During the 50s and 60s, Ronald Stein scored many low-budget films for studios like American International and Allied Artists, as well as an occasional bigger picture for Columbia or Paramount, lending his skill and penchant for creative experimentation both to memorable films such as THE PREMATURE BURIAL, NOT OF THIS EARTH and Francis Ford Coppola's DEMENTIA 13 and THE RAIN PEOPLE as well as less-eagerly recalled turkeys as ATTACK OF THE 50-FOOT WOMAN, IT CONQUERED THE WORLD, CANNIBAL ORGY and so on.
Born in St. Louis in 1930; Stein was educated there at Washington University, later studying at Yale and U.S.C. in Los Angeles. He acted at the Music Director's assistant and soloist for the Municipal Opera in St. Louis during the early 1950s before becoming involved in film scoring. Stein is also an accomplished arranger as well as a professor of music, heading the Scoring and Arranging emphasis at the College of Music, University of Colorado at Denver from 1980-85. His first love, however, remains composing, and he has remained active in film scoring over the years.
Regardless of the qualitative content or budgetary limitations of the picture in question, Stein takes his responsibility as a member of the film's production team seriously, and he approaches with professionalism assignments even for such prime schlockers as SHE-GODS OF SHARK REEF, as he said in a recent Interview for
The Denver Post [3-3-85]: “Yes, that's one of the worst films ever made,” he admitted. “I wrote an hour of music for that one. Do you know why? Because it needed 60 minutes of music to save it. I look at a picture from an emotional point of view. To write the proper music, you must know what the audience will want to be feeling at a particular moment, and the music must supply this.”
A consummate craftsman as well as an articulate speaker, Stein describes with a remarkable memory for detail his work In film music of the 50s and 60s, as well as his imminent return to Hollywood scoring in 1985.
How did you get started in the film music field?
The whole thing really revolved around what I thought during the Army, because I had three choices. One, to go back to Yale where I was studying my Master’s advanced degree; to go back to St. Louis where I came from and head up an entire music studio I (which was a rather flattering offer at the age of twenty-two). And the other was to go to Hollywood and try to write music for films, for which I felt I had a certain bent, since my whole background was drama – a double major in drama and music. So I wrote twenty-two letters to all the heads of the studios. I received one reply, from Lionel Newman, and he said “don’t come,” that there were plenty of composers and that it would be difficult to break in. But I came out anyway, in 1954, and met people like David Raksin, and others, and played piano for them and showed them some of my work.
One stop that I made was in the office of Roger Corman, who at that time had made two small films, THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS and FIVE GUNS WEST, and was about to direct the first film for a new company called American International Pictures – their first in house production. I stopped in and left a record of my music and about a week or so later I received a phone call from him saying that they’d take a chance on me. “We don’t have much money, but we’ll give you a full credit with your name on it by itself.” I suppose, to break into the field, I would have been willing to do it for nothing with no credits, but I didn’t say that! They gave me a percentage of the net profits of the picture, something which is probably unheard of in this country to anyone like a film composer, and that amounted to thousands of dollars later on, when they bought out all the percentages.
But that’s how it happened. Roger said, “We want a modern Indian score,” and I guess the abstract symphony that I had written at Yale, in the third movement there was some wild timpani going along with a lot of other music maybe that’s what he thought was a modern Indian score! Anyway, the film was APACHE WOMAN, and I guess I gave them a romantic score, although there were certain modern touches. I learned a great deal on that first film from the music editor, Jerry Irwin. Another person who helped me a great deal was Irving Talbott, at Paramount Pictures. When I’d gone around to see everyone I met him, and for some reason he took a liking to me even though I didn’t work for Paramount for many years. Irving Talbott was a conductor of other people’s music, and he also came from St. Louis which was my home town, and for that reason he spent a lot of time showing me a lot of tricks about using a stopwatch and click tracks and streamers and all kinds of things of which I had read nothing. Before I came to Hollywood I knew nothing about synchronization, I read no books about orchestration, I only came with what I felt would be my own talent and the idea that I could treat a film.
