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Posted: |
Mar 24, 2021 - 5:43 AM
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By: |
Graham Watt
(Member)
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I know that there were other heads of the music department for other studios, but I'm particularly interested in Joseph Gershenson here, partly because I grew up with the Universal horror films, and also because I recently purchased MMM's re-recording of (most of) CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. These re-recordings are absolutely top-notch. The Radio Symphony Orchestra of Slovakia under the baton of Masatoshi Mitsumoto don't seem to get mentioned in the same breath as other re-recordings - perhaps due to the nature of the films - but they're among the best. I think I have about five or six on the MMM label.
Anyway, the question is - What did Joseph Gershenson actually do? I've read through all the liner notes, and they're so copious that I can't find any concrete info. Reading the notes takes me longer than listening to the CDs. What I infer is that in the many cases where a score was partly original, with the rest consisting of stock music, Gershenson chose two or three composers he felt right for the task (Herman Stein, Hans Salter, Irving Gertz, Henry Mancini etc) and assigned them specific scenes according to the mood needed. Then it "looks like" the composers often adapted some of their previous scores for Universal, and often their previous previous scores for Universal, and often the work of other composers who went uncredited in the original previous film(s), and so it ended up in many cases like an assembly of stock cues, but adapted, rarely just dropped in from an earlier recording. Something like that?
It's all so complicated. Maybe it would be easier if I told you what I used to think Joseph Gershenson did - I used to think that he watched every film and personally chose every piece of stock music then edited it all together himself. I gather that that cannot have been the case. What a workload. So who actually chose the pieces, adapted them and edited them all together? I think I have an idea of the choosing and adapting, but the final result?
My final question (for today) is about the 1966 William Castle film LET'S KILL UNCLE. That Main Title is absolutely great. Herman Stein is credited on-screen as composer, and indeed I can hear quite a bit of THE INTRUDER in there, and also a touch of CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON ("his" BA BA BAAAA music is used for a scene with sharks in a swimming pool, and for a shock moment of a beggar with no legs). Was this a "partially original" score? I'm particularly interested in finding out whether the Main Title music was written specifically for LET'S KILL UNCLE, and if not, what its origins are. It's a great piece.
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He collected a paycheck 
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Wasn't Hans Salter the one that came up with the three note CREATURE theme? I have the MMM rerecording not 5 feet from me, but I'm apparently too lazy to search through the liner notes this morning. But as I recall, Salter was given the 'horror' scenes of the movie to score.
And in regards to Joseph Gershenson - as a kid I always knew the name from HOUSE OF DRACULA. As fate would have it, I would see that movie before a lot of the other earlier Universals. So I had a year or so of thinking the HOUSE OF DRACULA score was all original. Now years later, I don't care to see his name for the music in that movie... it's 90% recycled music, played and recorded very quickly and cheaply. I believe the only original music in the movie is the 'Moonlight Sonata' scene that turns into the 'Music of the Night' - and I would assume that credit would go to Edgar Fairchild.
So yes, as said above - Joseph Gershenson collected a paycheck!
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I know that there were other heads of the music department for other studios, but I'm particularly interested in Joseph Gershenson here, partly because I grew up with the Universal horror films, and also because I recently purchased MMM's re-recording of (most of) CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. These re-recordings are absolutely top-notch. The Radio Symphony Orchestra of Slovakia under the baton of Masatoshi Mitsumoto don't seem to get mentioned in the same breath as other re-recordings - perhaps due to the nature of the films - but they're among the best. I think I have about five or six on the MMM label.
Anyway, the question is - What did Joseph Gershenson actually do? I've read through all the liner notes, and they're so copious that I can't find any concrete info. Reading the notes takes me longer than listening to the CDs. What I infer is that in the many cases where a score was partly original, with the rest consisting of stock music, Gershenson chose two or three composers he felt right for the task (Herman Stein, Hans Salter, Irving Gertz, Henry Mancini etc) and assigned them specific scenes according to the mood needed. Then it "looks like" the composers often adapted some of their previous scores for Universal, and often their previous previous scores for Universal, and often the work of other composers who went uncredited in the original previous film(s), and so it ended up in many cases like an assembly of stock cues, but adapted, rarely just dropped in from an earlier recording. Something like that?
