Just watched a nice montage of clips of LILIES OF THE FIELD Hi-lighting the Jerry Goldsmith scored sequences and I started thinking. Of course Sidney Poitier won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance as Homer Smith and Jerry Goldsmith surely wrote a truly touching and beautiful score to accompany the picture. I wonder what the film would be like without Jerry's score and if another composer took the reigns, would it have been as effective? So, I'm thinking how much did Jerry's score really enhance the movie and particularly Poitier's performance? I think it did extremely. I do also believe that Sidney is a phenomenal actor and truly deserved the award. The combination of Sidney's acting and Goldsmith's score worked like magic for me and we're not talking Anthony Hopkins and Fats here. That film had enough MAGIC of it's own, but yet another time when Goldsmith's score truly enhanced and jelled with a performance.
And so my bold question to you:
Would Sidney Poitier have won the Oscar for Best Performance by an Actor if Jerry Goldsmith had not scored the picture? How would the performance come off without a musical score at all? Of course we'll never know unless we can magically beam to a J.J. Abrams Alternate Timeline or Universe.
Please share your thoughts on LILIES and Sidney and Jerry and in film scores enhancing performances in general. Could be fun. Maybe share some movies and performances where the two were "nailed" as James Horner would have put it.
Thank gals and guys and I hope you are all staying Safe and Well!
And if you have the DVD or Blu-Ray of LILIES OF THE FIELD definitely watch it again. It was a film and score that truly effected me as 9 year old kid when I first saw it and when I had no idea who Jerry Goldsmith even was. I know that my heart and soul were touched and that the music helped me love the character of Homer Smith as played by the wonderful Sidney Poitier!
A nice section of some of Sidney's acting and Goldsmith's score under. ****SPOILER WARNING***** If you haven't seen the film and don't want any spoilers please don't watch. Thanks and Enjoy if you do!
There's a clip on youtube of Sidney after winning the Oscar and his thoughts to the press. Boy, they were pretty dumb back then too. The press announcer of this clip speaks of Gregory Peck who won Best Actor the year before in a movie called "HOW TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD"! That's hilarious.
Tried to link it here, but youtube links hate me and whenever there is a lower case "L" in the http line they never work. Balls again.
The title for search at youtube if you want to see it is: Sidney Poitier Press Room Interview after 1964 Oscars Win
Here's another great scene with Sidney and Stanely Adams from LILIES. I love it how when you freeze it at 1:07 you can see Varese's Retro Ad in the background behind Stanley of what they will ship their CDs to customers in, in the future. I'd say 10 cents is about what their shipping is worth. (Sorry I just can't stop myself)
Poitier very-good actor he was in solid movies before Lilies one of those roles could've earnt an Oscar there's no influence with music. Jerry's material super-luscious that really touches beautiful vocal-points it is sensitive more-tutorial narrative, I rate it like Mocking Bird educational, 1963 was a huge year of movies/scores every-one deserved too scoop.
I'd have to watch the entire movie without any scoring to really answer this question. Once a movie has a score, it's hard to not to incorporate its impact with everything on screen. There's a cut somewhere of the unscored "I could have been a contender" taxi scene in "On The Waterfront" and it feels empty without Bernstein's music. But I'm sure I'd be impressed by the acting if I wasn't expecting music.
I like what Sydney Pollack said in Moviola, something about the director taking his creation to the composer and saying, "Here, make this better." And maybe in some subliminal way JG made Poitier's performance better in the eyes of the awards personnel (besides making the picture as a whole better).
I actually think the other way around. Jerry and most composers have so many uninspiring assignments that when such a labor of love by director Ralph Nelson (he put up his house to make LILIES OF THE FIELD) and such a dazzling performance comes along he must have breathed easier and relished doing this. He talked little about it probably because he was saddled (like THE RIVER WILD) with a "given" main theme "Amen" by Jester Hairston, who sang for Poitier, and hence it wasn't entirely his score. But his nuance is in every part of it.
Of course credit must be given to Jester Hairston for his "Amen" Theme which indeed Jerry did use in his score. But if you listen to just the score that Goldsmith wrote, without any of the "Amen" as background or counter melody, it is still pretty amazing. Goldsmith's genius was to take the "Amen" elements and incorporate them brilliantly into his own thematic material. The two together are purely superb and one without the other are still pretty dang good. I'd love to hear a take of the score with the film and take out all of the "Amen" references and see how it would play. That would be quite interesting. It probably for sure wouldn't be as great as both together, but I would love to hear it all the same. Maybe Goldsmith could have come up with is own original "Amen" or "Religious Hymn" sounding theme that would have worked too. His other music in the score seems properly close to "church like" in many cases.
It's like, think James Horner's GLORY without the main Prokofiev IVAN THE TERRIBLE Theme. Take all that out and still you have a pretty kick ass emotionally effective James Horner score.
If in a J.J. Abrams Alternate Universe / Timeline, Jerry Goldsmith had won the Oscar for Best Score for LILIES OF THE FIELD, I would hope that they would have nominated both Goldsmith and Jester Hairston for the music. If they didn't and just Goldsmith, I would like to believe that Jerry would definitely mention and give thanks and rightful acknowledgement to Hairston in his acceptance speech.
On the Soundtrack LP Release Hairston seems to only be referred to as "Vocalist" and Jerry gets the "Music Composed and Conducted by" credit. That was most surely wrong, but I guess that's what they did back then.