What were some of your impressions, working on those low-budget movies at the time?
I treated every project that I’ve ever worked on, and some of them have been fairly miserable, with the greatest deal of respect. My question to myself, always, in any work I’ve done, was that my contribution had to be equal to or greater than anyone else’s individual contribution. Maybe on some of the lower budget films that was easier to achieve than in, say, working on a Francis Coppola film or Richard Rush or something else. That’s always been the way I’ve approached it. This is also the way I treated it, budget-wise, never wasting money, even if I wasn’t paying for it. I treated it with a great deal of respect, first of all because the medium, to me, deserves it; and secondly, because the cooperation of all the people involved in order to get a film mounted is so important. Since then I’ve been an associate producer on some documentary films and I’ve learned a great deal about filmmaking, beyond just the music, and to get something together that is a film that expresses itself in some kind of meaningful way, even though the subject matter may be pretty poor, is an achievement unto itself just to make it come off. So I’ve always appreciated that and tried to contribute as best I could in that direction.
What kind of conditions did you work under, in terms of time allowed, size of orchestra, and other limitations imposed on the music you were to write?
We always used the lower amount of instrumentation. There was a special budget for musicians for lower budget pictures. For a picture under $150,000 you could use an orchestra of twenty-two musicians for X-dollars. For many of those early films I used twenty-two musicians and I’m proud to say they sounded much bigger and fuller than that, which maybe has something to do with my orchestration, which I pride myself on.
The time condition, for writing… well, in 1958, I think I did thirteen films in one year. Practically all the films that I’ve done have had at least forty-five minutes of music if not more, and so I’ve accomplished that and also orchestrated all the music in all the films myself (except for a few of the contemporary rock things, where we used people like David Gates or whoever was connected with a group to do special arrangements). I believe that orchestrating is an integral part of the compositional process – this does not mean that Jerry Goldsmith and Arthur Morton, together, don’t make fantastic music, but it is easier for many composers to accomplish more and perhaps to think of the individual notes at a little greater leisure because it is rather tedious to put all the notes down for every instrument transposed, which is the way I write.
I have to tell you one thing, I wrote one film score – I finished dubbing a picture at 6pm on a Friday and at 9am the next Monday was the downbeat for another film score which I hadn’t yet written a note on, and I wrote that forty-odd minutes of music between 6pm Friday and 9am Monday when it had to be recorded. I can’t say that it was the greatest music I ever wrote, but it did not harm the film. That’s one thing I can’t stand, things that are tedious, overdone, underplayed, overplayed. I think of the drama always, the pacing of the editing, what the intent of the author was, whether the actors achieved it or didn’t, what the director’s thrust is in the cuts, and I take all that into consideration before I think of even one note of music.
I’d like to name a few other films of this period and ask for any recollections you may have on the way you scored them. Do you recall your approach to IT CONQUERED THE WORLD?
One thing I remember is that I used electronics in about seven of the cues. This was before synthesizers, of course. I used an oscillator and recorded it myself at the frequencies. There were these wild birds that came out of this monster and they stab people in the back of the neck. This particular scene I scored with these swirling flutes above the rest of the orchestra while these birds were attacking. Then I overdubbed that with piccolos played by the same three flutists an octave higher, and then I overdubbed that an octave higher yet with the oscillator, and since most of the music was trills, I could set the frequencies and just move my hand nervously on the oscillator at that frequency and then slide to the next frequency in time with the music. I used electronics that way, which I suppose is about the crudest way a person could ever do it, you’re not even sophisticating it with tape!
How about NOT OF THIS EARTH?
I enjoyed doing that score very much, in fact I liked the film very much. The motive is four notes long. I have to admit I don’t think it’s as good as Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, I used a half step instead of the skip of a third! But the whole thing is based on that, and one of the few times I wrote a fugue occurred in that film. You don’t very often get a chance to experiment with classic forms of music inside of films, and you shouldn’t, because when people impose that on a film it doesn’t work for it unless the scene gives you that opportunity.
