So the Williams fans choose The Fury, the Jerry fans choose Lonely are the Brave, and everyone else chooses Spartacus or Lust for life !!
In Harm's Way was my back-up choice, but as an art book junkie, I "had to" choose Lust for Life. At the time of the FSM release I even searched for a pay phone(!) to place my order but instead stopped by my wife's work and called it in there (I'm pretty sure it was Lukas who took the order). It was the first time any of my wife's coworkers had even seen me.
Thinking (and listening) back on scenes from Kirk Douglas films, my all-time favorite cue is "Positive Identification" from In Harm's Way. The shot of a tormented, grief-stricken Kirk after having identified the remains of his wife is imo hands down the best-scored scene in the entire film.
They didn't give him much of an obituary on the BBC, but I gave up watching when they mentioned his Hollywood Blockbuster Heroes Of Telemark, which is of course a British Production.
Best score for a film with him in it is of course "Spartacus".
Lonely Are the Brave. My favorite Kirk Douglas performance (his own favorite of his roles as well), favorite Kirk Douglas film, favorite Goldsmith feature film score, and *possibly* my favorite Goldsmith-scored film as well. Absolute masterpiece. I even wrote my senior paper in college on it!
I recently watched ‘Lonely Are the Brave’ after many years and was surprised by the Goldsmith score, it is great, hopefully it will come back in circulation soon.
Finally, Mr Douglas was a wonderful actor who gave many fine performances none more so than in ‘Ace in the Hole’.
To pick one out of so many would make me feel guilty. Just look at the great names that have scored a Kirk Douglas film. Rozsa, North, Tiomkin, Raksin, Goldsmith, Williams, Bernstein,etc. Mr. Douglas' career spanned more than half a century and all the giants of film music composition were there to contribute. I salute Kirk Douglas and those who wrote music for his films.
Gosh, so many years and so many to choose from. These are all excellent scores, IMO:
OUT OF THE PAST (Roy Webb) GUNFIGHT AT OK CORAL (Dimitri Tiomkin) PATHS OF GLORY (Gerald Fried) THE VIKINGS (Mario Nascimbene) SPARTACUS (Alex North) -- although I'm not as obsessed about this as everyone else seems to be LONELY ARE THE BRAVE (Jerry Goldsmith) THE HEROES OF TELEMARK (Malcolm Arnold) THE FURY (John Williams) -- unsurprisingly, my favourite!
Sorry to hear about his passing, but MAN what an age! I thought he would live forever!
