of at least an octave, (3) diatonic in a major key, (4) teasing descending figure at the end (see Figure 5.14 “Katie

Bell” and Figure 5.15 “Scarlett”).

Figure 5.14. “Katie Bell,” Reel 1, Part 3, transposed to C major.

Figure 5.15. “Scarlett,” Reel 3, Part 1.

The tuneful Scarlett leitmotif begins on the tonic pitch, grounded in her womanhood, unlike in her childhood theme that begins on scale degree 3. Particularly when interacting with men, Scarlett’s melodious flirtations span across her speaking range, reminiscent of singing, and both of her themes reflect this tuneful nature of her speech. The dotted rhythm and pentatonic descent in the final measure of “Katie Bell” mimics a flirtatious giggle (measure 60). This represents Scarlett’s harmless teasing

134 nature, as when she tells every man individually at the Twelve Oaks barbecue that she wishes to eat her supper with only them. As an adult, however, Scarlett uses her femininity to manipulate men in a conniving way, as when she lies to Frank Kennedy so he will marry her and pay Tara’s taxes. Musically, this is manifested in a descending pentatonic figure, reminiscent of “Katie Bell,” but with even eighth notes in place of the girlish dotted rhythm (measures 65-66). The phrase ends on scale degree 2 and then repeats itself, melodically avoiding resolution to the tonic and symbolizing Scarlett’s practice of “dangling the carrot” for the men who follow her every command.

After Scarlett greets Frank Kennedy, she walks up the stairs with her friend

Cathleen and sees Rhett for the first time, smiling at her from the bottom of the staircase.

Cathleen tells Scarlett about his scandalous exploits and bad reputation as Rhett’s leitmotif is introduced (see Figure 5.16).

Figure 5.16. “Rhett,” Reel 3, Part 1.

Assuredly contrasting with the previous childlike themes (“Katie Bell” and the

Tarleton twins theme), Rhett’s leitmotif is a masculine and steady swaggering march in

6/8. Its long-short-long-short rhythmic accompaniment is grounded firmly in the tonic and played by low strings and horns, indicating his military associations and establishing the hero archetype. The charismatic melody begins with a sustained tonic pitch just as motionless as Rhett’s fixated gaze at Scarlett. The prominent beats of each measure feature either a pitch from the tonic triad (F, A, or C), or a nearby pitch headed stepwise

135 in that direction (E, G, B). The ornamental eighth note flourish across the bar line

(measures 2-3) symbolizes Rhett’s charisma and style in its momentary abandonment of the leitmotif’s melodic rigidity. Steiner’s musical representation of charm and masculinity solidifies the image of Rhett as the epic romantic hero.

Rhett and Scarlett first meet in the library at Twelve Oaks after Scarlett confesses her love to Ashley (and is rejected). Rhett has overheard the entire exchange, hidden from view. Scarlett, embarrassed and insulted by his presence, says Rhett is “no gentleman,” to which he responds “you, Miss, are no lady.”30 Here, he and Scarlett establish the nature of their relationship, completely unaccompanied by background music. In this first use of silence as a scoring device, Steiner demonstrates that Scarlett’s and Rhett’s usual charms carry no weight with each other. Scarlett’s flirty “Katie Bell” theme would be ineffective here—Rhett sees straight through her well-practiced allure—and Rhett’s own dominant leitmotif would be unfitting, as the furious Scarlett is instantly immune to his charms.

Additionally, the silence of the room accentuates Scarlett’s embarrassment and the awkwardness of the circumstances of this first meeting.

Scarlett and Rhett meet again at the Atlanta Bazaar, when Rhett bids in the dance auction for the widowed Scarlett and the two lead the Virginia Reel. Their dialogue is underscored by popular dance music, providing a reference for the scene’s setting while emphasizing their mutual amusement with one another as they waltz. Their final lines in the scene foreshadow the end of the film: Rhett tells Scarlett, “Someday I want you to say to me the words I heard you say to Ashley Wilkes . . . ‘I love you,’” to which Scarlett

30 Howard, GWTW script, 35-36.

136 replies, “That’s something you’ll never hear from me, Captain Butler, as long as you live!”

Later, Rhett visits Scarlett and brings her a new bonnet from Paris, regaling with her the latest European fashion trends. They converse with each other until Scarlett enquires about Ashley in the war, and Rhett, annoyed by her obsession with “the wooden-headed Mr. Wilkes,” leaves.31 Steiner resists underscoring this interaction, again relying on silence to emphasize the directness with which the two characters speak to one another. For instance, Scarlett teases Rhett, saying she won’t marry him to pay for the bonnet he gave her, to which he replies “don’t flatter yourself, I’m not a marrying man.”

Scarlett flirtatiously continues, “well, I won’t kiss you for it either,” and then promptly tilts her head back, preparing to be kissed. Rhett grabs her arm, and then instead of kissing her says: “No . . . I don’t think I will kiss you. Although you need kissing—badly.

That’s what’s wrong with you. You should be kissed—and often—and by someone who knows how.” Scarlett calls Rhett a “black-hearted, conceited varmint” for this rejection, which makes him laugh and reply “I’m the only man over sixteen and under sixty who’s around to show you a good time.” If this was underscored with romantic music, the scene would be inappropriately impassioned.

At McDonough Road near the end of Act I (after the Escape from Atlanta), Rhett and Scarlett kiss for the first time. Until this passionate scene, their leitmotifs never appear together; Steiner parallels the significant moment by layering the two musical themes, emphasizing the overwhelming emotion through intervallic modification and dissonance. Developmental material non-specific to either character fills the rest of the

31 Ibid, 57.

137 musical space with heavy chromaticism, ascending sequences, and dissonant harmony.

The leitmotifs make their appearances when their corresponding character says something significant, musically mimicking their dialogue (see Table 2).32 Rhett dominates the conversation, proclaiming his love for Scarlett and explaining their likenesses, and therefore his leitmotif occurs the most frequently. Scarlett’s objections are manifested through her chromatically modified leitmotif, as well as through two uses of silence that each interrupt Rhett’s dialogue.