What about THE SHE-CREATURE?
(chuckles): I used electric violin and I used seven different tam-tams splashing and sustaining in relation to the theme. I guess for me, as the She Creature appeared from the ocean, she appeared with the sound of splashing Chinese gongs. At least that was my feeling; but the point is, I didn’t just use one, I used different pitches and combinations at different appropriate times. I enjoyed the sequence where Marla English went back in time, and that kind of thing. I like to be able to create the mood of what’s happening exactly, and of course that’s really purely orchestration rather than the particular notes.
What about ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS and INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN?
We have to lump them together?! One is a comedy and the other is to be laughed at! No, I shouldn’t say that! In THE ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS I used an organ as well as a full orchestra, and I wrote what I think is one of my best cues for the final attack, it achieved many peaks of climax and interest over a long period, almost four minutes long, which is hard to do in film music without becoming redundant. I don’t want to say much more about ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS!
As far as INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN, I loved doing that, especially the main title theme, which was played on the xylophone-kind of
Flight of the Bumble Bee except there’s another tune going on in the orchestra. I had a chance to do some comedy there with the drunken farmer, the Saucer Men stabbing his cattle with alcohol and various things like that. No matter what you imagine musically, the music has to enhance whatever is happening dramatically.
What about DINOSAURUS?
That film, of course, substance wise, seemed to be a little bit shallow. I think I wrote a nice theme for the dinosaurs, the challenge there was in the comedy scenes with the caveman. Some of those I think worked out rather well, I used four instruments for that treatment, that’s almost like doing a TV comedy show. The theme was drowned out pretty much by the sound effects at the end of the film, but I wrote some heroic dinosaur music, I think.
What of THE PREMATURE BURIAL? Some sources credit this as a collaboration with Les Baxter.
I wrote all the music. What is credited perhaps is the A.I.P. emblem, which Les Baxter wrote, but none of the other music was written by Les Baxter [the official musical cue sheet for the film bears this out, -rdl]. I wove the theme from “Molly Malone,” which is performed by a whistler, into the score and I enjoyed that. I am also proud of the score’s orchestration. I took a lot of care with the sync of the piano when she plays. I treat with much respect any kind of music that you’re going to see being played, to make it look as authentic as possible.
THE TERROR and THE HAUNTED PALACE?
A couple of good ones, there. About THE HAUNTED PALACE, I’ll just give you one quote. I usually go to the theatre to see the films that I’ve scored just to see if what I accomplished came out the way it should, for the effect in the audience. The first night THE HAUNTED PALACE came out I went to a small theatre on Hollywood Blvd., and I was sitting toward the back, and in front of me was sitting a little girl and what looked like her parents on either side. I don’t know if there was too much theme, but about the last time Vincent Price walks down this hall (Roger Corman often has endless halls that people have to walk down to get places!) and while he was doing that the theme came in again, to me, I like a classic Frankenstein type of romantic theme, with Tchaikovskian overtones, and there’s no dialog, and it’s about the third time you’ve heard that theme, and the little girl said out, loud, “Oh! That music!” Well, that made my evening, because she meant it in a kind of excruciatingly electrifying or exotic way. THE HAUNTED PALACE had a theme in the lower instruments, with the trumpets, playing a chordal obbligato above it.
THE TERROR also has a theme, totally different from THE HAUNTED PALACE, but it’s also in the lower instruments. It’s the only two times I’ve written the main theme in the bass, with other kind of movement of music above it. It’s kind of a challenge to do that, you won’t hear many themes in movies in which the harmony and other melodic lines are playing above the tune. Not that you can’t do it, but it’s not done too often. I seem to remember other kinds of music which may have been part of a track job on that particular film, as well as the music I composed for it.
What films are you especially proud of from this period?
