MUSIC BY MAX STEINER

MUSIC BY MAX STEINER: The Epic Life of Hollywood's Most Influential Composer. Steven C. Smith. Oxford University Press; 2020. 

Gone with the Wind, Now Voyager, King Kong, Of Human Bondage, Charge of the Light Brigade, White Heat, The Fountainhead, Johnny Belinda, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Mildred Pierce, Since You Went Away, Casablanca, The Letter, Dark Victory, Jezebel, Angels with Dirty Faces, A Star is Born (1937) -- this barely scratches the list of the 241 scores composed by the great Austrian-born Max Steiner. This excellent, well-researched, and very thorough biography examines Steiner's family and early life in Vienna, his early years working on Broadway, the first pictures that he began scoring, up to his triumphs on such as Gone With the Wind (for which he did not win an Oscar and should have) and scores that did win Academy Awards, such as Since You Went Away, Now, Voyager and The Informer. Steiner clearly understood the importance of underscoring to bring out the emotional sub-text in motion pictures, a style that was later implemented by many other composers in Hollywood. At first, some people thought it was strange to hear, say, a symphonic orchestra in the middle of the desert, but eventually audiences came to appreciate the music blaring from the speakers while the actors did their thing onscreen. Music By Max Steiner looks at his various, often troubled, marriages, his problems with the studios and producers such as Selznick, his gambling and profligate spending which left him deeply in debt until, lo and behold, he actually composed a hit song with his theme from A Summer Place. The book also looks at the sad, tragic and all-too-brief life of his handsome only son, Ronald, who committed suicide at 21 (and was possibly gay). Steiner's music has complemented many great movies and enriched movies that even Steiner wished he hadn't had to work on, but although he occasionally wrote a less-than-compelling score, that didn't happen very often. My favorite Steiner theme: the sensitive and lovely waltz that signifies the relationship between Olivia de Havilland and George Brent in In This Our Life. (Author Smith doesn't comment on this, but with so very many movies to choose from it's inevitable that some of your favorites will be overlooked.) The book gets rather technical at times but that shouldn't blunt your enjoyment even if you're not a musicologist. 

Verdict: Excellent biography of a gifted composer whose life and work richly deserves to be re-examined. ****.                                                                                                                                                                                                         

LOVERLY: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MY FAIR LADY

LOVERLY: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MY FAIR LADY. Dominic McHugh. Oxford University Press; 2012.

This scholarly tome looks at virtually every aspect of the world-famous and wonderful musical, Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady, from George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion to the Broadway (and subsequent) productions of the musical, the acclaimed motion picture version, and reassessments of the show over the decades. McHugh goes into various attempts to go against Shaw and turn the piece into a conventional romance, and how librettist and lyricist Alan Jay Lerner did his best to avoid that situation. The book goes into casting choices and decisions -- Mary Martin was for a long time the front-runner to play Eliza Doolittle -- as well as rehearsal problems and how they were dealt with. McHugh also scrutinizes and analyzes the music (unless you're a music student these passages may be a little dry, of course) and cites composer Frederick Loewe's influences. McHugh hardly leaves a stone unturned, although I must say I was given pause when he describes "On the Street Where You Live" -- in my opinion a beautiful and soaringly romantic number and a major highlight of the score -- as "superficially pretty, but a little dull and insipid [like Freddy]." Dull and insipid? To each his own. I also recommend The Musical Worlds of Lerner and Loewe.

Verdict: More than anyone could possibly want to know about My Fair Lady. ***. 

ON SONDHEIM: AN OPINIONATED GUIDE

ON SONDHEIM: AN OPINIONATED GUIDE. Ethan Mordden. Oxford University Press; 2016.

Mordden, who has written several informative, engaging, and highly opinionated volumes on musical theater, herein devotes a full book to the work of Stephen Sondheim. In addition to his shows, Mordden also explores the lyricist-composer's film and television work, such as Evening Primrose, Dick Tracy, and Stavisky. Mordden is an unabashed Sondheim admirer, taking a stand against his critics, and explaining what he feels is Sondheim's unqualified genius. Mordden has chapters on Sweeney Todd, Company, Follies, Gypsy, Pacific Overtures, Passions, Anyone Can Whistle, and others, and even looks at the film versions of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, and Into the Woods. Mordden, as usual, writes with authority and flair, with an obvious passion for his subject. Admittedly, Mordden won't necessarily convince readers who would much prefer to listen to, say, Richard Rodgers' Younger Than Springtime than Sondheim's The Little Things We Do Together and who love The King and I much, much more than Follies or that closet queen show (as I call it), Company. Broadway was being more and more influenced by pop music -- as opposed to European style operetta and opera a la Rodgers and Lowe -- as Sondheim ascended, and nowadays most Broadway scores are pure pop and even rock. Writing strictly in an admiring mode, Mordden never acknowledges that the undeniably gifted Sondheim (Send in the Clowns; Joanna; Agony; Grateful/Sorry; Too Many Mornings; Losing My Mind; many others) can also be quite trite and tiresome at times. Arguably, Sweeney Todd is Sondheim's masterpiece. Sondheim also co-wrote the screenplay for The Last of Sheila and was a script writer for the old Topper TV show with Leo G. Carroll as Cosmo Topper!

Verdict: Solid book on the work and career of Sondheim with a little bit on his personal life. ***.

ROADSHOW: The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s

ROADSHOW: The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s. Matthew Kennedy. Oxford University Press; 2014.

If you've reached a certain age you may remember going with your parents to see big, splashy, over-produced versions of Broadway musicals such as The Sound of Music, which I saw at the Rivoli in New York when I was a kid. You may not remember that many of these films were released as "roadshows" -- you got tickets and reserved seats in advance -- and while most of these roadshows were musicals, a few were not. They were long, often had intermissions, and, of course, higher ticket prices. [The last roadshow I remember seeing was, of all things, Last Tango in Paris.] In any case, with wit, solid research, and large doses of amiability, Matthew Kennedy traces the birth and death of the roadshow musical in this marvelously entertaining and very well-written volume. Once upon a time Julie Andrews [Darling Lili] was seen as the greatest thing since sliced bread, but that was before she appeared in Star! and others and soon her "mega-star" days were over. Then we have all the musical adaptations -- Paint Your Wagon, Camelot, Goodbye Mr. Chips -- in which most of the lead performers could not sing.  When producers ran out of Broadway shows to adapt (Funny Girl, Hello Dolly) they made musicals out of films that originally had no music in them  (the aforementioned Mr. Chips) or adapted films, such as Dr. Dolittle and The Happiest Millionaire, from other medium. And we mustn't forget the hilarious "feud" between Barbra Streisand [A Star is Born] and Carol Channing [The First Traveling Saleslady] when the former got the coveted part in Hello Dolly which Channing felt should have been hers. Roadshow dissects what went wrong with most of these over-bloated pictures, whose musical values were often lost behind inappropriate actors and overblown budgets, as well as producers and directors who often had no idea what they were doing, such as Joshua Logan of Paint Your Wagon. Broadway adaptations of the previous decade may have been more effective (Carousel, The King and I etc.), but  in the sixties for every Sound of Music there were half a dozen or more critical and financial mega-turkeys.

Verdict: Compulsorily readable! ****.