It's all so complicated. Maybe it would be easier if I told you what I used to think Joseph Gershenson did - I used to think that he watched every film and personally chose every piece of stock music then edited it all together himself. I gather that that cannot have been the case. What a workload. So who actually chose the pieces, adapted them and edited them all together? I think I have an idea of the choosing and adapting, but the final result?
My final question (for today) is about the 1966 William Castle film LET'S KILL UNCLE. That Main Title is absolutely great. Herman Stein is credited on-screen as composer, and indeed I can hear quite a bit of THE INTRUDER in there, and also a touch of CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON ("his" BA BA BAAAA music is used for a scene with sharks in a swimming pool, and for a shock moment of a beggar with no legs). Was this a "partially original" score? I'm particularly interested in finding out whether the Main Title music was written specifically for LET'S KILL UNCLE, and if not, what its origins are. It's a great piece.
Before he was in the music department he produced films. Mancini said although he didn't compose he had a good ear for what fit the film. List is on IMDB.com
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Livio, just checked the liner notes. I too had the impression that Salter wrote the BAH-BAH-BAHHH! Creature motif, simply because it was the most "horrific" music in the film(s), but it seems not - "What sets the CFTBL score apart from many other monster movie scores is its reliance on a single musical motif - Herman Stein's memorable three-note Creature theme..." And although he wrote it, Stein didn't like the idea of it being used so much. David Schecter goes on to explain that Joseph Gershenson's musical instincts were good, and thus attributes the overuse of the motif (in the original and in the two sequels) to ("possibly") producer William Alland or "somebody higher up at Universal".
Thanks for looking. I do recall that none of the composers particularly liked the overuse of Creature theme. Someone at Universal decided they wanted to hear it every single time the Creature was seen on screen. Despite that, it's still a tremendous and beautiful score
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Livio, just checked the liner notes. I too had the impression that Salter wrote the BAH-BAH-BAHHH! Creature motif, simply because it was the most "horrific" music in the film(s), but it seems not - "What sets the CFTBL score apart from many other monster movie scores is its reliance on a single musical motif - Herman Stein's memorable three-note Creature theme..." And although he wrote it, Stein didn't like the idea of it being used so much. David Schecter goes on to explain that Joseph Gershenson's musical instincts were good, and thus attributes the overuse of the motif (in the original and in the two sequels) to ("possibly") producer William Alland or "somebody higher up at Universal".
Thanks for looking. I do recall that none of the composers particularly liked the overuse of Creature theme. Someone at Universal decided they wanted to hear it every single time the Creature was seen on screen. Despite that, it's still a tremendous and beautiful score
Kinda like every time we see James Bond we hear the ascending and descending chromatic line.
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Kinda like every time we see James Bond we hear the ascending and descending chromatic line.
Yes, but that chromatic line was not continuously blasted from the brass section every time you saw Bond. Though, that'd make the Bond movies a bit interesting
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Posted: |
Mar 24, 2021 - 8:15 PM
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By: |
MMM
(Member)
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Too many questions to answer in one block, as I just returned from being gone all day and need to eat. But I'll try to do the best I can... In a nutshell, Gershenson started conducting pit orchestras back East. He was not a composer, but was credited with writing some lyrics to some songs (not many). Whether he wrote them or not, who knows? But he got paid for their use. He was a solid conductor with a good sense of drama. The composers preferred to be in the booth during recording so they could monitor the mix -- knowing that Joe could conduct as well as they could.
