Hugo Friedhofer's score


The brilliance of Hugo Friedhofer's music makes it as integral to the movie as the movie itself. From the opening fanfare to the bouncy rhythms as the trio tour Boone City by cab to the hazy and moody nocturnes of Fred's dream and the smoldering Al in the hallway to the heart-rending crescendo during the reading of General Doolittle's letter, the music is a vital character in this epic production. I can't fail to mention Friedhofer's sly use of "Among My Souvenirs" thrown in for good measure when Al knocks on his own door for the first time. Without this score, the film would be diminished; still satisfying, but somehow wrong.

But did you know that director William Wyler was no fan of Friedhofer's effort? In fact, he wanted it all re-done, but the score came too late in the film's post-production for a do-over, so Wyler had to suffer through music he felt was inappropriate for his film. I'm confounded to what he imagined in its place, but there you have it.

The other interesting thing about the theme music is how much it borrows from Aaron Copland's theme from OUR TOWN (particularly the last third of it). Friedhofer had to have this in mind when he was writing. He seemed to be trying to infuse the music with a sense of nostalgic Americana, and Copland was the go-to composer of that style; sentimental, yet uncompromising. You don't have to be a musician to hear the similarities; but it's also worth noting that Wyler finally got his man. In 1949, Aaron Copland scored William Wyler's THE HEIRESS.




reply

Thanks for that Farley. Definitely an important part of the film's impact, and yes very Copland-esque. Funny about Wyler not liking the score.

reply

Often I'll read about a director not liking an element of some famous film. For instance, Francis Coppola disliking Al Martino as Johnny Fontane in THE GODFATHER or David Lean hating Alec Guinness' award winning performance in BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI. Always interesting.

reply

The score is stunning but too intrusive and too emotional. The opening scenes are very painful for me specifically because of the violins' intensity; I'm glad when the music becomes less sad during the "night-out" sequence.

Very interesting to know the soundtrack is like Our Town's. That film was a huge senior-play during my high school years, and unlike 3JRHFTW, its sentimentality may be its entire meaning. The great thing about Al, Fred, and Homer is their stories are *not* tearjerkers. Can you think of any other "man's film" from that era that is so emotional without being non-manly? (Of course, they didn't make non-manly movies in that era.)

reply

Hmm . . . for me the music only enhances what are already highly emotional situations. So I wouldn't say it's "too intrusive," but rather just a wonderful complement.

reply

I tend to agree. I love the score. Re Our Town, I think there's a great deal more in Wilder's play than sentimentality. I directed the play for an adult audience some years ago, and we focused on the thematic elements in it similar to those in TBYOOL: The moments we miss in our lives (amounting to years) never to be recaptured due to our anxiousness to "get on" with living and our "fear" of death (though not necessarily due to war as in TBYOOL) obsessing our own behavior. Similar lessons in both extraordinary and timeless dramas.

reply

Hi farley, good to see you again. That's interesting, I didn't know you were a theater director. Well done! Are you still involved in theater?

I want to go back to hilaryjrp's point. I think she may be onto something. While we all agree about the quality of Friedhofer's score, Wyler not liking it probably had to do with the "ordinariness" of the protagonists' stories. These are just three joes returning home from the war, whose problems are both mundane and recognizable to post-war American audiences. I bet Wyler wanted the music to be more pedestrian, not one with the majestic sweep of GONE WITH THE WIND. I don't know who the minimalist Hollywood composers of the day were (Bernard Herrmann was probably one), but I can now imagine the director saying that the Friedhofer's score is too ennobling. Afterall, Wyler took care in making sure that his characters' wardrobes were off the rack, that the actors wore little or no make-up, that the sets were modestly furnished. Why would he want a big emotive score counter-balancing that effect?

But I reiterate, I can't imagine the film without that music. And I don't hear it being redundant with any of the situations. I think they marry quite well. Wyler was wrong.

reply

I love me some good writin' , cwente's and wrfarley's.