There are a couple of things. I’ve always tried to be inventive in each film score. In THE LITTLEST HOBO, which I think is the first time that an animal’s thoughts motivated the entire narrative of the film, Randy Sparks sang the song that I wrote, “Road Without End,” which was the dog’s thoughts. I used ten instruments on that film; I could have used a much larger orchestra but I didn’t feel it was necessary. For example, if I can give you just a touch, there’s a scene where the dog, the German shepherd, has just had a little flirtation with a black poodle that has gone into a store with its owner. The shepherd sits down outside the door of the store, like he’s waiting for the poodle to come out. The next cut, which we were going to treat just with sound, is a closeup of the white tip of a blind man’s cane tapping on the sidewalk. I took the rhythm of that tapping, the exact sound of it, and I put it in as the end of the previous cue, way up in medium-high xylophone thirds while something else was sustaining, but right at the end of that cue as the dog is waiting poised outside the door you hear this tap-tap tap tap-tap in the xylophone and it ends the cue, fading out, and the next cut is the tap-tap tap-tap of the cane. It’s almost like a rhythmic sound dissolve that you didn’t know was going to happen. That kind of thing.
I love using sound effects in music. I’ve used musique concrete. In GETTING STRAIGHT there’s a scene where Elliot Gould is talking to a sexy student, and in that scene I used vibes, bass, and the actual sound of his voice when, at the end of the scene, she says some kind of a joke and he goes, “tsk, tsk, tsk.” I had the music cutter take out his “tsk, tsk tsk” and cut it in a three/four time, so that you have this tsk-tsk-tsk as the rhythm behind the theme, and then it ends and he goes “tsk, tsk, tsk.” It’s kind of a rhythmic sound that you couldn’t quite put your hands on, but it fits, because it was quietly behind the vibes and the dialog. I love experimenting and using sounds in film. I’ve worked with some fantastic sound people, like Walter Murch, and you get inspired. Music is part of the sound spectrum of the picture, anyway, the big emotional part.
You’ve worked on many films for which you got no credit or which were credited to others, such as JOURNEY TO THE 7TH PLANET which is credited to Ib Glindeman…
The credits may not always reflect something that is accurate. The cue sheets may be made up differently by the studios, or something else. Ib Glindeman is a composer, I’ve heard his music. There is his music in JOURNEY TO THE 7TH PLANET and there is my music in that picture. Many of the low budget pictures often had title changes, as well. For example, THE NAKED PARADISE, which I did in 1956, was changed to THUNDER OVER HAWAII. I don’t know why companies change the names, maybe they think they can sneak them into TV as a different film than the one they released theatrically.
Like BLOOD BATH, which was the TV title for PLANET OF BLOOD.
That’s what I mean. In those days we did a lot of what we call tracking – reusing music from one film in another. For example, I composed music for one library in particular, at American International, which I recorded out of the country, and they used it in low budget and other kinds of films that they picked up spuriously. That’s how my music appeared in many of the films, though sometimes not directly created for that specific film.
You’ve worked with many different directors and producers, including Roger Corman and Francis Ford Coppola. How much input did they contribute toward the music you wrote?
I have to admit that Roger Corman, one of the most talented producers of any kinds of films, is successful mostly because he lets people do what they could do best, and very often, fortunately for him, the chemistry worked. I’ve written film scores for certain producers where they were right behind me at the piano, saying “what is that?”, “what is that note?”, “why did you do that?”, where you have to explain and give them an entire music lesson! However, I feel the more information a person has, the better off their movie will be. I don’t like to have surprises.
Let me just digress a moment. I remember a conversation at the Academy, where Richard Brooks showed THE PROFESSIONALS. A question was asked how he and the composer, who was Maurice Jarre, how he worked with the composer. And after a little pause, Richard Brooks said, “I gave Mr. Jarre recordings of the kind of music – the feeling of music – that I wanted and where they should go, in what sequences, and then he went off and wrote his own music,” which was very fitting, and in fact it was a very nice score. But, you see, being able to communicate is the most elusive element – just a change of a few notes can change the character of an entire structure. So therefore people who don’t know music and can’t explain it specifically need to use records or something if they want to communicate with a composer in this way.
