Herbert Stothart

Publication: The Max Steiner Journal / Issue No.4 / 1979

Publisher: Max Steiner Music Society

Copyright © 1979, by Max Steiner Music Society. All rights reserved.

Business was booming on old Broadway in the snowy December of 1927. While Herbert Stothart was conducting his operetta Golden Dawn to packed houses at the Hammerstein Theatre, other future film scorers were conducting musical shows to packed houses at neighbouring theatres. Max Steiner was conducting Vincent Youmans' Hit the Deck at the Belasco Theatre. Roy Webb was conducting Rodgers and Hart's A Connecticut Yankee at the Vanderbilt. Alfred Newman was conducting George Gershwin's Funny Face at the Alvin. The Great White Way was at the peak of its Golden Age… At the same time, Al Jolson's Warner Bros. film THE JAZZ SINGER, a part-Talkie just released, was attracting huge audiences. A new Golden Age, that of Hollywood, was about to dawn. Besides songs, Jolson's picture contained a musical score specially composed, arranged and conducted by his (59th Street) theatre orchestra leader, Louis ("April Showers") Silvers, who had accompanied him to Hollywood. Stothart, Steiner, Webb, Newman and various other top Broadway musicians could hardly then have guessed that, within the space of two years or so, they would all follow them out to the motion picture studios in sunny California, and never return. They became the originators, the founding fathers, of soundtrack film music. This article is dedicated to one who, half a century ago, went to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
 

Herbert Stothart was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on September 11, 1885. His mother was Bavarian; his father, a welfare worker, came from a South Carolina family of Scottish descent. During the 1890s Herbert sang in the choir of St. John's Protestant Episcopal Church on the city's South Side. Although his German mother passed on to him a love of her native music, there was no tradition in his family of music as a means of livelihood. Young Herbert's early ambition was to teach history at school. To that end, he enrolled at the Milwaukee Normal School. He took part in the musical side of amateur theatricals there, and on certain evenings each week he worked as an usher at the Davidson Theatre. He graduated and went to the University of Wisconsin, financing himself by teaching at a tiny South Side Milwaukee school.

It was at college that Herbert Stothart's musical talent really blossomed. He became a leading light of the University's Harefoot Club, for whose amateur theatrical productions he composed and conducted the music. He could equally well have acted in them; he was tall, with Latin good looks, dark hair (gone grey by the time he went to Hollywood in 1929), shining dark eyes and a high forehead; he somewhat resembled a later member of the Harefoot Club, future stage and screen star Fredric March (1897-1975). Song-writer Joseph ("I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now") Howard was so struck where one called Manicure Shop, that he had it produced professionally at a leading Chicago theatre, where it enjoyed a respectable run.

Stothart then broadened his musical horizons by studying in Europe. He returned to Wisconsin University as a music teacher. But not for long. His encounters with the exciting, bedazzling world of the theatre had seen to that. His urge to have a shot at Broadway became irresistible. He saved some money and, in 1914, resigned from his University post and entrained for New York City, carrying in his pocket an introduction to Arthur Hammerstein, Florenz Ziegfeld's rival as a producer of stage spectaculars. Stothart played some of his songs on the piano in Hammerstein's office. The producer acknowledged that he had a way with a melody, hired him and sent him out as conductor of the third touring company of High Jinks, a popular show composed by Rudolf Friml (1879-1972), a Hammerstein discovery who came from Prague.

Five vagabond years as a road-show musical director followed for Herbert Stothart. Occasionally Hammerstein would interpolate a Stothart song in one of his Broadway "book" shows. There was one in Friml's Katinka (1915: bought by M-G-M in the Thirties as a possible vehicle for MacDonald and Eddy, but never filmed), and another in Somebody's Sweetheart (1918).

In 1919, Stothart married a young actress, Dorothy Wolfe, whose mother, Georgia, was a New York theatrical agent. Later that year, Arthur Hammerstein called him in off the highways and by-ways of America. The producer had a young stage-manager nephew, Oscar, who had written some good lyrics for Columbia University theatricals, but who could not write music. Hammerstein wanted a composer to work with the inexperienced Oscar on a show for Broadway. Stothart found the lanky, beaming Oscar was as progressive and bursting with new ideas as he was, and a partnership began which lasted throughout the 1920s.

The first show with music by Herbert Stothart and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960: Oscar was named after his famous impresario grandfather), entitled Always You, opened at the Central Theatre, New York, on January 5, 1920. Starring Helen Ford, it ran for a mere 66 performances, although the subsequent tour lasted six months.

For Stothart and Oscar's next show, Tickle Me, Arthur Hammerstein summoned up reinforcements. Veteran librettist and lyricist Otto Harbach (1873-1963), who had written the lyrics of numerous shows such as Friml's The Firefly, and songs such as Karl Hoschna's "Every Little Movement Has A Meaning Of Its Own", collaborated with Oscar on the lyrics and libretto. Frank Mandel also collaborated on the libretto, which dealt in happy-go-lucky fashion with a Hollywood unit filming in Tibet. Stothart composed all the music. Starring Frank Tinney, Tickle Me began its highly satisfactory 207-performance run at the Selwyn Theatre, New York, on August 17, 1920. Arthur Hammerstein produced it on a splashy scale (particularly the "Ceremony of the Sacred Bath" scene), and the songs had the boisterous jollity of the age (one chorus number, "We've Got Something", kidded Prohibition).