Please be patient whilst  I make my argument, highly (highly) influenced by the fact "Our Town" was the senior play at my high school in 1969, where we junior high children also attended. A more psychologically destructive and ugly era I can't imagine--coming of age at a time when public school teachers approved, highly, of Magical Mystery Tours and Yellow Submarines. This was a time of cultural and personal despair like none other in my 59-year-old life, so my opinion of everything cultural from that era is highly colored by my lonely revulsion for it and everything associated with it.

My opinion of "Our Town" is influenced by, but not wholly dependent on, this personal history. While giving young actors a chance to shine, the play depressed me beyond words. The finiteness of beauty in this world and this stage of history (I believe we're soon due for another) is too mournful, so mournful that to me, it's actually verboten. Who among us hasn't been Lot's wife at some age or another and looked back and back and back, until we realized (if we were lucky) we weren't only mourning illusion, but were unconsciously (cwente, please please don't be mad at me) sinning. I believe that fiction must be a message of hope, or else it is sin.

That's exactly why those violins at the beginning of TBYOOL turn on the eye-spigots as soon as the DVD's in the player: this score's sublimity complements a film that celebrates reality and suffering and loss. The film celebrates these horrible effects of war in a no-nonsense, bring-it-on, onward-Judeo-Christian-soldiers way that SO overflows with hope. I can come up with only one other film that overflows with hope, "The Sound of Music." But that light-hearted movie does not dwell on depression overcome, self-doubts and alcoholism overcome, ugly ephemera overcome. The proof? Homer's wedding, more than anything else. Ugliness and the scars of war overcome while never disappearing.

I apologize for the length of this response, but TBYOOL is the primary religious experience of my adult life. It shows the power of non-sentimental religion, and to find non-sentimental religion in modern American culture is nearly impossible. My using the term "non-sentimental" shouldn't be taken as negating a single word of my and cwente's discussion on the film's sentimentality in regard to portraying--and being pluperfectly honest about--human emotion, in specific, manly emotion. It is this manly emotion the poor young turkeys who come here crowing about a "sentimental" film either 1) do not understand because they've never been blessed to experience it, either in a father-figure or themselves; or 2) have seen but brazenly reject it--to their own peril.

"Sergeant York" is in its orbit, but nothing is in the league of The Best Years of Our Lives. Every time I watch it, now once a year because it's not to be taken lightly, I feel as if the Savior is beside me, or better yet, that I am in His arms. Its rhetoric comes from heaven, and in that respect, it reminds me of the highly realistic closing of the I Have a Dream speech: Martin Luther King's indignant, impatient joy that finally, in the presence of something too long hoped-for, he is free at last.

reply

hilary,

Please never apologize for writing a long post. When you do, they are always wonderfully composed and clearly expressed -- and, as in this last ... powerful. I'd like to think that your thoughts are much in line with what Wyler may have thought when he expressed some disappointment with the score. Not bad being compaired to William Wyler in the context of a film discussion, eh?

In my case, I have always loved soaring violins and a throbbing percussion section in films even when they are, as you so beautifully explain it, unnecessary or intrusive... That's just me, I guess.

Thanks for another lovely post in a vast wasteland of posts (not you farley, my brother). 

reply

cfwente,

You da man . I read an interesting discussion about scores in film. (Can't remember which film the discussion was about!) A poster said scores move the action forward; he criticized the particular score's prominence for that reason. This idea--music moving the story forward--never occurred to me.

In 2016, a biography or maybe any film can't have soaring violins and intense orchestration; we're too sophisticated now. I guess a part of us knows what the poster said, about music nudging us to feel things a script and acting alone should make us feel. As wrfarley is, I'm stumped as to why William Wyler had misgivings about this in 1944 or thereabouts. Maybe TBYOOL's score is meant to make us feel the still very fresh pain of war vets, returning to a world where the reasons for their sorrow are as foreign as the battlefields they escaped. In this case, the Friedhofer score does its job exactly. Up until the "night out," it acts as a kind of chorus from a Greek tragedy and makes us so so sad. So for this reason, the score's intrusiveness has a purpose. It really is fascinating how the "night out" changes the mood entirely, and how the sadness makes way for the three heroes' stories.