Working for Francis Ford Coppola was wonderful. He’s a genius. I’ve known him for a long time, and I scored DEMENTIA 13, his first film. It was a low budget picture that Francis shot in five days and nights. It only cost $40,000; Roger put $20,000 more into it and stuck in the psychologist talking about the Dementia Precox, which was then cut out of the picture when Francis re-bought all the rights, and put it back in its original form. Francis, of course, is also very musical, and of course his father, Carmine, is a musician and composer. Let me say that I he and his father were not the closest father and son at that time, and when we recorded THE RAIN PEOPLE in San Francisco, Francis came and said, “Ron, do you think we could use my father to play flute?” He had played flute for Toscanini, and I said if he can play flute for Toscanini he can certainly play flute for me! And in San Francisco he played the flute. It had some very nice flute parts even overdubbed on the theme of THE RAIN PEOPLE, and really the re-connection between Francis and his father took place at that time. I felt very good that I was a catalyst in the renewal of their relationship. I also used some synthesis on that film, the whole bass line of THE RAIN PEOPLE is a Moog synthesizer. Music synthesis is – really opening up, too. I tried to use certain kinds of synthesis in different scores fitting to my purpose, but that whole area should be a fantastic direction for all music, legitimate as well as film. It’s proven itself in rock music, already; there’s hardly a record out without any synthesis.
How much freedom were you given by various directors and producers?
In working with different directors and producers, I was usually given complete freedom. Once again – because these people are not always able to be conversant in what they want with music, I was able to experiment, to write in styles that are perhaps more modern and strident and dissonant than many films scores we hear, not because I think you’ve got to have dissonance to be modern, but when everything is crumbling down or the monster is eating a person, I think that’s a rather dissonant occasion! It calls for extreme treatments inside the music, as long as it all fits together. So I was able to do many things in relation to orchestration and electronics, the style of the music, the specific instruments, those kinds of things. Writing music for science fiction films in particular is a wonderfully exciting experience for a composer because, as science fiction is in the beyond and the nearly impossible, you can think in the beyond and the nearly impossible, and you have the chance to achieve something new.
I’m happy to say that, with one exception, the placing of the music in a film, which is just as important as what the music says, were my own choices, and with which the director or producer agreed, although I have had to argue with some of them. The exception was DIME WITH A HALO, which I did for MGM. In that particular film I wanted to make sure that there was no music in the church scene when the little boy talks to this statue of Jesus on the wall and thanks God for letting them steal the dime out of the collection box, with which they then won the lottery, and while he talks I made sure that there was no music. But one of the producers said, “Well, it’s too quiet!” I loved the hush in the church, but he said “We gotta have music, gotta have music!” and I said, “Well, I don’t have any music.” So then Robert Armbruster wrote a piece of Flamenco type music (which I stayed away from like anathema), Laurindo Almeida recorded it on guitar, and they put those two pieces of music in. When the review came out in Variety, it said that the music was very nice, “except for the two sequences in the church where the music stood out and was obnoxious.” So I called Variety and said “I had nothing to do with that music! Please print a retraction!” They checked with MGM, and the next day, in a little black box in the corner, they did say that it wasn’t my fault! I don’t know what kind of justice it is, but it was the only bad review I’ve ever received.
You’ve also worked on many of A.I.P.’s youth-oriented films during the 60s. What can you say about your work on those kinds of pictures?