Table 2. Appearances of Leitmotifs, McDonough Road

Leitmotif Reel/Part Measures Start time Line Rhett R10/P1A 4-12 1:28:17 “Not ‘we,’ my dear, ‘you.’” Scarlett 13-18 1:28:42 “Rhett, you must be joking.” Rhett 19-20 1:28:59 “Maybe I’m ashamed of myself.” “You should die of shame to leave Scarlett 21-26 1:29:06 me here, alone and helpless.” R: “Climb down here. I want to say Silence 26 1:29:18 goodbye.” S: “No.” “Bad lots, both of us, selfish and Rhett R10/P2 14-17 1:29:52 shrewd.” Silence 17 1:29:56 S: “Don’t hold me like that.” Rhett R10/P2A 18-24 1:30:00 “Scarlett. Look at me.” Rhett 27-28 1:30:26 “Kiss me. Once.” Scarlett 37-40 1:30:51 “Oh, go on. I want you to go.” “Nevermind the rest, I follow the Rhett 41-45 1:30:57 general idea.”

32 Compiled from conductor’s score, Reel 10, Parts 1A-2A, HRC; Selznick, GWTW DVD.

138

At the beginning of the scene, as they rest before continuing to Tara, Rhett tells

Scarlett he is leaving her to go join the Confederate Army. Horns introduce his leitmotif with heroic purpose. Beneath the melody, unpredictable shifts in tonality signify Rhett’s startling decision and Scarlett’s shock. Scarlett protests as her leitmotif, dissonant and played by moody clarinet, expresses her disbelief (see Figure 5.17).

Figure 5.17. “Scarlett,” Reel 10, Part 1A.

Steiner widens the intervals beyond their usual size, stretching the phrase to a ninth instead of an octave as Scarlett panics (measure 14). When Scarlett asks Rhett why he’s leaving, the music subsides. As he answers, “maybe it’s because I’m ashamed of myself,” his theme regretfully enters, voiced by the woodwinds (see Figure 5.18) The melody has three altered intervals, each one widened by a half-step. The tritone descent in measure 20 (expanded from its usual perfect fourth) signifies Rhett’s guilt for not joining the army sooner, as does the final ascending interval of the phrase, a woeful minor third (changed from a whole step).

Figure 5.18. “Rhett” and “Scarlett,” Reel 10, Part 1A.

139

Unsympathetically, Scarlett retorts, “You should die of shame to leave me here, alone and helpless!” Low strings enter with a diminished version of her leitmotif ascending a ninth, one whole step past its normal peak (measures 21-22), outlining her growing anger. Rhett laughs at the notion of a helpless Scarlett, which escalates her rage as well as the starting pitch of her leitmotif’s next phrase (measure 23, a half-step higher than the previous phrase’s initial pitch). The underscoring suddenly stops when Scarlett refuses to climb down from the wagon. Rhett physically removes her, abandons his humor, and declares his love for her, underscored by 30 seconds of dissonantly romantic orchestration. His leitmotif restates itself within the dense texture, as he restrains Scarlett and compares the similarities between their personalities. Scarlett pushes him way and the music stops. Rhett is not deterred—he reclaims her attention, telling her “Never mind about loving me. You’re a woman sending a soldier to his death with a beautiful memory.” A chromatic figure ascends to the climax of the scene (see Figure 5.19).

Figure 5.19. “Rhett,” Reel 10, Part 2A.

Rhett kisses Scarlett on the downbeat of measure 27, as his leitmotif moves to an alternate harmonic sphere. While the rhythm of Rhett’s theme remains unchanged

(measures 27-28), it tonicizes a minor ninth chord instead of a major triad, its starting pitch (B) the ninth above the root, instead of the tonic pitch. Its intervallic relationships

140 area also compromised, with only one original interval unaltered (measure 28, beat 3 is approached by whole step as in the original leitmotif). The intervallic modifications of the melody, and the harmonic alteration to a minor ninth recontextualize Rhett’s theme as a romantic one, rather than a heroic, impartial one.33 Rhett repeatedly resists love and romance, a tendency he abandons in this moment as he passionately embraces Scarlett.

She pulls away from his grasp, however, and slaps him across the face—the melody line drops out here, replaced by a “stinger” chord (Figure 5.19, measure 29). The “stinger” is a form of close synchronization used in silent film practice—also known as Mickey-

Mousing—designed to emphasize suddenness. Scarlett shouts at Rhett to leave, and describing various ways she hopes he will die in battle. Her leitmotif, accented and sforzando, emphasizes her anger (see Figure 5.20). The opening phrase peaks at a seventh this time instead of an octave or a ninth (measures 37-38). The usually flirtatious second half of this phrase angrily descends three times in a row (measures 38-40) mimicking the rise and fall of her voice as she repeatedly curses Rhett.

Figure 5.20. “Scarlett,” Reel 10, Part 2A.

Unaffected by Scarlett’s fury, Rhett says goodbye to Scarlett and walks away, militaristic horns playing his restored leitmotif. This foreshadows the end of the film when, again, Rhett leaves Scarlett to the tune of his martial theme. Scarlett sobs

33 Michael V. Pisani, “When the Music Surges: Melodrama and the Nineteenth-Century Theatrical Precedents for Film Music Style and Placement,” in Oxford Handbook of Film Music Studies, ed. David Neumeyer (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 578.

141 momentarily until the Tara theme begins; she gains control of herself, grabs the horse by the reins and continues on without Rhett.

In extreme contrast to their dramatic parting at McDonough Road, Scarlett and

Rhett’s next interaction occurs without a single note of underscoring. Dressed in the famous green curtain dress, Scarlett visits Rhett at the Yankee prison to try to persuade him to give her money to pay the taxes on Tara. Her ploy fails, and much like the rest of their conversations, their bluntness with one other enrages Scarlett and amuses Rhett.

Steiner also withholds music the next time the two are alone, when Rhett visits a drunk

Scarlett after the death of her second husband, Frank. Rhett asks her to marry him, mocking the typical proposal by using flowery romantic language sarcastically. She resists at first until he kisses her—in complete silence—and she swoons and says yes.

The two openly admit that neither is in love with the other, but Rhett suggests it will be

“fun” and Scarlett confesses she is “only partly” agreeing to the marriage for his money.

In both of these important scenes, the absence of music demonstrates the absence of romantic love, the focus instead on their honesty with one another; without music, there is nothing to hide behind, and they speak their minds freely (and rudely).

The couple’s marriage initiates a musical shift. Their leitmotifs, frequently occurring as fragments, do not overlap (as in the McDonough Road scene) or occur successively; they are almost always separated musically by another character’s leitmotif

(usually Ashley’s or Bonnie’s). Their only loving exchange in the film happens during their honeymoon, as Rhett comforts Scarlett when she wakes from a nightmare, panicked from chasing something unknown through the mist. Their leitmotifs appear together for the only time in their marriage (see Figure 5.21). Marked Sentimentole and dolce at half

142 its usual tempo to reflect the sensitivity of the scene, Scarlett’s theme underscores Rhett’s voice as he tenderly promises to keep her safe (measures 12-15). Scarlett asks, “Rhett, would you do something for me if I asked you to?” as Rhett’s leitmotif enters, overlapping hers.