Speaking of war-film scores, does anyone else think "Patton's" concluding scene is a stunner? I don't know what you call those echoing, historic-sounding trumpets that play when George C. Scott and his gorgeous dog walk by the windmills, and there's that gut-wrenching concluding soliloquy about All Glory is Fleeting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPiH-LBna5II rewatch that last scene on Youtube quite a lot. It would have been so wonderful if that great film had never been tainted with late 60's sturm und drang.

reply

I love the PATTON score by Jerry Goldsmith (he composed another gem for CHINATOWN). Yes, the end of PATTON is haunting, even more so when you realize that the film ends just short of the general's fatal car crash. In addition to the echo-y trumpets, there's an unusual use of a church organ which is played not only at the end, but throughout the film during Patton's more reflective moments.

I'm clear-eyed in my admiration of Friedhofer's score in 3JRHFTW, hilaryjrp. It's not just soapy strings in there, but sad and mournful horns (most prominent in the opening theme) which help give the music its authority. Yes, I agree that it should be left to the actors to convey the emotional turmoil in a scene, but BEST YEARS is a film where the music elevates the drama to something epic or legendary. Let's remember, that the characters in the film are not unique, they are emblematic of all American returning war veterans. It's a film made for them. That the story ends with the message that there is promise over the horizon must have made the real "Joes returning from the war" leave the theater with optimism. Friedhofer's contribution was to drive the point home, writing what suggests triumphal military music that got tired and downbeat, like the characters in the film. And like the characters, also looking for redemption.

Interesting to note that Wyler seemed to like the soaring scores in his films WUTHERING HEIGHTS, JEZEBEL, FRIENDLY PERSUASION and THE BIG COUNTRY. That he wanted more humble music for 3J actually surprised me given the sweep of those other scores (he did commission less heart-tugging music for many of his other films - DETECTIVE STORY, ROMAN HOLIDAY and THE DESPERATE HOURS, for example).

A couple of film score stories I've heard: when Miklos Rosza scored his films, he would write bits for every piece of action. If, for example, a character hopped over a fence, Rosza would put in a quick harp glissando going up and down to match the action. He would also put in little "stingers" when a character opened a door and saw something shocking. Hitchcock was a director who detested melodies in his film scores. He didn't want hummable music distracting from the visuals he created.

reply

Enjoying the discussion; PATTON indeed a fine score- Goldsmith had another gem with his interesting one for PLANET OF THE APES. In a Wyler biography I've read the story was Rosza convinced or agreed with Wyler that the BEN-HUR chariot race sequence needed no music. It would have been too intrusive and overbearing during all that action. I don't recall if he had yet actually scored any music for it. If true pretty remarkable check of ego yet he had scored something like 2.5 hrs of music already!

reply

I'm clear-eyed in my admiration of Friedhofer's score in 3JRHFTW, hilaryjrp. It's not just soapy strings in there, but sad and mournful horns (most prominent in the opening theme) which help give the music its authority. Yes, I agree that it should be left to the actors to convey the emotional turmoil in a scene, but BEST YEARS is a film where the music elevates the drama to something epic or legendary. Let's remember, that the characters in the film are not unique, they are emblematic of all American returning war veterans. It's a film made for them. That the story ends with the message that there is promise over the horizon must have made the real "Joes returning from the war" leave the theater with optimism. Friedhofer's contribution was to drive the point home, writing what suggests triumphal military music that got tired and downbeat, like the characters in the film. And like the characters, also looking for redemption.


Wow, I had no idea Goldsmith wrote Chinatown (very trumpet-y too, though). Turtletommy is right about the reason for the organ in the Patton score.

