Thirties Flashback: Film Music Column Number Two

By Bruno David Ussher

Bruno David Ussher was a Los Angeles music critic (and Professor of Music Criticism at the University of Southern California) for many years for different Los Angeles newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals from at least the 1920s and into the 1950s. During the years 1938-1941, his column appearing in the Los Angeles Daily News (not connected with the current Los Angeles Daily News) regularly covered film music. The column presented here is from the forthcoming book "Music in Film," a collection of Ussher's film music columns, edited by G.D. Hamann for the Filming Today Press. For further information on the book, please contact Mr. Hamann at Filming Today Press, 2365 Scarff Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007 or by e-mail at GDHamann@Juno.Com. Filming Today Press has published over 100 books of newspaper coverage in the 1930s on film stars, character actors and film directors.

At times the absence of the so called handwriting on the wall spells the word "exit" more plainly than a "mene mene tekel upharsin" written in fiery letters. In other words, George Antheil's name had been announced in publicity stores as the composer of the music for DeMille's Union Pacific. But the screen title of the filmic railroad saga not only makes no mention of the once so much discussed George Antheil, but screen credit for the music is given to Sig Krumgold and John Leipold.

What has happened to the screen music of George Antheil, one time musical enfant terrible No. 1 of these United States? Is one to suspect that the music of Antheil was "too good" to be engraved on celluloid, or....?

Antheil startled and even stirred a certain part of the world at one time in the 1920s with quite unwonted musical devices and instrumentations. That was about the time when Leo Ornstein's "Wild Man's Dance" was considered really wild. A few cold winters ago, George Antheil smelled the steaming fleshpots of Hollywood's Egypt, came to New York, and with or without benefit of an agent equaling his own gift and gab, landed the job of being Cecil B. DeMille's composer in waiting. In the meantime, that is to say every three months, he would send an article to Modern Music (the League of Composer's quarterly, and an excellent and indispensable magazine it is), under the caption, "At the Hollywood Front."

In these articles composer in waiting Antheil practically stated musically nothing worth while was coming out of Hollywood. I think he praised Werner Janssen and was nice to others, especially to Boris Morros, who was his boss. That is to say, DeMille released through Paramount in those days Morros was music department head for that studio.

I really have a certain respect for Antheil's cleverness. I do think his "Hollywood Front" articles, however, were not quite fair. They were not written from the "front," but from the "sidelines," where people wait. These articles were all the more unpleasant to those who sat through DeMille's last two pictures, Plainsman and Buccaneer. For these, according to the credits, Antheil had furnished the music, and as I said as a composer in waiting.

One waited in vain for this artistic dragon killer to have freed Princess Music and wed her to Prince Cellulois at the DeMilleian altar.

But as every one knows, DeMille has immensely strong opinions on certain matters. He believes in boy meets girl, but Princess Music never went home with Prince Cellulois. I am inclined to think that it was not entirely Antheil's fault, when music was merely an "also ran." In a way I felt sorry for Antheil, as long as I did not remember his snobbish comment about his colleagues in Modern Music.

Yesterday I attended Union Pacific, and I have nothing to report about the music. DeMille once more postponed the wedding of sight and sound. A couple of locomotives met, also two boys and a girl. But music remained an "also ran."

Someone should speak to "C.B." Composers are paid presumably because they are musical film experts. Why not leave them alone, and let them live or die with their music before the public. Why limit them before the music is recorded, or "kill" the recorded music with action noise or enemic dynamics in the "dubbing" room where the music sound track is underlaid beneath the dialog. A pity because Leipold, Krumgold and others working on the score have sufficiently demonstrated their sense of music in relation to film and screen drama.

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At last Ilona Massey is coming into her own. She is being starred in MGM's Balalaika as leading soprano. I recall expressing my delight at Massey's voice when she sang a small part in MGM's monster operetta, Rosalie. I asked then that Massey be given a better chance. I claim no credit for the decision favoring Massey. Any one with ears could tell that La Ilona can sing. Some of her feature numbers will be solos backed by Russian Cossack chorus.

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Herbert Stothart is musically in charge of Balalaika. Stothart is MGM's ace music director, compiler and composer of operettas and I have been told that I shall hear things quite advanced and out of the ordinary at an early recording. Gus Kahn, Robert Wright and Chester Forrest are the lyricists. The story dates back into the glamorous days of imperial Russia and Nelson Eddy's baritone will by no means be suppressed. Sigmund Romberg has composed especially a vocally broad brimmed song, "Soldier of the Czar."

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