Figure 5.21. “Scarlett” and “Rhett,” Reel 18, Part 2.

As Scarlett asks to go home to Tara, Rhett’s theme becomes the primary melody

(measure 16), momentarily harmonizing before she joins his theme in unison up the octave (measures 17-18). This measure and a half is the only time in the entire film when

Rhett and Scarlett are in agreement musically (unison). Rhett concedes to leave New

Orleans as their themes—each unchanged with the exception of their reduced tempi— suggest the possibility for Rhett and Scarlett to fall in love. This honeymoon phase, however is short-lived.

When Bonnie is born, a twinkly, music-box melody played by the celeste plays separated statements of Rhett’s and Scarlett’s themes. Bonnie’s theme interjects in one- or two-measure excerpts throughout the remainder of the film when her parents’ dialogue

143 centers on her. The last of these takes place in the dialogue of scene when Bonnie falls off her pony to her death. The film concludes quickly from this point on: Melanie visits a distraught Rhett, then faints, miscarries her second child, and dies. Scarlett finally realizes she doesn’t love Ashley and runs to tell Rhett that she’s discovered she loves him after all. Her leitmotif makes a brief two-measure appearance as she explains to Rhett that she loves him, but her musical voice is quickly drowned out by Bonnie’s theme at the forefront of Rhett’s mind. Finally, with his most famous line, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” Rhett walks away as his leitmotif enters fully intact, independent, and at it most jaunty, carefree tempo yet.

Scarlett finally meets her match in Rhett as a lover, after having been married first to “a boy” and then to “an old man,” as Rhett calls Scarlett’s first husbands (Charles

Hamilton and Frank Kennedy, respectively). Because of their similarities, however, they never should have pursued a relationship. Their individual complexities and shortcomings drive them to combust when they are in close proximity with one another, as in their scene at McDonough Road when their two independent musical themes mutate into a cacophonous, albeit passionate moment. The frankness with which they address the other nearly always includes some variation of the word “no,” including: “You are no lady;” “You are no gentleman;” “That’s something you’ll never hear from me, Captain

Butler, as long as you live;” “No, I don’t think I will kiss you;” “You’ll never mean anything but misery to any man;” “I’m not in love with you any more than you’re in love with me;” “I don’t care if you never come back.” These are only a handful of examples, yet all occur before Rhett and Scarlett are even married! Steiner and Selznick highlight the strong-willed nature of the characters and their incompatibility by marking their

144 conversations with silence—“no” music. By withholding a romantic theme for their relationship, Steiner emphasizes their lack of real love for one another, while accentuating each character’s independence. Their marriage is a failure, and they are each flawed characters—yet their combination on screen is one of the reasons viewers have been attracted to Gone with the Wind for decades.

Steiner crafted these several leitmotifs to musically identify each character and their relationships. By relying on an arsenal of scoring devices from his varied musical experience, Steiner provided Selznick a score that not only supported the film’s storyline, but commented on its complex narrative themes of love and nostalgia. In the three main romantic relationships, Steiner uses thoughtfully prepared non-diegetic music to underscore significant moments and turning points in each couple’s interactions. His development of their leitmotifs—whether by melodic, rhythmic, or harmonic modification, or by some other alteration—serves to convey the characters’ spoken and unspoken thoughts and feelings. Viewers empathize with Melanie, Ashley, Scarlett, and

Rhett as they experience triumphs and hardships on-screen, emotionally connected to the story in part due to the thematically associative music. Audiences across generations have experienced an enhanced sense of longing and resolution without realizing the degree by which Steiner’s music initiated it. This power of Steiner’s thematic composition is most significantly manifested in his most famous and recognizable leitmotif: Tara’s theme.

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CHAPTER 6

MOTIVIC DEVELOPMENT IN STEINER’S USE OF ORIGINAL MUSIC: TARA’S THEME

In his Oral History of the Great Depression, Studs Terkel quotes Ray Wax: “in the worst hour of the Depression, if you were aggressive, if you wanted to scrounge . . . you could survive.”1 Scarlett O’Hara characterized this spirit, and her message of survival at any cost had immense appeal nationwide. According to Chadwick, “It was not the sweeping soap opera-ish drama of the film, the vivid Technicolor landscapes, marvelous performances or soaring speeches which made it such a success in 1939 . . . but the timing of its release and the mood of the Depression-era people watching it, people who, like Scarlett, never wanted to be hungry again.2

Steiner wrote the film’s most famous leitmotif, Tara’s theme, with this audience in mind. Using conventional musical techniques such as octave leaps, internal repetition, and stable harmonic structure, Steiner created an Irish-tinged melody evocative of the

Old South, which he used to highlight the narrative elements of survival and nostalgia.

Tara’s theme appears throughout the score when Scarlett feels weakest, but must persevere, and when she is away from home and longing for her old carefree way of life.

Its expressivity, whether in fragmented statements or its full form, conveys Scarlett’s

1 Ray Wax, quoted in Studs Terkel, Hard Times: An Illustrated Oral History of the Great Depression (New York: The New Press, 2012), 428.

2 Chadwick, “Reel Civil War,” 333.

146 thoughts and mood. As the storyline progresses, Steiner develops the leitmotif to suit the dramatic function. The thematic associations formed by the end of this developmental process result in an intensified emotional response to the leitmotif in its final appearance, despite the fact that the same orchestration and volume are used at the end of the film as in the opening title sequence.

Act I

Gone with the Wind begins with a pastoral overture, followed by the Selznick trademark music.3 A brief statement of Mammy’s cheerful leitmotif underscore images of field-hands working the cotton fields, followed by the text: “Margaret Mitchell’s Story of the Old South.” Musical tension builds as the ascending melody approaches its peak, then culminates in a dramatic tonic crash onto the downbeat of Tara’s theme. At full blast, the sweeping leitmotif plays as the film’s title scrolls across the screen: “Gone with the

Wind,” set against an orange sunset backdrop with a single silhouetted oak tree.

The striking introduction of Tara’s theme as the main title music immediately establishes its importance as a leitmotif. According to Justin London, its appearance here in conventional binary structure serves to “fix” it as a reference: the opening “A” theme is associated with the title, genre, and tone, while the reduced orchestration and dynamics of the more lyrical “B” theme is associated with the heroine.4 Although Golden Age audiences were well acquainted with this common design, even the inexperienced listener could grasp the significance of Tara’s theme as it continued in repetition for more than

3 Selznick, GWTW DVD, 0:00-2:30. The overture features five leitmotifs, all played lightly, primarily by strings, for Melanie, Belle Watling, Rhett, Mammy, and the Love Theme.