Anyway-- I'm not saying that the actors should convey the emotional turmoil in any given scene; the comment I read said that. I agree--and you put it so well--the music does indeed elevate the drama to the level of epic. The score really is a character in itself, in a way. No question whatsoever, that Wyler intended this film as a way to encourage the boys and men returning that there was hope ahead for them.

I think that the reason for the hideous number of suicides in returning Iraqi/Afghan war vets has less to do with the terrain and remote desert ugliness, and much more to do with the fact these young men return to a country where their contemporaries are generally, for lack of a better word, "metrosexuals." Young men these days don't want to be the kind of man a boy becomes when he is exposed to violence and suffering. In World War II, returning vets had a hard enough time--as the character of Fred Derry makes clear. But back then, Fred didn't also have to live in a whole town of prigs like his "boy-boss" at the drugstore. That's what boys these days are returning to, and it's driving them to self-hate and suicide.

So I can't agree with you more, wrfarley. To me, the score in this film served both as musical background and also as religious inspiration.

reply

Actually wrfarley should be credited for bringing up the organ in the PATTON score.

reply

Wyler also didn't care for Copeland's score for The Heiress in '49. He asked Friedhofer to re-score and re-arrange it for the film because it wasn't full enough -- which was done. Copeland disowned his work in the film and said so publicly, though he got an Academy Award for the score despite his statement. Strange turnabout, don't you think? Well, that's Hollywood for ya!

And, yeah, I'm a farley fan, too. 

Farley #2

reply

cfwente: Ha, I finished work and put in a DVD without realizing who the writer was: Thornton Wilder. The film? "Shadow of a Doubt." I did a double-take.

reply

It's a very beautiful score and it touches me emotionally every time I see the film. The only movie that comes close in my opinion is the Song of Bernadette, which has music by Alfred Newman. Both scores are heavy on the strings, which fit perfectly with the ideas and plots of their respective films. Of course a great score is nothing without great writing, acting and directing, and fortunately both films are magical in all of those departments.

reply

I got some 'splainin' to do. I just looked at the BEST YEARS chapter in Jan Herman's biography of William Wyler and I cannot find a quote or any text about the director's displeasure with the score. I'm certain I read it in this book, but it's not where I thought it was and the index only has one citation for Hugo Friedhofer, which is a mention of his Oscar win for the music. Of course, I can excuse myself by stating I read the book ten years ago and conflated it with some other director's complaint about a famous score, but I'm pretty sure I read it here (or somewhere else). If I'm wrong, we might have to chalk this up as a symptom of encroaching Alzheimer's disease.

If anyone has any further info, it would be helpful. If not, I will be in need of someone helping up and down stairs and feeding me in the near future.

reply

Ha! I never remember things that did not happen, wrfarley. In fact, I don't remember



ahem...

oh, yes! "Does This Ever Happen to You?" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036868/board/nest/228024423?p=3

You read it somewhere else. It's the memory gremlin at work, taking the actual citation from where you read it and hiding it in another synapse. If our computers--even our Apple computers --can have glitches, then, by gum, so can we.

I am glad, however, to read that Wyler didn't regret the score. The score is indispensable.

reply

farley,

Don't worry about a thing. I've been afflicted with the same disease you're afraid of for years! My advice is to look at the positive side. You will never have to apologize for stupid comments again. I've been making these for years now, and when people hear (or read) them, their response is -- "Can I get you a glass of warm milk, Farley-boy?" Yesterday, I was in a panic looking for my slippers when my wife, who has never been so afflicted (nor will she ever be!) told me I was wearing them. Anyway, I got a kiss on the forehead, and a glass of warm milk with a pill and a shot of Bailey's Irish Cream to boot!

See . . . it ain't so bad when you really think about it. . . Ahhh, now, what were we originally talking about??? . . .

Farley #2

reply

To Farleys Everywhere 

My New Year's resolution was to keep a diary. Ha, at 59. I started writing lists of the full names of every person I ever knew. I group them by the place/situation/time period in which I knew them. I got upset when I forgot the last name of one of my nursing home ladies.