Joe was a credit hog, and got his name on films by bringing in more than one composer, sometimes moving a composer off a film when he only had another few pieces to complete. That way, he could use the excuse that if a composer didn't compose 80% of a score, no composer would get credited, only the "Music Supervisor." Guess who that was? But there were also times when Stein and others wrote 100% of the music in a movie and still didn't get credit.
One example of how composers didn't get their "just due" at the studio: Herman Stein wrote all of THIS ISLAND EARTH except the last couple of reels. He could have finished that work in just a couple of days, as there wasn't much music in them. Instead, Joe brought in Mancini and Salter to write a few cues and Herman had his name gone from the screen credit, although he was credited in some of the pre-publicity material. Joe ended up with one of only three (I believe) fully card credits in this prestigious picture.
Gershenson claimed (I heard it in an oral history he did) that he would audition what the composers wrote and choose the best themes. No, he didn't. Or if he auditioned them, the composers didn't listen to his opinions. The composers would play the various themes to each other when there were multiple writers working on a film, decide which they'd go with, and that would be that.
The composer along with the music editor spotted where music would and wouldn't be used.
Joe was the head of the Music Department. He was in charge of dollars and cents and other business matters, along with the aforementioned conducting.
Herman Stein wrote a lot of the themes on pictures he worked on, including CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. He was also asked to write the "Main Title" pieces for a lot of the films that were composed by multiple writers. CREATURE is an example of that.
The composers would find out from either Joe or his assistant Milt Rosen whether a film would have an original score, a partly original one, or and all-tracked (re-using older cues) score. The composers and/or Rosen would choose the library pieces, and the composers would make it all work, rewriting and adapting them to make the music flow from cue to cue. These old pieces were newly conducted and recorded -- they didn't "drop in" previous recordings, except maybe during the 1958 Musician's Union strike.
Why Herman got a screen credit for LET'S KILL UNCLE is bizarre. He didn't write anything for this all-tracked score. It does include some CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON cues in it, but they are from Hans Salter's pieces and one by Mancini. There is also music in the Castle film from THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US, THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, MIDNIGHT LACE, THIS ISLAND EARTH, PORTRAIT IN BLACK, TOY TIGER, and others, with quite a bit from UNGUARDED MOMENT, which features a superb score by Herman Stein, with some music by Mancini in that picture as well. The "Main Title" of LET'S KILL UNCLE is the "Main Title" from UNGUARDED MOMENT. I really like the film a lot and recommend watching it. It was an attempt to give Esther Williams a "dry" role, and I thought she was fine in it.
Maybe Gershenson gave Stein credit for LET'S KILL UNCLE because he screwed him over so many other times? When Herman said something to Gershenson that the Music Supervisor didn't like (and Herman had every right to say it because it was true), he got blacklisted by Gershenson and couldn't get any other film work other than the small Corman film THE INTRUDER a few years later. He was supposed to score FREUD, but when Herman was removed from the picture, Jerry Goldsmith got the job. Fortunately, Herman was able to get some television work over at Fox through his friend, composer Irving Gertz, who had free-lanced for Universal a lot and had his own issues with Gershenson of a similar nature. But almost nobody would hire Herman after Universal's Music Department let everyone go in 1958. So that should answer your question regarding "What Did Joseph Gershenson Actually Do?"
Thanks for the kind words about our re-recordings. I don't know why Monstrous Movie Music doesn't get the credit it deserves, as I think we were the first label to re-record so the music had a powerful dramatic presence in terms of how it was miked and engineered and produced. We wanted the music to sound like FILM MUSIC rather than classical or a pops concert. We did other things other labels hadn't done before we came along, but I'm happy that people who have our albums still enjoy them after all these years.
Masatoshi Mitsumoto is a positively brilliant conductor (he's a composer, too), and Kathleen Mayne's re-orchestrations are pretty much flawless (she's a fabulous composer as well). We had a great team, but bootleggers and people seeking free music made it unprofitable for us to continue. We gave our all to every aspect of our projects, and that included time and money.
