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The sad truth is that vintage soundtracks have close to no cross-over appeal. MGM and Fox have tons of Elvis in their vault, yet there are no soundtrack releases (complete with underscore and all). Afficionados of classical music seem to be content with the "On The Waterfront" suite - otherwise such a "big" title would not be released by a boutique label like Intrada and would not be OOP soon after being released. The list of cases like these goes on and on. Bond collectors would rather buy a picture vinyl disk than having complete scores.
These three scores have always been among the holiest grails in soundtrack collecting to me, but seem to have little importance to a larger audience. "Giant", for sure, is not Tiomkin's greatest achievement, but I have to confess that "East of Eden" and "Rebel" are the most important scores in Rosenman's vast oeuvre to me.
The thing is that James Dean starred in three larger-than-life movies ("Giant" having some obvious weaknesses), but one can discuss how important those are to a modern audience. The scores (particularly the two by Rosenman) are a major part of that legacy to me, but opinions on that will differ even more.
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For such titles as East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause I actually don't expect them to be released by a film music label. And I know it could be difficult to convince a classical label to release them.
But a classical label would reach a much larger audience than a film music label.
No classical label will ever release the original recordings of EAST OF EDEN or REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE. Nonesuch did a new recording with longer suites of both scores in 1997 and something like this is probably all that will ever happen regarding these titles..
The classical labels don´t have such good contacts with studios like Warner as our few soundtrack labels like LLL or Intrada have them. Besides, none of these classical labels will pay enormous sums of money for an original soundtrack recording from 1955 which has only been preserved in mono and of which it is doubtful that you will nowadays sell more than 1500 or 2000 copies - if at all.
To just quote MV Gerrhard again:
"No, it's not. The studios wouldn't pick up the tab for this. The cost for transferring these tapes alone would put an end to this before it even started...
If companies like us don't do it, it won't get done."
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Besides, I wouldn't be surprised to see Naxos Historical releasing them someday, since copies from the OST exist in private collections.
There are so many scores from the 40s and 50s which exist in private collections and nevertheless nothing happens about them. So that´s no reason at all to believe that something may appear in the near future. Just think about all the Korngold soundtracks for example - despite the fact that the Korngold revival with his orchestral/chamber works and operas is still going on really well among classical labels nowadays, no classical label dares or even can officially release the original soundtrack recordings anymore of which the rights belong to Warners. So why would you think that Naxos Historical may suddenly tackle the two Rosenman scores which are from WB as well?
The insurmountable problems with Warners and that they have not the qualified personnel anymore to deal with licensing such old scores remains - even if a classical label wants to get a license there. And the classical labels normally don´t deal with such old soundtrack recordings at all and don´t have the experience with the peculiarties of such tapes/recordings as our few boutique labels have them
By the way, the complete recording sessions (on even three CDs!) for EAST OF EDEN have been circulating among collectors worldwide for at least 20 years. Has anything happened during all this time with this material? No, not at all! And nowadays we live in a time in which it is even less possible to officially release the complete score than it was about 10 or 15 years ago. Therefore I have not much hope that anyone will do it anymore.
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Regarding Naxos Historical, and other classical labels with such series, they won't need to deal with Warner Bros. to release the OST when they are in the public domain.
Naxos Historical certainly won´t do that. You can bet on that. Have you seen them doing any of the original Korngold soundtracks during the last few years? Certainly not - and therefore of course they also won´t tackle the two Rosenmans without dealing with Warners.
Alll these Korngold original recordings also exist in the same way in private collections for years and years - even in better quality than some of the Tsunami CDs were during the 90s - and despite the public domain situation nobody in Europe dares to do anything about them and will release them on regular CDs in current times. You can therefore wait a long time for this.
The reason is above all that you will completely lose the US market as the CDs will then be considered bootlegs there - because the rights situation in the US is completely different than in Europe -and US retailers won´t sell such a CD - and at least within the US it might be possible that WB will even proceed against them. No label wants to take on such a risk and can afford that! Therefore no official label will produce such a "boot" CD release when a large US studio is involved. It would only be possible without the involvement of such a larger studio.