Not to be morbid, but www.legacy.com is a great way to research long-forgotten people. If you use the advanced search and put in facts you *do* recall about someone whose name you forget, you frequently will find not only their names, but the names of other people who "ring a bell." Then--off on another search of another group of people you know.

reply

I may have found the culprit. In the trivia section of 3JRHFTW, there it is. Wyler hated Friedhofer's score. While it is hardly an authoritative source ("It must be true. I read it on the internet!"), at least I can say I saw it somewhere. That it's not in the Wyler biography makes the claim particularly dubious. A director hating the Oscar-winning score of his Oscar-winning movie would have been worth mentioning by his biographer, it would seem.

Re-reading the BEST YEARS chapter last week (all of about 10 pages), I did come away with some other interesting tidbits. First, Wyler strongly considered Olivia de Havilland for the role of Millie. The scene where Dana Andrews exits the car, he bumps his head on the door frame by accident. Wyler said, "Hey, that's good. Do it again." Wyler proceeded to shoot take after take of Fred getting out of the car, banging his head on the roof each time. Teresa Wright believed that Wyler was punishing Andrews for showing up on set late with a hangover. Late in the production, after watching a rough cut, Wyler thought he needed to bridge the scenes between Fred leaving home and arriving at the airfield. He said to screenwriter Robert Sherwood, "I need something here." Sherwood came up with the beautiful scene of Pat Derry reading Fred's citations to Hortense.

reply

Interesting stuff. I heard Charlton Heston say, more than once, that Wyler had the habit of re-taking scenes multiple times with no comment about what he wanted done differently and later picking the take he liked best. So, it could have been a punishment or, maybe, just SOP.

reply

Ok enough apologies and beating oneself up, I too thought I had read somewhere that Wyler didn't care for the score of your Three Joes epic. I think I've read the Anderegg bio of Wyler not the Madsen "authorized" ("authorized" bios give me pause- I'm expecting less than the full truth (whatever that is) from subject, friends and family) but at any rate I came across this book about Hugo Friedhofer which has some excerpts here, incl. some TBYOOL info and a little of a much longer Friedhofer oral history that I'd love to read further:

https://books.google.com/books?id=eI6AdtHt9WEC&pg=PA11&lpg=PA11&dq=Hugo+Friedhofer+%2B+william+wyler&source=bl&ots=ilfPFxTfaJ&sig=pgXOX8hc-3SefejiyNW1kLC5MQA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjD3K28i9_KAhVK6GMKHS7QBdMQ6AEIIzAB#v=onepage&q=Hugo%20Friedhofer%20%2B%20william%20wyler&f=false

According to it Wyler didn't like the score at first but a vet buddy liked it so much that Wyler reconsidered and changed his mind. I learned many new things about Friedhofer just scanning the excerpted pages in the link- hadn't realized how much he was admired among his peers and the other film scores he had been involved with directly or indirectly. I've been very interested for years to see Brando's One Eyed Jacks get a "restored" full widescreen release on DVD/Blu-ray- I've never seen it but it's always mentioned in hoped-for restorations/releases. I guess it's kind of a mess, but still has its virtues. Anyway the score by Friedhofer is supposed to be very good.

Oh and whether at that link or elsewhere Wyler didn't care much for the Jerome Moross' THE BIG COUNTRY score either!!! Brilliant perfectionist to a fault director as well as questionable musical taste!!!

reply

Ok enough apologies and beating oneself up, I too thought I had read somewhere that Wyler didn't care for the score of your Three Joes epic.


That was an interesting article. I actually can understand Wyler's ambivalence. The fact is (as Billy Wilder appears to have agreed) the score is so overwhelming in the opening scenes that all anyone can do for the first fifteen minutes of the film is cry. It's not a gender-thing; that score is musical heartbreak. Often, when I think it's a good time of the year, almost always autumn, to replay the film, I will find myself stalling because I don't want to gear up for the gut-wrench . Then, when I'm calmer, I just open a new box of tissues and watch again.

