What was Tiomkin doing between 36 HOURS (released November 1964) and THE WAR WAGON (released May 1967)? Did he take a job conducting this for one of those $1.98 record labels? If so, I can see why he didn't want his last name on it.
It's odd though... indeed, why wouldn't it feature his full name? I mean, "Dimitri Tiomkin" was perhaps the most widely known film composer to the public at large in his day, yet it just says "Dimitri's Hollywood Orchestra & Chorus". Certainly, Tiomkin would have gotten a big credit if he wanted it. The fact that his name is not on it really makes it seem that it wasn't actually him, or that he recorded it as a favor and didn't want his name all over it.
Thanks for the input. Looking at this release a little closer it's clear that this is the show score (with songs omitted from the film), which suggests the recording pre-dates 1965 by several years. So another delve into Discogs brings up a few identical releases, all with different (probably fake?) performers but the same track order (and in some cases the same atrocious errors in track titles, like "Hello farewell"!):
There are a number of others that drop, add or move a track (like the Dean Franconi one on Design), which I suspect are also the same recording. I will have to see if any of these are on good old youtube, but whatever their provenance I have confidence in stating that Dimitri Tiomkin had nothing to do with any of 'em! But I'm open to being corrected...
... but whatever their provenance I have confidence in stating that Dimitri Tiomkin had nothing to do with any of 'em! But I'm open to being corrected...
I don't think Tiomkin was involved in any way. He couldn't even sue because the record producers didn't use his full name. How many "Dimitri" were there in the 1960s who made such recordings? I think it's just a fishy marketing ploy to lure some of the oblivious record buying public into this kind of stuff.
Yes, indeed, Bob! Thanks. So far, I have found these albums on youtube that seem to be identical recordings under a variety of pseudonyms. There's the Crown 1000 Strings (yeah, right) version:
And that's as far as I got before getting totally R&Hed-out. Apologies if this is all too boring! But at least it seems pretty certain the Tiomkin link on Discogs is an error.
By the way, if you want to set your teeth on edge, listen to "Hello farewell" on the very first link!
By the way, if you want to set your teeth on edge, listen to "Hello farewell" on the very first link!
It's as good as your average elementary school production. It would be interesting to known the truth about where, when, and by whom this was actually recorded.
I don't think Tiomkin was involved in any way. He couldn't even sue because the record producers didn't use his full name. How many "Dimitri" were there in the 1960s who made such recordings? I think it's just a fishy marketing ploy to lure some of the oblivious record buying public into this kind of stuff.
I believe during 1965 and ‘66 Tiomkin was involved with doing the music for the Russian biopic TCHAIKOVSKY, later released on an import 2-lp set.
I don't believe that Tiomkin recorded the TCHAIKOVSKY score until 1968. I suppose he could have been preparing the adaptations and doing other work on the film (for which he was Executive Producer) earlier. Shooting of the film began on 16 June 1968.
Based on what Miklos Rozsa said in this interview that I translated from French a while ago (see https://miklosrozsa.net/1982Interview/), I think it is very unlikely that this production really involved Tiomkin:
I did not like Tiomkin. Not only did I dislike the man, but I didn’t like his music. He was a braggart. Every day, you could see in the newspapers — not the trade papers, but the dailies — stories about Tiomkin. He had two public relations people who made up things like “Mr. Tiomkin conducted La Traviata at La Scala in Milan,” for example. [He] had probably never seen La Traviata. Moreover, as a conductor, he was a Spanish cow [an expression suggesting he mangled the English language]! Two days later, we would read: “The Ambassador of the United States in Rome gave a reception in honor of Mr. Dimitri Tiomkin.” Not a word of truth. And every day something like that. He claimed when he was making a film for Hitchcock that he had a Debussy piece that he wanted to include, for which one couldn’t get the score. (Of course you can get all of Debussy’s scores.) He claimed to have heard this piece in Moscow in his youth and that he could rewrite every note from memory. It was all pure fiction. That’s the way he did things!