4 Justin London, “Leitmotifs and Musical Reference in the Classical Film Score,” in Music and Cinema, ed. Neumeyer, Flinn, and Buhler, 87-88.

147 three minutes straight. The most important theme in the film, it appears as a source of inspiration and a reminder of home when Scarlett faces defeat.

The “A” section of Tara’s theme is comprised of two-phrase antecedent- consequent periods, constructed over simple harmony that firmly emphasizes the tonic in every phrase (see Figure 6.1).5 The “B” section, half the length of “A,” harmonically contrasts by avoiding the tonic and lingering in minor chords. The ABA form firmly roots the tonal center in “A,” yet provides enough musical contrast in “B” to encourage the listener to anticipate the return of the tonic. By this design, “A” represents home, the

Tara plantation, and “B,” yearning for that home (by Scarlett, in particular).

According to Steiner’s orchestration (actually, Friedhofer’s), the string section drives the melody, a typical practice in symphonic scores for dramatic films. Horns respond to the melodic statements, contrasting via triplet rhythms and ascending at ends of phrases (measures 12-13, and 14-15). The allocation of the horns to the secondary or middle texture is reminiscent of American march music in which horns assumed the countermelody. This juxtaposition of textures enriches the score, implies a continuous melody, and even evokes a hint of patriotism. As the harmony moves to the subdominant for its third phrase (measure 16), the melody shifts up to a higher pitch level (scale degree

1 instead of 5). Here, the horns harmonize in thirds with the strings’ melodic 4-3 suspension. By the second statement of “A” (measures 19-26), initiated by trumpet, the horns begin to form some semblance of a countermelody. In the “B” section, violas and cellos depart from the primary melody, adopting a call-response format together with horns. Each statement of the highest voices (violins, flute, and oboe) is echoed by a

5 Neumeyer, “Film Music Analysis,” 13.

148 compressed version in the lower voices, whose replacement of the octave leap with a seventh motivates the sequential descent in the first three phrases (measures 27, 29, 31).

Figure 6.1. “Tara,” Reel 1, Part 1.

149

By the fourth statement, violas rejoin the primary melody for a sweeping ascending figure, and horns signal the return to the tonic pitch with an accented arpeggiated figure (measures 33-34). At the reprise of “A” (not included in Figure 6.1), the horns and strings trade orchestral dominance; the trumpet’s proclamation in measure

34, therefore, sets up the shift in instrumentation wherein the brass section takes over the primary melody. The intervallic contour of the melody emphasizes the same sense of longing as the binary form.

Steiner treats the opening four notes as the head motif (measures 11-12), and frequently relies on this phrase alone to recall the theme. The head motif features an octave leap followed by descent, a compositional device commonly used in the opening phrases of Irish airs (such as those by Thomas Moore) and Stephen Foster melodies

(“Gentle Annie” (1856), “Old Folks at Home” (1851), and “Jeanie with the Light Brown

Hair” (1854), among others). Steiner adopts this convention for multiple reasons. First, to denote the Irish heritage of the O’Hara family. Second, to indicate the antebellum setting.

The similarity to Foster’s melodies recalls the time period and region associated with his songs. “Old Folks at Home,” for instance, features the same intervallic shape (octave leap followed by a descent of a minor third) in its opening phrase on the lyrics “Swanee

Ribber” (see Chapter 4, Figure 4.13, measure 10). In his musical suggestion of Ireland and the Old South, Steiner echoes what William W. Austin calls “the dream of home,” establishing the nostalgic tone for the film.6

6 Austin, “Susanna,” 132; W. H. A. Williams, ‘Twas Only an Irishman’s Dream: The Image of Ireland and the Irish in American Popular Song Lyrics, 1800-1920 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1996), 45.

150

Anticipation judgments play a significant role in thematic composition. Tara’s theme unfolds predictably and is therefore easy to recall. When the second note of the melody leaps an octave, for example, Steiner satisfies listener expectations for a post-skip reversal by descending into the open space left by the octave jump.7 Additionally, the head motif functions as the antecedent phrase of the two-phrase period that defines the theme (measures 11-12). The consequent phrase (measures 13-14) imitates the contour of the antecedent, yet completes the cadence by landing on scale degree 1 rather than 2. This symmetry establishes a pattern that “allows the listener to anticipate the final point of arrival.”8 The rhythmic pattern of short-long-short-long established in the head motif repeats in nearly every phrase of the rest of the theme, as does the melody’s basic shape.

Such internal repetition reinforces the distinction of the opening phrase, enabling listeners to easily identify modifications later. This satisfies London’s assertion that an effective leitmotif must be distinctive, but “not too discursive,” and “reasonably stable . . . without risk of losing its designative function.”9

Planted in tonality and steeped in repetition, Tara’s theme is predictable. Each phrase resolves as expected, yet its arching melody and lush texture convey the nostalgic themes so prominent in the film. This first occurrence of the leitmotif is the only time it appears in its entirety. More than 20 fragmented statements appear (including the head motif), half of which occur in a span of 30 minutes in the middle of the film (from

7 Bob Snyder, “Memory for Music” in Oxford Handbook of Music Psychology, ed. Susan Hallam, Ian Cross, and Michael Thaut (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 110; Crawford, America’s Musical Life, 215. According to Snyder, a post-skip reversal is “the expectation that after a large melodic interval, there will be a change of direction of melodic motion.” Crawford’s label is “filling the gap.”

8 Leonard G. Ratner, “Period,” Grove Music Online.

9 London, “Leitmotifs and Musical Reference,” 88.

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Scarlett’s return to Tara in ruins in Act 1, to her father’s death in Act 2). The richest, most complete appearances of the theme occur as bookends, opening and closing each

Act. Each of these moments serves to remind audiences of Scarlett’s survivalist nature, and to “dramatize the psychic ache” that encompasses the narrative.10

After the main titles, Tara’s “A” theme makes two appearances with its full orchestration, each at significant moments in Act I. In both instances, Selznick uses a pullback shot with Scarlett in silhouette against a sunset panoramic view of Tara. This beautiful picture, together with the Tara theme playing at full symphonic volume, represents the impact of effective visual-audio pairing in film. The combination evokes such meaning that Selznick uses it four times—to open and close each act of the film.