Would TBYOOL be the film it is without the score? I hate to say it, but I don't think so. That's kind of scary and also humbling to think, the significance of "things not seen."

reply

I have never read such bs anywhere as what you write! The music was FALSE. That is why Wyler hated it. It was pretentious crap. Turning an engine mount on an aircraft wing into a screeching Satanic explosion was false. The engines were removed to be put to better use. There was no drama in 4 empty engine mounts. That was FAKE. It made hearts beat in the audience, but not because an engine fell off or even broke. It was simply removed. Dull, but true. To write wild music that I expected Astaire to burst on the scene to perform a modern dance in orange and black, was false. THAT is not what we were seeing. The planes were about to be recycled for housing. Oooooh! Booga booga!

Accusing metrosexuals of ANY responsibility for veteran suicides is obscene. If anyone has nothing at all to do with this issue, I think you found them! You ought to be ashamed of yourself for minimizing the struggle of people who cannot find an alternative way to stop their hurt. They are suffering so much, and for you to turn it into some sort of evidence in a social campaign to regress to an earlier historical period people mistakenly believe would be easier, simpler, or more in keeping with some religious or social ideal is hideous. Do you believe God causes hurricanes to punish women's "libbers?" Or to punish gays? That's what it sounds like...the same ignorant thinking that caused the Inquisition to spread, witches to be burned, hung, drowned...

A study of suicides by U.S. veterans (not state national guardsmen, or the number could be even higher according to CNN) a few years ago revealed that 22 veterans commit suicide every day! The number indicates a huge surge in Vietnam era vets killing themselves as they retire, and cannot get the specific help they need to transition from one identity to another. 69% of veterans committing suicide nationally are aged 50 or older. This completely destroys your argument that metrosexuality returning vets face is too big a burden to deal with...whatever you made up.... These vets have been back in the States for a very long time. Much more serious issues are at play. Longtime marriages are breaking up, families are grown, are out of the house, and the men simply give up. They lived with the stress of memories of terrible violence for so long and can't stand any more of it.

Combat stress and military sexual assaults also are cited as causes of suicide attempts. Female veterans commit suicide at a ratesix timesthat of their civilian counterparts, placing them on a par with male veterans, which is not the case among women in the general population, who attempt suicide much less often than their male counterparts (5.2 women per 100,000 to 20.9 per 100,000 men, annually), according to the L.A. Times. http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-female-veteran-suicide-20150608-story.html The Pentagon released a report that 23% of female active duty personnel had suffered a sexual attack. Which combination of statistics is frightening--and disprove any link to "metrosexuals."

Gulf War I veterans are continuing to experience excruciating symptoms of the Gulf War Syndrome that the V.A. refused to acknowledge for years. And as trauma injury treatment has improved, lives are being saved that we are not prepared to treat in the long term, medically and esp mentally, emotionally. Some argue the number of suicides is much lower, esp for Gulf War 2 vets, but many more--those who have performed significant research on the topic--claim the actual figure is much higher because so many Gulf War 2 vets are outside the V.A. system--their experiences won't be part of any study using V.A. numbers. They were state national guardsmen.

Experts point out that homeless people often aren't counted among vets committing suicide, because they lack ID. Suicide by cop is not included in the numbers either. Vets are committing suicide at a rate much much higher than their presence in the population. The suicide rate for veterans increased 2.6%--double that for the rest of the population--between 2005 and 2011. Nearly one in five suicides nationally is a veteran, although they make up only 10% of the population. Veterans commit suicide at a rate of about 30 for 100,000 in the population. Non-veterans commit suicide at a rate of about 14 per 100,000 of population, placing veterans at slightly more than double the rate of non-vets... All these figures were compiled by CNN http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/21/us/22-veteran-suicides-a-day/ 30% of veterans from Iraq and Gulf Wars have contemplated suicide, and 45% know someone who has attempted it.