We were supposed to win a Grammy on one of our first two recordings, but a clerical error at the Grammys prevented us from either being nominated. I got a call from the head of the Grammy committee right after we weren't nominated, and he apologized for the stupidity that caused the mistake. They wanted us to win two awards -- one for each release -- but that wasn't possible -- and in the process of trying to figure out what to do with us, we ended up getting left behind by mistake. He said he felt so awful he would try to help us -- he ended up writing a 17-page (I think) full-color article on us for a prestigious music magazine, and I have 20 copies of that magazine. I'd much rather have the Grammy.
We were also "People" magazine's head music story and got removed with two hours before publication when Michael Jackson either got married, divorced, or had a kid, or said he had a kid. I forget which, but we were in the grocery story at 4:00 a.m. picking up 100 copies of just-delivered copies of "People" when we discovered what had happened. After that, we were "old news" to "People" and they moved on to other things. I think I'm still paying for those 200 press release faxes I sent all around the world hours before we discovered we had been bumped. LOL!
That and the Grammy bother me a lot more than the fact that MMM doesn't get the credit it deserves. I would definitely enjoy seeing a Grammy on the shelf. I have three Rondo Awards, but that's not quite the same thing... And we would have had four or five Rondos but people nominated more than one of our releases for the same year, that split the vote, and we ended up coming in second to other entries who got fewer votes than ours. MMM definitely didn't have the luck it needed -- that's for sure! LOL!
And now it's time for supper!
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But almost nobody would hire Herman after Universal's Music Department let everyone go in 1958. So that should answer your question regarding "What Did Joseph Gershenson Actually Do?"
Actually, Joseph Gershenson did what a certain president did 60 years later.
Next question?
Either "What Did Stanley Wilson Actually Do?" or "Watt Is Graham Actually Going To Do?"
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Posted: |
Mar 25, 2021 - 1:48 AM
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By: |
chriscoyle
(Member)
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Too many questions to answer in one block, as I just returned from being gone all day and need to eat. But I'll try to do the best I can... In a nutshell, Gershenson started conducting pit orchestras back East. He was not a composer, but was credited with writing some lyrics to some songs (not many). Whether he wrote them or not, who knows? But he got paid for their use. He was a solid conductor with a good sense of drama. The composers preferred to be in the booth during recording so they could monitor the mix -- knowing that Joe could conduct as well as they could.
Joe was a credit hog, and got his name on films by bringing in more than one composer, sometimes moving a composer off a film when he only had another few pieces to complete. That way, he could use the excuse that if a composer didn't compose 80% of a score, no composer would get credited, only the "Music Supervisor." Guess who that was? But there were also times when Stein and others wrote 100% of the music in a movie and still didn't get credit.
One example of how composers didn't get their "just due" at the studio: Herman Stein wrote all of THIS ISLAND EARTH except the last couple of reels. He could have finished that work in just a couple of days, as there wasn't much music in them. Instead, Joe brought in Mancini and Salter to write a few cues and Herman had his name gone from the screen credit, although he was credited in some of the pre-publicity material. Joe ended up with one of only three (I believe) fully card credits in this prestigious picture.
Gershenson claimed (I heard it in an oral history he did) that he would audition what the composers wrote and choose the best themes. No, he didn't. Or if he auditioned them, the composers didn't listen to his opinions. The composers would play the various themes to each other when there were multiple writers working on a film, decide which they'd go with, and that would be that.
The composer along with the music editor spotted where music would and wouldn't be used.
Joe was the head of the Music Department. He was in charge of dollars and cents and other business matters, along with the aforementioned conducting.
Herman Stein wrote a lot of the themes on pictures he worked on, including CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. He was also asked to write the "Main Title" pieces for a lot of the films that were composed by multiple writers. CREATURE is an example of that.
The composers would find out from either Joe or his assistant Milt Rosen whether a film would have an original score, a partly original one, or and all-tracked (re-using older cues) score. The composers and/or Rosen would choose the library pieces, and the composers would make it all work, rewriting and adapting them to make the music flow from cue to cue. These old pieces were newly conducted and recorded -- they didn't "drop in" previous recordings, except maybe during the 1958 Musician's Union strike.