The first of these occurs within ten minutes of the first scene (at 12:01). Tara’s theme underscores Gerald O’Hara as he tells Scarlett that “land is the only thing in this world worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for—because it’s the only thing that lasts.”11 Solo clarinet at pianissimo recalls the opening phrases of the “A” section as

Gerald imparts his love of his Irish heritage. The theme’s defining octave leaps recall

Thomas Moore’s traditional Irish airs (such as “The Last Rose of Summer”), and emphasize the image of Ireland as “a land of great beauty . . . assumed to have a hold on the Irish heart.”12 As father and daughter gaze across the plantation’s property, Gerald tells Scarlett, “Oh, but there, there now, you’re just a child. It will come to you, this love of the land—there’s no getting away from it if you’re Irish.” The subtle underscoring

10 Crawford, America’s Musical Life, 215.

11 Howard, GWTW script, 9.

12 Williams, Image of Ireland, 48.

152 blooms into full orchestration, as the string section brings the second statement of “A” to the forefront and ends the scene. Steiner practically hits the audience over the head with the maestoso statement, as if to say “remember this, it’s important!”

At this early point in the film, the visual of Tara becomes fixed with its musical theme. The plantation and Scarlett’s father adopt associative significance as reminders of the importance of heritage and land. It also functions as a bit of exposition to establish the

Irish-ness of the O’Haras, as Scarlett and her father (more so than her sisters and her non-

Irish mother) exhibit the hard-headedness that characterizes the Irish. Gerald alludes that as natural fighters and survivors, the Irish defend and take pride in their land, acting as necessary—and at all costs—to preserve it. This serves as the first hint that survival will become an important theme in the narrative. He also prophesies the downfall of the Old

South and Scarlett’s post-war future when he says land is the only thing that lasts.

Ultimately, Scarlett comes to embody her Irish roots, living up to her father’s words from this early interaction.

The second full statement of Tara’s theme appears at the end of Act 1. After years of war, Scarlett returns home to a grim reality: Tara is destitute, Scarlett’s mother has died, and her father has gone mad. In the iconic finale scene, Scarlett walks the demolished grounds of Tara, and frantically eats (then regurgitates) a raw radish picked from the dirt. On her knees and sobbing into the ground, this is her “lowest moment” . . . she is “completely defeated.”13 Out of this defeat, however, Scarlett rises with “grim determination.” Looking to the sky with her fist clenched, two brass exclamations signal her famous monologue:

13 Howard, GWTW script, 125.

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As God is my witness . . . As God is my witness . . . They’re not going to lick me! I’m going to live through this and when it’s over I’ll never be hungry again . . . No, nor any of my folks! If I have to lie, steal, cheat, or kill! As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again!14

At her final line, the Tara theme enters with full force and resolutely ends Act 1.

Scarlett’s oath represents the turning point in her life. Her determination to overcome her impending defeat rather than submit to it becomes one of the defining principles of her future, and firmly establishes the theme of survival. When Tara’s theme plays in the pivotal moments after this monologue, audiences empathize with Scarlett to the tune of the musical representation of resilience.

Act II

The Entr’acte reprises the entire “Escape from Atlanta” sequence and segues into the opening text of Act 2: “Sherman!” Flames, wind, gunfire, ghostly silhouetted marching troops, and a cacophony of militaristic chromaticism assault the audience as they read about Sherman’s “path of destruction” through Atlanta. At the height of the din, the brass suddenly subsides and the strings cut through, optimistically playing Tara’s theme at a livelier tempo than before. In an effective union of visual-musical film techniques, the flames disappear and transition to a bright day at the scorched fields of

Tara, as text appears: “Tara had survived to face the hell and famine of defeat.”15 Here,

Tara’s theme reintroduces the spirit of hope in its brightness of tempo and its shift to strings from the preceding brass-filled war noise of Sherman’s music.

The next two appearances of the leitmotif are fragmented and altered, and use surprising harmonic shifts and symbolic instrumentation to emphasize the unhappy

14 Ibid., 126.

15 Ibid.

154 circumstances of the O’Hara family. In juxtaposition with the opening title sequence showing Tara’s slaves working the fields, the first scene of Act II begins as the O’Hara sisters pick what is left of their charred cotton. Solo oboe replaces the strings on the Tara melody, the solo woodwind instrumentation indicative of the O’Hara parent figure (just as in the opening scene with Gerald). As Suellen complains about fieldwork, calling

Scarlett “hateful” for making them work, the leitmotif approaches its usual V-I cadence.

Scarlett suddenly appears, accompanied by a stinger chord, and sternly tells Suellen “too bad about that.”16 The chord’s startling appearance here as a nondiatonic half-diminished- seventh chord interrupts the cadence just as suddenly as Scarlett appears in the scene. The melodic phrase still concludes on its tonic pitch, however, signaling that Scarlett has ended the conversation (or so she believes). Suellen makes the mistake of telling Scarlett she doesn’t want to work anymore and that she hates Tara, prompting Scarlett to slap

Suellen across the face, hard. Cello enters in the breath after Scarlett strikes her sister, playing the opening octave ascent of the Tara leitmotif in F minor instead of F major (see

Figure 6.2, measure 29). All of Tara’s complete appearances are written in F major, symbolically functioning as the key of Home. In Steiner’s film scores, according to

Charles Leinberger, musical key associations to the visual image were “obviously intentional,” possessing “distinct programmatic meanings” as was the case in late- nineteenth-century music.17 Steiner’s use of the parallel minor of the Home key suggests a sense of sadness and loss as Tara faces darker days.

16 Ibid., 127.

17 Leinberger, “An Austrian in Hollywood,” 86.

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Figure 6.2. “Tara,” Reel 12, Part 1.

Scarlett aggressively commands Suellen, “Don’t you ever dare say you hate Tara again!” then, softening her tone, adds, “That’s the same as hating Pa and Ma.”18 In its opening statement, the Tara melody falls disappointedly from its highest point to ♭3 and

♭2, increasing the usual descent by a half-step on each note. The subsequent statements of each octave motif parallel this trajectory, falling a major third from the melodic peak

(instead of a minor third), and followed by a whole step (instead of a half-step). This seemingly small melodic modification results in great harmonic change. As a result of the opening phrase ending on ♭2, the harmony of measure 30 becomes a Neapolitan sixth.

The usual function of this chord (♭II6) is to prepare a dominant harmony for the next measure by substituting for a predominant harmony (IV, ii7, etc.). Wagner’s use of it throughout The Ring suggested the “world’s end”—perhaps this meaning could be implied here as the antebellum life at Tara and in the Old South disappears.19 Regardless of symbolic harmonic associations, the Neapolitan functions unusually in this

18 Howard, GWTW script, 127-8.

19 Matthew Bribitzer-Stull, Understanding the Leitmotif: From Wagner to Hollywood Film Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 198.