So nowadays it´s not all that easy anymore as you might assume. The 90s are long over.
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I also prefer downloads to physical CDs, and I'm actually not waiting for anything. I have just said I would't be surprised if someday the OST are available.
But I'm still surprised FSM never released the OST when the label was still active.
Well, the irony with all of this is that the complete (or at least almost complete) OST of EAST OF EDEN has long been available as a US boot CD even since the late 90s and you could buy that one on Discogs if you want to. So who needs another CD from dubious sources which isn´t correctly licensed from Warners? This would be more or less nonsense so that really nobody will do it anymore today.
However, I fully agree with you that it is strange that FSM didn´t release the score when they still had a good relationship with Warners more than 10 years ago.
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I also prefer downloads to physical CDs, and I'm actually not waiting for anything. I have just said I would't be surprised if someday the OST are available.
But I'm still surprised FSM never released the OST when the label was still active.
Well, the irony with all of this is that the complete (or at least almost complete) OST of EAST OF EDEN has long been available as a US boot CD even since the late 90s and you could buy that one on Discogs if you want to. So who needs another CD from dubious sources which isn´t correctly licensed from Warners? This would be more or less nonsense so that really nobody will do it anymore today.
However, I fully agree with you that it is strange that FSM didn´t release the score when they still had a good relationship with Warners more than 10 years ago.
I was almost sure that it was included in one of the James Dean box sets as well, but I'm unable to find it. The CD, however, is available for very reasonable prices.
One would think that the Korngold tracks would be out by now, but it seems the labels don't bother with that. I can only think of one label which would release stuff like that, but I don't think they would issue a multi-disk set of original Korngold recordings.
Rosenman is not on Naxos' agenda. They have a quite exhaustive catalog of Rozsa titles (including soundtrack albums), but if they were interested in Rosenman they would by now have uploaded the Columbia or Imperial LP.
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One hopes we FSMers are all acquainted with Leonard Rosenman's 1977 re-visit of these two scores in the album from 9-30-55. Lack of discussion on 9-30-55, though, causes me to wonder just how many of us like (or dislike) this disc?
I hesitate to buy it because I read there were dialogues. But I'd certainly like to know more about the score and album.
It's an interesting concept album, featuring music by Leonard Rosenman, adapting his own music from EAST OF EDEN and REBELL WITHOUT A CAUSE, period songs, and some tracks feature narration (three, one is a newsclip, two are narrated by Richard Thomas). It's by no means a substitute for actual recordings of the film scores, but an interesting album on its own terms.
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Maybe LLL would have produced both scores if their GIANT double CD hadn´t been such a commercial failure several years ago. That one was a huge disappointment for them.
Was that so? That's a shame.
The commercal failure of GIANT at least during the first few months after it had been released was certainly a decisive factor that the number of Golden Age releases on LLL dwindled down that much after 2015.
Just read MV Gerhard´s comment from April 2016 when asked whether a few Golden Age titles would be planned in 2016 on LLL:
"Nope. Maybe one GA title this year. After the turd the very very expensive GIANT laid last year I figured why bother spending all that time and money on GA titles that no one buys?"
https://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?forumID=1&pageID=63&threadID=67395&archive=0
That's a shame. GIANT was supposed to be limited to 3000 units, I guess if MV calls it a very very expensive turd it sold nowhere near that amount.
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That's a shame. GIANT was supposed to be limited to 3000 units, I guess if MV calls it a very very expensive turd it sold nowhere near that amount.
There was one further comment by MV in which he stated that "Mono" had been one of the reasons for the lack of sales:
"Mono kills sales. This is very true. Damn kissing disease."
As the OSTs of both EAST OF EDEN and REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE are of course also only in mono, you can guess what will happen in the near future.
Add to this the fact that the GIANT release was more than 7 years ago and the studio politics at Warners have changed even more to the worse during the last few years. So everything would be even more expensive than in 2015 (not to forget additional Sony costs!) and licensing of such old titles has become more or less impossible anyway.
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