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LP was released containing the theme performed by somebody. I picked it up for the Saul Bass cover art.
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This is one of my favorite films of all time and I love the score. There was no soundtrack LP, however, only a single track re-recorded by another artist (previously discussed in another thread back when the Black Box came out). Unfortunately, other than album masters, pretty much all of the tapes from scoring sessions from UA films of this period ended up in a landfill, so there's little hope that this score will be released (by anyone) on CD.
Here's what I posted in that earlier thread:
There was a single track on one of the UA anthology LPs (see Recordman's recent thread on the subject:
http://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=52737
for a photo) performed by Roger Wayne -- and this same track was also the title cut on a Roger Wayne LP released on the Musicor label, which may account for the confusion.
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This is one of my favorite films of all time and I love the score. There was no soundtrack LP, however, only a single track re-recorded by another artist (previously discussed in another thread back when the Black Box came out). Unfortunately, other than album masters, pretty much all of the tapes from scoring sessions from UA films of this period ended up in a landfill, so there's little hope that this score will be released (by anyone) on CD.
Here's what I posted in that earlier thread:
There was a single track on one of the UA anthology LPs (see Recordman's recent thread on the subject:
http://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=52737
for a photo) performed by Roger Wayne -- and this same track was also the title cut on a Roger Wayne LP released on the Musicor label, which may account for the confusion.............. jeff, this is one of my favorite films also and is my favorite BILLY WILDER film , bar none. it has what i consider JAMES CAGNEYS best performance. he did say in an interview once that there were some people he really did not enjoy working with , but HORST BUCHHOLZ was the only person he wanted to punch out. but about the film, i never get tired of watching it . every frame seems just about perfect. glad you like also.
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There was no album, hence no album master nor any other tapes that we could find. But, you can at least by the Sabre Dance and you'll have half the score 
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There was no album, hence no album master nor any other tapes that we could find. But, you can at least by the Sabre Dance and you'll have half the score
The other half might be, "Yes, we have no bananas" sung in German!?
- JMM
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This must be my favorite comedy film of all time.
Unfortunately, since much of the humor was topical, it all seems pretty dated by now. And many of the lines are delivered in such a staccato style of speaking that laughing at them often makes you miss the next one. It's pure farce, and Cagney is brilliant.
They even had to add a spoken prologue, wherein James Cagney discusses the building of the Berlin Wall, which didn't exist when the film was shot, but had been built by the time the film was released.
There are so many great lines in this film, not to mention line readings, which my older brother and I used to vaunt back and forth at each other for years:
"She married a Communist? This'll be the greatest thing to hit Atlanta since General Sherman threw that little barbecue... No, I don't think it's funny. They're going to live in Moscow! Now that's funny!"
"I just need to go home and pack: my chessboard, my extra shirt, and two hundred books."
"They'll assign us a magnificent apartment, just a short walk from the bathroom."
"I wash his shirts, he broadens my mind, and sometimes we go up on the roof and watch the Sputniks go by..."
"He said I shouldn't be arrested, I should be pitied, because I was the rotten fruit of a corrupt civilization. So, naturally, I fell in love with him."
"Soviet missiles, WHHOOOOOOSHHHH! Venus! American missiles, pffft, pffffft... Miami Beach."
"Adolph who? I was in the Untergrund." "You mean the resistance?" "No, the Untergrund, you know, the subway. I was a motorman. Down where I was, nobody ever told me anything."
"I wonder what it's like to work for Pepsi-Cola."
"My daddy wanted to break it up between me and Choo-Choo. Choo-Choo Babcock. I met him in a telephone booth. 43 of us piled inside, you know, to break the record, and by the time we got out, we were engaged."
"Don't forget to send me 'Pravda:' just the funnies!"
"Comrades, if we do that, do you know what they will do to my family? They will line them up against the wall and shoot them: my wife, and my mother-in-law, and my brother-in-law, and my sister-in-law.... Comrades, let's do it!"
"Is everybody corrupt?" "I don't' know everybody!"
" Is old Russian proverb: 'Go West, young man!'"
"Do you realize that Otto spelled backwards is Otto?"
"Otto says that no woman should have two mink coats until every woman has one mink coat." "I'm with Otto."
"I like John Kennedy because he's got more upstairs." "You mean, more brains?" "No, more hair!"
"A countess! That means everyone will have to curtsey to me! Except maybe Grace Kelly!"
You see, some of the lines were awfully topical....
At the time, as I recall, critics thought it was too fast, the characters weren't well-rounded, and Wilder was using gimmicks from earlier scripts he'd written, like the three bumbling commisars from NINOTCHKA, who also appear here.
But I didn't care. I loved it. I still do.
BTW: Except for a few minor, short interludes, most of the music is Khatchaturian's "Sabre Dance," as noted above, although the pop song, "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" is used in a most novel fashion.... J.
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And, for $.38, Jimmy Cagney's wife was played by......?
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What could be more topical around these parts? How about the line, "Put your pants on, Spartacus!"?
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Arlene Francis, best known as one of the panelists on the popular TV show "What's My Line." She was involved in another of the musical gags, because her character was squeamish about pronouncing the word "pregnant" (another dated aspect of the movie). When some other character (one of the Russians?) got wind of the daughter's pregnancy, he broke into song: "Sally is pregnant, Sally is pregnant" -- sung to the tune of the "Ride of the Valkyries"!
I remember that and I remember the pervasive Khachaturian. Can't recall anything about the Previn.
It wasn't "Sally" that he was saying. When he's trying to explain Scarlett's condidtion, he uses the German word, "schwanger," which Arlene Francis doesn't know. Then her eavesdropping little boy pipes up, "I know what that means." When she asks him, he says, "You told me not to use words like that." Then the little girl says, "I know! He says Scarlett's going to have puppies!" Then Francis says, "She's pregnant?" And the doctor exults, "Yes! Pregnant is schwanger! Schwanger is pregnant! Dum da da dee dah dum da da dee..." to the tune of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries."
Arlene Francis is priceless in this movie. "And here will come Mr. and Mrs. Hazeltime. And there will be little Scarlett, unsullied, unchanged, unwed... Just slightly schwanger. Cheers!"
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What could be more topical around these parts? How about the line, "Put your pants on, Spartacus!"?
"See ya on the barricades, pal!"
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I know many of these lines because this is one of the few films we recorded on reel-to-reel from the old ABC "Sunday Night Movie" light years ago, and I used to listen to the tape so often I ended up learning much of the script.
Interestingly, ABC made a number of cuts to the film, so that, when I finally saw it again years later, I was happy to learn there was more I had forgotten about.
Great film.
See it in widescreen if you can.
TCM shows it every now and then.
And it was available on DVD. I have it.
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Could this be a job for Twilight Time?
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