156 appearance, as a minor tonic (i) immediately follows the ♭II6 (measure 31). This atypical movement is driven by the intervallic shape of the melody, played here by oboes (“Pa” and “Ma”). The motif falls to A♭ and dictates a return to F minor, subito piano as

Scarlett’s sister woefully return to their work. The final melodic phrase (measure 31) ends on scale degree 5, harmonizes a V7 chord, and fades out before resolving (measure

32). Concluding the leitmotif with a half-cadence as the scene ends signifies the uncertainty Scarlett now faces at home, her former place of comfort.

Scarlett’s Men and Tara

On separate occasions both Ashley and Rhett each tell Scarlett what she doesn’t realize for herself until the end of the film: that her strength comes from Tara. Steiner uses symbolic instrumentation to recall character associations in his underscoring of each of these conversations. After Ashley’s return from the war, he and Scarlett share an intimate love scene in the Paddock. When she realizes they’ll never be together, Scarlett dejectedly cries, “There’s nothing left for me,” and Ashley responds, “Yes, there is something. Something you love better than me, though you may not know it;” he scoops up a handful of Tara’s earth and presses it into Scarlett’s hands, gently saying “Tara” as the leitmotif appears (see Figure 6.3).20

Figure 6.3. “Tara,” Reel 13, Part 2.

20 Howard, GWTW script, 147.

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In measure 90, the main melody moved to the low strings represents Ashley’s voice, and the melodic echo moved to the high strings represents Scarlett’s, a switch consistent with the instrumentation used in their love theme. Ashley’s voice urges

Scarlett to acknowledge the importance of Tara, and Scarlett begrudgingly echoes his efforts in brief triplet sighs at the conclusion of each of his melodic statements: “Yes—I still have this.” Just as Gerald’s message was lost to a distracted Scarlett at the beginning of the film, Ashley’s words here are met with apparent indifference as Scarlett changes the subject and then heads back to work.

Much later, Scarlett marries Rhett. After their honeymoon, he tells her, “You get your strength from this red earth of Tara, Scarlett. You’re part of it, and it’s part of you.”21 Scarlett tells him she would “give anything to have Tara the way it was before the war.” Tara’s theme underscores this exchange with woodwinds, nostalgically representing Scarlett’s parents and old memories of her life on the plantation. In his use of Tara’s melody here, Steiner reminds audiences that Rhett is echoing Gerald’s words— the two conversations mirror one another in their masculine assurance to Scarlett of the importance of Tara. Rhett tells her that money is no object and she can make Tara “as fine a plantation as it ever was.” Scarlett throws her arms around Rhett’s neck and kisses him, exclaiming, “Oh, Rhett, Rhett, you are good to me!” The violins (representing

Scarlett’s voice) gleefully join the woodwind melody up an octave until the theme cadences, understated at piano beneath the couple’s conversation. Hereafter, money and materialism overtake their discussion, Scarlett wishing her enemies to be jealous of her new life while Rhett laughs heartily in agreement. As their discussion of home, family,

21 Ibid., 201.

158 and happy memories become dominated by talk of money and greed, a mutated fragment of Tara’s theme underscores (see Figure 6.4). While the octave leap and short-long-short- long characteristics of the head motif remain intact, each phrase chromatically descends in hurried sixteenths. This is the rhythmic opposite of the pastoral sustained notes usually found in these phrase endings. In this significant albeit brief scene, the jaunty staccato and sinister falling melodic lane reflect both Scarlett’s excitement and her superficiality.

Figure 6.4. “Tara,” Reel 18, Part 2.

In Scarlett’s scenes with Ashley and Rhett, both men reinforce her father’s message of the importance of Tara. Like the plantation itself, Tara’s theme is present even when Scarlett is unable to acknowledge its significance. The fragmented appearances of Tara’s theme in these two scenes are emphasized by masculine instrumentation, characterizing the men in the scene as well as recalling Gerald O’Hara.

Scarlett’s apathy and distraction causes each quotation to change, either by fading to the background and ending, or mutating into a distant remnant of its original design. These scenes, together with Gerald’s in the beginning in Act I, foreshadow the finale of the film, when Scarlett, in a moment of desperation, hears the voices of these three men in succession. Underscored by a complex, multi-layer variation of Tara’s theme that

159 culminates in the largest cadence of the entire film, Scarlett finally understands the importance of Tara.

“Tomorrow Is Another Day”

By the last scene of the film, Bonnie and Melanie have both died, Scarlett has realized she doesn’t love Ashley, and Rhett has just left her, having uttered one of the most iconic lines of dialogue in film history. Scarlett is left alone in her ornate house in

Atlanta. Exhausted, sobbing, and contemplating her fate, she asks herself: “What is there to do? What is there that matters?”22 She collapses hopelessly onto the staircase, then hears her father’s voice in her head (played in the film as a voiceover): “Do you mean to tell me, Katie Scarlett O’Hara, that Tara doesn’t mean anything to you? Why, land’s the only thing that matters—it’s the only thing that lasts.” The finale music begins subtly, played by solo oboe and flute, as Scarlett remembers her father’s words (see Figure 6.5).

In the climactic 12 measures leading up to Scarlett’s final epiphany, Steiner layers thematic elements associated with Gerald O’Hara, Ashley, Rhett, Scarlett, and Tara. The tonal center is unstable, and builds tension by (1) increasing volume, (2) raising pitch levels, (3) compressing rhythmic motion, and (4) adding dissonance. Designed to expand to a cacophonous peak, the gradually intensifying noise of this finale mirrors Scarlett’s despair, confusion, and emotional chaos until her breakthrough moment quiets her mind

(and the orchestra).

Hovering above the orchestration, voices on an “ooh” vowel mimic the sound of wind. Beginning at a low pitch level and dynamic, the “wind” slides up and down in half- steps, eventually expanding the intervallic space (up to a minor third) by the climax of the

22 Ibid., 254.

160 scene. The initial pitch for the vocal sound effects rises, guided by a gradual crescendo as the tension of the scene builds. When Scarlett begins her final lines, the voices subside.

Steiner incorporates vocal sound effects here to thicken the texture and to reintroduce the human voice (as part of the musical track) to the audience’s ear, so that in the final moments of the film, the sound of the choir singing Tara’s theme has been properly prepared (rather than appearing suddenly).