Why Herman got a screen credit for LET'S KILL UNCLE is bizarre. He didn't write anything for this all-tracked score. It does include some CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON cues in it, but they are from Hans Salter's pieces and one by Mancini. There is also music in the Castle film from THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US, THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, MIDNIGHT LACE, THIS ISLAND EARTH, PORTRAIT IN BLACK, TOY TIGER, and others, with quite a bit from UNGUARDED MOMENT, which features a superb score by Herman Stein, with some music by Mancini in that picture as well. The "Main Title" of LET'S KILL UNCLE is the "Main Title" from UNGUARDED MOMENT. I really like the film a lot and recommend watching it. It was an attempt to give Esther Williams a "dry" role, and I thought she was fine in it.
Maybe Gershenson gave Stein credit for LET'S KILL UNCLE because he screwed him over so many other times? When Herman said something to Gershenson that the Music Supervisor didn't like (and Herman had every right to say it because it was true), he got blacklisted by Gershenson and couldn't get any other film work other than the small Corman film THE INTRUDER a few years later. He was supposed to score FREUD, but when Herman was removed from the picture, Jerry Goldsmith got the job. Fortunately, Herman was able to get some television work over at Fox through his friend, composer Irving Gertz, who had free-lanced for Universal a lot and had his own issues with Gershenson of a similar nature. But almost nobody would hire Herman after Universal's Music Department let everyone go in 1958. So that should answer your question regarding "What Did Joseph Gershenson Actually Do?"
Thanks for the kind words about our re-recordings. I don't know why Monstrous Movie Music doesn't get the credit it deserves, as I think we were the first label to re-record so the music had a powerful dramatic presence in terms of how it was miked and engineered and produced. We wanted the music to sound like FILM MUSIC rather than classical or a pops concert. We did other things other labels hadn't done before we came along, but I'm happy that people who have our albums still enjoy them after all these years.
Masatoshi Mitsumoto is a positively brilliant conductor (he's a composer, too), and Kathleen Mayne's re-orchestrations are pretty much flawless (she's a fabulous composer as well). We had a great team, but bootleggers and people seeking free music made it unprofitable for us to continue. We gave our all to every aspect of our projects, and that included time and money.
We were supposed to win a Grammy on one of our first two recordings, but a clerical error at the Grammys prevented us from either being nominated. I got a call from the head of the Grammy committee right after we weren't nominated, and he apologized for the stupidity that caused the mistake. They wanted us to win two awards -- one for each release -- but that wasn't possible -- and in the process of trying to figure out what to do with us, we ended up getting left behind by mistake. He said he felt so awful he would try to help us -- he ended up writing a 17-page (I think) full-color article on us for a prestigious music magazine, and I have 20 copies of that magazine. I'd much rather have the Grammy.
We were also "People" magazine's head music story and got removed with two hours before publication when Michael Jackson either got married, divorced, or had a kid, or said he had a kid. I forget which, but we were in the grocery story at 4:00 a.m. picking up 100 copies of just-delivered copies of "People" when we discovered what had happened. After that, we were "old news" to "People" and they moved on to other things. I think I'm still paying for those 200 press release faxes I sent all around the world hours before we discovered we had been bumped. LOL!
That and the Grammy bother me a lot more than the fact that MMM doesn't get the credit it deserves. I would definitely enjoy seeing a Grammy on the shelf. I have three Rondo Awards, but that's not quite the same thing... And we would have had four or five Rondos but people nominated more than one of our releases for the same year, that split the vote, and we ended up coming in second to other entries who got fewer votes than ours. MMM definitely didn't have the luck it needed -- that's for sure! LOL!
And now it's time for supper!
Thanks for the info. Your CDs of This Island Earth and It Came from Outer Space are two of my favorites.
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