I remember doing some very exciting things for the youth-oriented ROCK ALL NIGHT, which was a musical, with The Platters and Fats Domino and various people of that period. Lou Russof, who was the brother-in-law of Samuel Arkoff of American International, and a writer from the radio days, he wrote, constructively, some very good screenplays, but I don’t think he always put the right words in the mouths of the youths. In pictures like DRAGSTRIP GIRL and that kind of movie, and sometimes it was difficult to figure out how to keep the thing rocking and pulsing when the dialog became stiff. Some of the music was imposed upon the scene. I didn’t always use the same type of rock music, sometimes I used jazz, sometimes legitimate, but those films can be tough to work on. I think they should have a documentary approach to the music, that it should almost be records of the day, otherwise if we try and duplicate it in style we sometimes miss.
You also scored a lot of war movies…
I thoroughly enjoyed doing films like PARATROOP COMMAND and WAR IS HELL. My themes and my sound, very often, was pretty strong – in context I guess that’s fitting for a war movie. WAR IS HELL was a ten-tone score but tonal, if you know what dodecaphonic music is, and I used a heartbeat mixed with the music. I listened to about thirty-two heartbeats before I picked the one I wanted, which you hear with the music when Tony Russell dies, and then the music fades out and it’s just his heartbeat, and then that stops. The whole thing was built toward that, that’s why the score has this dum-dum, dum-dum quality to it early on, which you wouldn’t relate to the heartbeat until we get to that scene. I have been told many times that the treatment was very effective.
And you’ve just finished scoring something called FRANKENSTEIN’S GREAT AUNT TILLIE?
Yes. The film is an independent production photographed in Spain and Mexico, written, produced, and directed by Myron Gold. It stars Donald Pleasance as the Baron, Yvonne Furneaux as the Great Aunt Tillie, and also June Wilkinson, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Aldo Rey, and the monster is beautifully played by Miguel Angel Fuentes This is a zany reproduction of the classic Frankenstein story, but it includes other interesting elements, like Tillie being a woman’s libber at the turn of the Century. We have flashbacks going back to earlier Baron Frankensteins, and what makes it colorful is that, while the Baron’s narration talks about all the great things he did in creating this monster, pictorially it is shown that he was really a glutton and something of a sex fiend.
How did you become involved with this project?
Myron Gold contacted me. I’ve worked with him before, when I had my own independent post-production company. We did the DATELINE YESTERDAY series, which was made in the 70s by Televisa of Mexico and then sold to Universal’s foreign distribution arm; I did the music for him, using the Mexican Symphony. I’ve been to Mexico a few times, I did Merle Oberon’s film which was shot in Mexico, OF LOVE AND DESIRE, and some other films. Most of them have been foreign productions and I’ve been asked to go down there and record the music. Of course, this is done for only one reason, to save money.
What kind of music have you written for FRANKENSTEIN’S GREAT AUNT TILLIE?
The music is something very different than a lot of the strident science fiction type music that I’ve written in the past. The film is more a delightful comedy, and I’ve used that kind of treatment rather than something sinister and menacing. I used an orchestra of 54 musicians, members of the Mexican National Symphony Orchestra; there is a large string section, I also used harpsichord and piano and organ and harp, and three percussionists, harmonica, and in one sequence, bagpipes! Of course I always use a synthesizer now because I believe it is an essential instrument for orchestration.
What are some of your other current musical activities?
I’ve been the head of the scoring and arranging department, as professor of music, at the University of Colorado at Denver since 1980, where I’ve started a collection of manuscripts from film and theatre. I’ve still worked in the film music field; I wrote the theme for a Western series which is still getting off the ground, a retrospective on all the westerns made in this country, and I’ll supervise the music for that. I did a little score to a film called STALEMATE, which I enjoyed very much since it dealt with a chess master, and chess is one of my hobbies. I’ve written a country western tune for a film called SPARKLES, which deals with a western singer who befriends a woman who’s sort of in trouble, and I may do the score for that picture as well. And I’ll be leaving the University of Colorado after the Spring 1985 semester to return to composing in Hollywood, so I will be adding new movies to your compendium of scores!
Sadly most of the pending movie projects Ron mentions here were not completed. He died in Los Angeles on August 15, 1988, of pancreatic cancer, at the age of 58. - rdl