Gerald’s leitmotif (called the O’Hara theme) begins the finale, his jig-like melody underscoring his message to Scarlett (measures 1-3). Scarlett begins to quiet her sobs, listening. Ashley’s voice enters: “Something you love better than me, though you may not know it—Tara!” An ornamented variation of his descending chromatic love theme

(with Scarlett) overlaps the O’Hara leitmotif. In Ashley’s brief musical comment, the downbeats fall by half-step, embellished by (mostly) upper neighbor tones. His voice joins the O’Hara line in measure 5, where the melody becomes fixated in an E major arpeggiated figure (embellished by scale degree 2). The long-short-long-short rhythmic repetition recalls the jaunty skip of the O’Hara solo leitmotif, as the melody continually outlines the E triad with no regard for the shifting tonality around it (how stubbornly

Irish!). Measure 5 also marks the first of 11 statements of Tara within the next eight measures. Scarlett hears Rhett’s voice: “It’s this from which you get your strength—the red earth of Tara.” The first half of the Tara statements each begin on a different pitch than the previous, and only the first four adhere to the quarter-rest downbeat found in its previous occurrences. Here, as low strings layered over harp glissandos (to saturate the texture), the head motif retains its shape, ascending first by octave leap, then descending by minor third, followed by whole step. Its second statement, however, begins to deviate

161

(measures 7-8) as its third interval is changed from a whole step to a half-step descent

(B♮ to B♭ across the bar line). At the conclusion of this phrase (measure 8, downbeat), another Tara octave statement enters in the horns.

Figure 6.5. “Finale,” Reel 24, Part 3.

As noted in the script: “Once again we hear the three voices repeating the same lines. The volume is still louder, the space between them still less, the speed of their

162 repetition still faster.” 23 The pace quickens in measure 9 when the time signature change from 12/8 to 4/4. Rhythmic compression results when the compound meter shifts to simple meter, reducing the number of subdivided beats per measure (two eighth notes per beat rather than three), and therefore drawing the prominent beats closer together. This increases the musical tension, as does the increasing thickness of the orchestral texture in dissonant harmony. The vocal wind effect becomes more prominent, contributing to the unrest and instability of the scene.

After the time signature change in measure 9, Tara’s fourth statement completes its octave leap on C♭ then widens its descent to a fourth. The downbeat of measure 10 signals the remaining succession of Tara themes, rhythmically compressed to two statements per measure. The seventh statement (measure 11) ascends only a sixth rather than the full octave, ending on a C that seems to catapult the violins into a string of three modified Tara motifs (statements 8, 10, and 11). These each linger momentarily on E♭ before falling to an eventual A♮, a span of a tritone. An expanded version of this shape— the ninth statement of the Tara motif—occurs as quarter notes in the low voice beneath the violin repetitions, emphasizing the dissonance of the tritone (measures 11-12).

According to Neumeyer, Steiner “exploits the tritone in its traditional meaning of

‘opposition’ to, or greatest distance from, the tonic.”24 This opposition (measure 12) is musically and emotionally unstable, the icing on the chaotic cake; Gerald, Ashley, and

Rhett individually exclaim “Tara!” each louder than the last. The final tritone figure of

23 Ibid., 255.

24 Neumeyer, “Film Music Analysis,” 23.

163 measure 12 suddenly lands on the downbeat of measure 13—Scarlett says “Tara!” quieting the voices—as the harmony pivots and A major becomes the new tonic.

This moment of realization is underscored by four measures of further development of Tara’s theme, featuring a countermelody, unexpected harmonic shifts, and the stepwise ascent of four modified head motifs (see Figure 6.6). In measure 13,

Scarlett smiles with the answer to her earlier question: “Home! I’ll go home . . . ” as woodwinds and strings harmonize in fully realized A major chords (instead of open octaves) of the restored Tara’s theme, the orchestral equivalent of Scarlett’s own voice joining those of her parents.

Figure 6.6. “Finale,” Reel 24, Part 3A.

The horn countermelody assumes the head motif in measure 14, beginning on an

F♯, part of the predominant (ii7) chord and one step above the previous motif statement.

After its octave figure and a major third descent, the countermelody unexpectedly

164 changes directions, triumphantly ascending a minor third to F♮. This results in a harmonic shift to a B♭ Neapolitan chord (♭II) over a pedal C (♭3) sustained by the bass voices. The Neapolitan functions as a predominant pivot chord to modulate to F major, ultimately harmonizing measure 15 as a predominant G minor-seventh chord (ii7). This shift occurs as Scarlett tells herself, “I’ll think of some way to get him back.” Scarlett’s new determination cues the dramatic appearance of the Neapolitan harmony. The countermelody outlines octave Gs (measure 15), then descends by fourth and then half- step, recalling the same tritone figure that appeared four measures earlier (Figure 6.5, measure 12). In the accompaniment, scale degree 5 collapses by half-step (measure 16), resulting in a G half-diminished-seventh, a substitution chord for the dominant. Steiner’s unexpected chromatic alterations of a traditional chord progression (predominant- dominant-tonic) prolongs the musical tension and prepares the upcoming perfect authentic cadence. These harmonic shifts occur beneath the melody—played by full strings, woodwinds, and brass—as it recalls the sweeping B♭-A seventh from the final measure of Tara’s B section (see Figure 6.1, measure 34). In the most anticipated cadence of the film, V7 to I in F major, Scarlett delivers her final line: “After all, tomorrow is another day!”25 The full Tara theme returns in its original orchestral state, with the addition of a wordless chorus (Selznick’s suggestion). Now overflowing with nostalgic and survivalist associations, the scene fades from Scarlett’s close-up to the final pullback shot: Scarlett again silhouetted at sunset near the oak tree overlooking Tara.

This final scene is monumentally emotional. The men in Scarlett’s life—her father, her unrequited lover, and her husband—all see the importance of Tara before she

25 Howard, GWTW script, 255.

165 does. In her final moments of the film, Scarlett is overcome with hope when she hears their voices directing her home. Viewers empathize with Scarlett as she, yet again, decides to overcome defeat; they are moved to tears as the film ends, inspired to follow

Scarlett’s lead and triumph over their own hardships. The Tara leitmotif is successful because its musical components are emotionally evocative. The sweeping octave motif, reminiscent of Irish airs and sentimental Foster melodies, stirs all of the nostalgia of the

Emerald Isle and the antebellum South. Its symbolic instrumentation, whether lush or subtle, indicates scenic tone and a character’s voice or thoughts, and invaluable method of musical communication. Its internal repetition and harmonic simplicity allows audiences to remember it easily. This way, when Steiner develops it, the audience can readily associate the dramatic events of the narrative with its musical occurrences. It is fitting that Tara’s theme opens and closes each act of the film, each time paired with an inspiring pullback shot of Scarlett silhouetted against an orange sky. The film’s nostalgic tone coupled with her message of hope resonated with the first audiences to experience

Gone with the Wind in the early 1940s, and is what continually captivates new viewers— her struggles and triumphs universally resounding for generations of audiences.