Suicide is NOT something anyone does because a guy in NYC or California waxes his chest, or uses a face cream! Or because a woman wants a construction job. It is a decision that is made for very personal reasons. It's a helpless response to overwhelming pain. A complete lack of alternative ways to stop the pain. People don't commit suicide in response to strangers' behavior--or there would be so many more, and few of us would survive to adulthood. Ask the veterans themselves. They report that they suffer greatly as a result of what goes on inside of their heads after they return from combat. Memories of people being killed that they cannot escape. Painful memories, painful injuries. They could not care less about metrosexuals--in fact may be metrosexuals themselves. I posted this info to try to compensate for the foolishness of blaming any group for something far more serious.

reply

Few more things of interest concerning Friedhofer:

Fascinating track by track breakdown from a 1978 recording of Friedhofer's score for BYOOL. The website seems chock full of other info too.
http://hugofriedhofer.runmovies.eu/?p=461

Had no idea the film originally had exit music, which was removed after the first few showings in Hollywood. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OisoX5vqAMU

Yippeee, a Full length YouTube video of ONE EYED JACK'S, scored by Friedhofer (listen for similar TBYOOL notes as Brando's name appears in the opening credits!)- looks like a great transfer from a Laserdisc. I'll be watching this soon!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sf_UKobXIH4

reply

I hated the music. HATED IT. Actually turn ed it down when he had that hideous racket while stowing where the old aircraft were stored--WTF is so ominous to the idiot composer about the spot on the wing where the engine nacelles were installed? That was shamefully stupid. He wrote music that sounded as tho it was the moderne score for a new dance of Hades...and the screen merely moved whom one engine mount to the next to the next to the next. Pretending they had some power to kill the actor...the engines now gone....

The fool must not have bothered watching the film--they explained the planes were about to be recycled into housing material! I never heard of this ass before, and will avoid his movies in the future. I understand William Wyler's pain. This was no Faustian dance like we saw Astaire do in the Band Wagon (I think that's the one...could be confused). All the screeching and fake drama was repulsive.

Give me Elmer Bernstein any day (we used to attend the San Fer5nando Valley Symphony concerts just to hear him conduct when I was young! I thought I did not like Herrman, but I think I'm a fan compared to how I felt about this pretentious yokel, Friedhofer.

reply

Well, there's always one in the bunch. I get so choked up at the music at the end that I almost blubber and there's another guy who thinks it's overwrought and hates it. I guess I can take comfort in the fact that this one time in my life I am part of the vast majority.

I'm reminded of Shallow Hal, of all things. In the film, when a hypnotized Jack Black asks Jason Alexander why he's wrong to see a beautiful Rosemary when everyone else just sees a fat tub of lard, Alexander replies, "Ummm....third party confirmation?"

reply

Friedhofer's score is perfect. The characters may not be individually spectacular or overwhelming, but the story is. In fact, it is a quiet epic of homecoming. Homecoming to America, scored with that unique "American" feel. The great sweep of history in WW II was not only in the enlistment-to-combat stages. The crucial "closure" of that "play" was the homecoming. And Friedhofer scored it without flaw.

reply

I forgot to mention some interesting straight dope earlier in this discussion; mainly regarding the film PATTON. That film was directed by Franklin J. Schafner, but do you know who was originally signed to helm it? Why, William Wyler. He worked on the script for over a year. Francis Ford Coppola wrote the original draft, which Wyler deemed un-workable, then brought in another writer, Edmund North, to pen the shooting script. I think this was around 1967. Whenever it was, Wyler, who was in his 60's had a health scare and realized he may not have the stamina to take on another stressful epic (as he had in BEN-HUR) so he bowed out of the project, and made the more modest film, THE LIBERATION OF L.B. JONES, which became the director's swan song.

reply

I liked the score alright. I esp like that he underscored the arial shots when they're coming home.

I could, however, do without the variation of the Nanny Nanny Billygoat children's goading theme when they showed Homer's little sis and her friends and Homer and Wilma. That was bad.

All Movie Reviews www.cultfilmfreaks.com

reply