Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem Bölcsészettudományi Kar DOKTORI DISSZERTÁCIÓ HUBAI GERGELY THE TREATMENT OF ARTISTIC INTEGRITY IN THE AMERICAN FILM INDUSTRY: REJECTED FILM SCORES IN STUDIO FEATURES DURING THE HOLLYWOOD GOLDEN AGE, 1933-1948 Irodalomtudományi doktori iskola Dr. Kállay Géza egy.tan. Amerikanisztika doktori program Dr. Frank Tibor egy.tan. Védési bizottság elnöke: Dr. Bollobás Enikő DSc. egy.tan. Opponensek: Dr. Bán Zsófia doc., Dr. Cristian Réka hab.doc. Titkár: Dr. Szabó Éva Eszter adj. Tag: Dr. Dragon Zoltán PhD. adj. Póttag: Dr. Federmayer Éva doc. Póttag: Dr. Benczik Vera adj. Témavezető: Dr. Hirsch Tibor doc. Budapest, 2014 You’re not a full-fledged screen composer until you’ve had a score thrown out of a picture. (David Raksin) Gergely Hubai • The Treatment of Artistic Integrity in the American Film Industry Table of Contents I: Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 4 I.1: A Brief Guide to Film Music Research ............................................................................ 4 I.2: The Origins of the Dissertation ........................................................................................ 6 I.3: Research and Presentation ................................................................................................ 9 I.4: Thesis ............................................................................................................................. 14 II: The Film Music Traditions of the Studio System ................................................................ 15 II.1. The Golden Age or The Studio System ........................................................................ 16 II.2. The Music Department ................................................................................................. 20 II.3: The Steps of Film Scoring (Then and Now) ................................................................. 25 II.4. The Criticism of the Establishment............................................................................... 32 III: George Antheil: The Silent Revolution at Paramount ........................................................ 36 III.1: The Making of a "Bad Boy" ........................................................................................ 38 III.2: The First Score: Ballet Mécanique .............................................................................. 42 III.3: The Revolution Starts: Meeting Morros ...................................................................... 46 III.4: Modern Music and Hollywood .................................................................................... 50 III.5: The Road to The Plainsman ........................................................................................ 54 III.6: The Fall of the Revolution ........................................................................................... 59 III.7: Summary...................................................................................................................... 65 IV. Arnold Schoenberg: Destined for Cinema ......................................................................... 67 IV.1: Flirting with German Cinema ..................................................................................... 69 IV.2: Meeting Thalberg: The Good Earth ............................................................................ 73 IV.3: Composer Biographies: The Beethoven Project ......................................................... 79 IV.4: Competing with Weill: Souls at Sea ........................................................................... 83 IV.5: Host, Teacher, Hero: Further Activities in Hollywood ............................................... 87 IV.6: Summary ..................................................................................................................... 93 V. Igor Stravinsky: Behind the Wallpaper ............................................................................... 95 V.1. The Exploited Composer .............................................................................................. 97 V.2: Stravinsky at M-G-M, 1935........................................................................................ 100 V.3. The War Movies: Commandos and The North Star ................................................... 107 V.4. The Fox Pictures: Jane Eyre and Bernadette ............................................................. 113 V.5. Summary ..................................................................................................................... 117 VI. Alexandre Tansman: The Sixth Place Composer ............................................................. 119 VI.1: The Polish Way to Hollywood .................................................................................. 120 VI.2. The Mounting of an Epic: Since You Went Away ..................................................... 124 VI.3. Casting the Composer ............................................................................................... 129 VI.4. The Scoring of Since You Went Away ....................................................................... 135 VI.5. Promotional Considerations ...................................................................................... 142 VI.6. Summary ................................................................................................................... 146 VII. Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 148 Appendices, Charts, Images ................................................................................................... 154 Arnold Schoenberg: Art and the Moving Pictures (1940) .................................................. 155 Igor Stravinsky on Film Music: As Told to Ingolf Dahl (1946) ........................................ 159 David Raksin: Hollywood Strikes Back (1946) ................................................................. 164 Works Cited ............................................................................................................................ 178 3 Gergely Hubai • The Treatment of Artistic Integrity in the American Film Industry Music is the most abstract of the film arts. It is also the most abused and the most exploited. (Tony Thomas) I: Introduction I.1: A Brief Guide to Film Music Research Despite the thousands of writings on film music, there is much about the subject that is terra incognita. It is no exaggeration to say that hun- dreds of film composers are all but unknown – their careers unchroni- cled, their music seldom heard and wholly unexamined. […] As film music approaches its centennial, historians, scholars, and musicologists have their work cut out for them (McCarty 1998:xiv). Even though these introductory remarks were written more than 20 years ago, Clifford McCarty’s thoughts on the neglected state of film music research are still valid to some extent. The establishment of soundtrack specialty labels such as Intrada, La-La-Land or the now defunct Film Score Monthly may have preserved thousands of film music re- cordings from the vaults of major Hollywood studios, this sudden availably of new materi- al didn’t result in a similar increase in the number of books and journals discussing these works. Part of the problem can be directly attributed to the interdisciplinary nature of what constitutes film music research and how different authors approach the same subject. Some of the most important contributors in this field are musicologists and com- posers, so their main field of interest is "how music works in the film" with an emphasis on "music". Esteemed authors such as Fred Steiner or Fred Karlin were actively working in the business while writing about it at the same time – some would argue that their theoreti- cal work was even more significant than their practical contributions to the field. The books written from a musical perspective usually focus on either one film (such as Stei- ner’s essay on Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho or Scarecrow Press’ Film Score Guides series) or look at various musical techniques and list dozens of titles that exemplify these methods (such as how Karlin structured his book On the Track). What’s common in both approach- es is that the authors’ primary resources are the musical manuscripts which are frequently featured as illustrations to make a point. 4 Gergely Hubai • The Treatment of Artistic Integrity in the American Film Industry The second group of authors comes from the world of film theory, so their main field of interest is "how music works in the film" with an emphasis on "film". Instead of consulting sheet music or available recordings, the film theorists are looking at the movies only, examining how the underscores affect (or in more interesting cases, manipulate) the audience. Film Music by Peter Larsen is perhaps one of the most widely available refer- ence books within this group and it can be considered a representative example of the film- centered approach. The key feature of this type of research is that the author looks at the film and its musical accompaniment much like how a formalist literary critic looks at a text – nothing outside the specific work is of interest for him. Unused cues, alternate recordings or rejected scores are of no consequence in their appreciation of the work. The Treatment of Artistic Integrity in the American Film Industry