Concluding Thoughts

Steiner’s varied experiences in Europe and New York prepared him for the film career he never planned to have. His work is widely known, as are the films his scores accompany. As one of the busiest composers in Hollywood’s Golden Age, Steiner helped to popularize advancements in film, and he frequently wrote more than one score at a time. His area of musical expertise fell out of favor with audiences during the decline of the studio system—his workload decreased significantly until it finally disappeared.

166

Fortunately, his work is preserved in the classic films audiences still watch today, and in the numerous soundtrack recordings of his symphonic scores.

Steiner’s compositional style was bred from his European background and a multitude of post-Romantic influences, namely Wagner’s operas. Steiner and Wagner share scoring tendencies in their use of orchestral underscoring to support and dramatize the narrative, particularly in the extensive use of the leitmotif technique. Used to emphasize character traits and scenic mood, this manner of musical commentary was the perfect fit for film as it developed as America’s newest art form. Additionally, Steiner’s pioneering recording techniques and flexible orchestration afforded smaller ensembles the symphonic punch of a full orchestra. Together with Selznick, he convinced

Hollywood of the importance of non-diegetic underscoring, proving time and again that background underscoring in support of the narrative was just as effective, if not more, than showing the source of the music on-screen.

According to Neumeyer, Steiner’s scoring practice can be categorized into five types of underscoring: (1) a stylized overture as the main title, (2) complete, clear themes used for characterization, from borrowed or original material, (3) dramatic music, (4) comedic music (mickey-mousing), and (5) generic action music.26 In the case of Gone with the Wind, this model proves an effective way to categorize the three-hour musical score. The focus of this study was the thematic material used for characterization, with a focus on the borrowed music of Stephen Foster and the American songbook, and the original music representing the relationships for the four main characters and Tara.

26 Neumeyer, “Film Music Analysis,” 24-25.

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The use of pre-existing music in Steiner’s scores was a time-saver as well as a means by which to enhance the tone of a scene by drawing from a viewer’s subconscious associations. For Gone with the Wind, this practice was particularly beneficial. By borrowing recognizable material, Steiner not only met Selznick’s brutal deadline, he helped to capture the musical atmosphere of the Old South, prompting the audience to reflect with nostalgia. Unfortunately, this nostalgia is founded in the Plantation Myth, the distorted view Americans have of their pre-Civil War history. Nevertheless, in his development of recognizable, emotionally associative songs, Steiner strengthened the storyline and significantly impacted the audience’s dramatic experience.

The same musical tactics he used to modify “Dixie” were similarly applied to

Steiner’s original thematic material. His preparation of emotionally reflective character and relationship themes generated a musical journey for audiences. The Love theme between Melanie and Ashley not only conveys the loving relationship of a traditional, virtuous couple, it is also the musical manifestation of the beauty and grace of the antebellum South. For Ashley’s leitmotif, the Wagnerian sob figure employs every musical lament device, building tension that reflects the conflicted relationship between the most honor-driven character in the film and the least. Just as effectively as he uses complex scoring devices to create dissonance and instability for Ashley and Scarlett,

Steiner uses complete silence and the lack of a love theme to exemplify the nature of

Rhett and Scarlett’s relationship. By interweaving each character’s individual leitmotifs, or by inserting space between them via the use of another character’s theme, Steiner tracks the progression of the doomed relationship that leaves so many viewers wondering if Scarlett ever does “get him back.”

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Armed with his arsenal of compositional devices and a team of colleagues willing to compose in his style, Steiner successfully crafted the musical support system for one of the most successful films of all time. Through melodic, rhythmic, harmonic, dynamic, and structural development, he achieves several goals, among them: (1) to convey to the audience the spoken and unspoken thoughts and feelings of the principal characters, (2) to establish the regional setting and historical time period, (3) to mirror the action by means of musical dramatization, (4) to translate the narrative’s important thematic themes, and (5) to elicit an honest, emotional response from viewers. Tara’s theme musically translates all of this and more.

Steiner’s leitmotif for the Tara plantation remains the most impactful theme of

Gone with the Wind, and one of the most famous, recognizable film themes ever written.

Tara’s theme elevates the poignant dialogue to an inspirational peak multiple times throughout the film, most significantly in the finale of each Act as it underscores

Scarlett’s most famous monologues. The distinctive octave leaps of the theme are easy to recall, instantly effective in their multiple nostalgic uses. Coincidentally, another song from 1939 features the octave jump that so successfully conveys longing for home and for better times . . . the most famous song from the score that beat Steiner’s score at the

Oscars, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz (1939). Just as Dorothy longs for Aunt Em and Kansas, Scarlett longs for Tara and the ease of her old way of life.

Scarlett’s message of hope continues to inspire audiences just as it did for audiences of the Great Depression era at the dawn of World War II. An anti-heroine set in one of the most tumultuous times in United States’ history, Scarlett’s perseverance and independence are what inspire viewers. Steiner’s reliance on his vast collection of

169 compositional devices, in collaboration with his team, “Max Steiner and Co.,” resulted in an expressive, effective score that effectively expressed Scarlett’s struggles. As she stands silhouetted against the sunset with Tara’s sweeping melody affirming that

“tomorrow is another day,” it is difficult to imagine any other music expressing her hope as deeply.

170

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Journal Articles

Gallez, Douglas W. “Theories of Film Music.” Cinema Journal 9, no. 2 (Spring, 1970): 40-47.

Green, Jessica. “Understanding the Score: Film Music Communicating to and Influencing the Audience.” Journal of Aesthetic Education 44, no. 4 (Winter 2010): 81-94.

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Unpublished Materials

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Media

Behlmer, Rudy. Liner notes to “Gone with the Wind:” Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. Max Steiner. Rhino Movie Music/Turner 8122 72822-2, compact disc, released 1997.

———, Liner notes to Max Steiner’s Classic Film Score “Gone With the Wind.” Charles Gerhardt with the National Philharmonic Orchestra. RCA Victor ARLI-0452, LP album, released 1974.

Selznick, David O., et al. Gone with the Wind. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, DVD, released 1999.