Based on what Miklos Rozsa said in this interview that I translated from French a while ago (see https://miklosrozsa.net/1982Interview/), I think it is very unlikely that this production really involved Tiomkin:
I did not like Tiomkin. Not only did I dislike the man, but I didn’t like his music. He was a braggart. Every day, you could see in the newspapers — not the trade papers, but the dailies — stories about Tiomkin. He had two public relations people who made up things like “Mr. Tiomkin conducted La Traviata at La Scala in Milan,” for example. [He] had probably never seen La Traviata. Moreover, as a conductor, he was a Spanish cow [an expression suggesting he mangled the English language]! Two days later, we would read: “The Ambassador of the United States in Rome gave a reception in honor of Mr. Dimitri Tiomkin.” Not a word of truth. And every day something like that. He claimed when he was making a film for Hitchcock that he had a Debussy piece that he wanted to include, for which one couldn’t get the score. (Of course you can get all of Debussy’s scores.) He claimed to have heard this piece in Moscow in his youth and that he could rewrite every note from memory. It was all pure fiction. That’s the way he did things!
LOL, thanks. That was very funny. And yes, that LP doesn't at all look like a Tiomkin project. Now Rózsa obviously was a very different type of person.
Based on what Miklos Rozsa said in this interview that I translated from French a while ago (see https://miklosrozsa.net/1982Interview/), I think it is very unlikely that this production really involved Tiomkin:
I did not like Tiomkin. Not only did I dislike the man, but I didn’t like his music. He was a braggart. Every day, you could see in the newspapers — not the trade papers, but the dailies — stories about Tiomkin. He had two public relations people who made up things like “Mr. Tiomkin conducted La Traviata at La Scala in Milan,” for example. [He] had probably never seen La Traviata. Moreover, as a conductor, he was a Spanish cow [an expression suggesting he mangled the English language]! Two days later, we would read: “The Ambassador of the United States in Rome gave a reception in honor of Mr. Dimitri Tiomkin.” Not a word of truth. And every day something like that. He claimed when he was making a film for Hitchcock that he had a Debussy piece that he wanted to include, for which one couldn’t get the score. (Of course you can get all of Debussy’s scores.) He claimed to have heard this piece in Moscow in his youth and that he could rewrite every note from memory. It was all pure fiction. That’s the way he did things!
LOL, thanks. That was very funny. And yes, that LP doesn't at all look like a Tiomkin project. Now Rózsa obviously was a very different type of person.
Based on what Miklos Rozsa said in this interview that I translated from French a while ago (see https://miklosrozsa.net/1982Interview/), I think it is very unlikely that this production really involved Tiomkin:
I did not like Tiomkin. Not only did I dislike the man, but I didn’t like his music. He was a braggart. Every day, you could see in the newspapers — not the trade papers, but the dailies — stories about Tiomkin. He had two public relations people who made up things like “Mr. Tiomkin conducted La Traviata at La Scala in Milan,” for example. [He] had probably never seen La Traviata. Moreover, as a conductor, he was a Spanish cow [an expression suggesting he mangled the English language]! Two days later, we would read: “The Ambassador of the United States in Rome gave a reception in honor of Mr. Dimitri Tiomkin.” Not a word of truth. And every day something like that. He claimed when he was making a film for Hitchcock that he had a Debussy piece that he wanted to include, for which one couldn’t get the score. (Of course you can get all of Debussy’s scores.) He claimed to have heard this piece in Moscow in his youth and that he could rewrite every note from memory. It was all pure fiction. That’s the way he did things!
I don’t remember where I read this so maybe someone can remind me.
As you probably know Tiomkin was put in charge of Army Signal Corp music department during WWII by Frank Capra who was the big boss. In that position Tiomkin decided which Hollywood composer would join the team scoring the various films like the “Why We Fight” series. When Rozsa applied to join the team Tiomkin rejected his application which made his draft status A-1 classifying his available for active military service. I don’t know that this is true especially since Rozsa probably not even a US citizen at that time. On the hand I f it is true, one has to wonder if Rozsa’s animosity toward Tiomkin originated from this incident or was the animosity already there and Tiomkin paying him back. Regardless it’s widely known that Rozsa had a very low opinion of many of his fellow film composers especially the ones who came from Broadway. He was very outspoken abut this. If taken at face value that would include Alfred Newman, Max Steriner, Herbert Stothardt in addition to Dimitri Tiomkin. I can just see him sitting around with Herrmann (they were friends) bad mouthing all their compatriots.
There are a lot of reasons for Rozsa to resent Tiomkin. For example David O Selznick ask Rozsa to make an audition for “Duel in the Sun” which he felt was insulting by while Tiomkin got the assignment. After he parted company with Samuel Bronstein over some dispute on “El CID” Tiomkin took over as composer on the rest of his films with a better deal to boot. Hitchcock only made one film with him then ghosted him. Tiomkin made quite a few Hitchcock films. Tiomkin became quite wealthy he didn’t.