Stothart and Oscar's Jimmie opened at the Apollo Theatre, New York, on November 17, and had 71 performances. Again Stothart wrote all the music; the libretto was by Oscar, Harbach and Mandel, the lyrics by Oscar and Harbach. A Stothart song was included in Friml's The Blue Kitten, that opened at the Selwyn 1920, New York, on January 13, 1922. Stothart conducted the 140-performance run, during which time he composed the score for Daffy Dill. He also conducted the 71-performance run of Daffy Dill (libretto by Guy Bolton and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II), beginning on August 22, 1922, at the Apollo Theatre, New York. 

In 1923, Stothart and Oscar had their first smash hit: Wildflower. To collaborate with Stothart in composing the music, Arthur Hammerstein brought in Vincent Youmans (1898-1946), who was just starting out on Broadway. The orchestrations were by Max Steiner. (Max worked a lot as arranger for Youmans and other composers during the 1920s. Using the piano for bass, Youmans would whistle tunes, which Max then wrote down and orchestrated. Because Youmans preferred working after midnight, Max's poor eyesight suffered.) Wildflower, evolving round Edith Day as a quick-tempered Italian Cinderella (libretto and lyrics by Harbach and Oscar), opened at the Casino Theatre, New York, on February 7, 1923, and ran for 477 performances. The show-stoppers were the title number and "Bambalina", both perennial favourites. The other Italian-type songs in the show are also charming: "April Blossoms", "There's Music in our Hearts", "I Can Always Find Another Partner", "Casimo", "Goodbye, Little Rosebud", "I Love You" and "You Can Never Blame a Girl for Dreaming". The original recordings of these songs (made by the London production cast, with the Shaftesbury Theatre Orchestra conducted by Philip Braham, in February 1926, just after the British premiere of Wildflower) were reissued last year on one side of an LP (SH 279) by World Records-EMI in England (and issued in the U.S. on Monmouth-Evergreen MES-7052).

Stothart again collaborated with Vincent Youmans on the music of Many Jane McKane (libretto and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and William Cary Duncan), which started a 151-performance run at the Imperial Theatre, New York, on Christmas Day, 1923. (Youmans then branched out on his own with No, No, Nanette in 1925, Hit the Deck in 1927, etc., and in 1933 he composed the songs for the Astaire and Rogers film FLYING DOWN TO RIO, which had Max Steiner as musical director.)

"An operetta set in the Canadian Rockies, with Mounties, trappers, Red Indians, a murder and a manhunt," in January 1924 Arthur Hammerstein sent Oscar up to Quebec for ideas. Oscar returned and started work on the libretto of Rose Marie with Otto Harbach. Arthur Hammerstein assigned Stothart to collaborate with Rudolf Friml on the music. The team decided to make the music integral to the drama, so that the songs moved the story forward like arias in an opera, thus establishing something new in operetta. Stothart composed most of his share of the score, redolent of the northern pine forests and mountain lakes, in a cabin he owned overlooking Lake Michigan. He alone composed "The Minuet of the Minute" for the ballroom sequence, and "Hard Boiled Herman". He worked with Friml on "The Song of the Mounties" and some of the other numbers. Rose Marie, starring Mary Ellis (ex-Metropolitan Opera), Dennis King and William Kent, opened at the Imperial Theatre, New York, on September 2, 1924, and had a sensational run of 581performances.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Rose Marie did even better. Stothart went to England to assist in its production at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London. Starring Edith Day and Derek Oldham, it opened on March 20, 1925 and ran for a record-breaking 851 performances (and was revived there in 1929). Stothart later returned to Europe for its Paris and Berlin premieres. The original 1925 London cast recordings of Rose Marie (together with some of the songs from Katinka, The Blue Kitten, The Vagabond King and The Three Musketeers) were reissued in 1976 on the World Records - EMI (British) double album "Rudolf Friml in London" (SHB-37). M-G-M in Hollywood filmed Rose Marie as a Silent in 1927 (starring Joan Crawford), and as a Talkie in 1935 (MacDonald and Eddy: Stothart as musical director had to leave out his “Minuet of the minute” and “Hard Boiled Herman” - the picture omitted the ballroom sequence and Herrman - and instead he composed a new song for Jeanette MacDonald to sing, “Pardon Me, Madame”, with lyrics by Gus Kahn) and 1954 (Howard Keel and Ann Blyth).

Herbert Stothart composed his next operetta, Song of the Flame, with George Gershwin (1898- 1937). The lyrics and book were by Oscar Hammerstein II and Otto Harbach. Stothart conducted its 219-performance run at the 44th Street Theatre, New York, beginning on December 30, 1925. The lavishly mounted and sumptuously costumed production starred Tessa Kosta as an aristocrat who leads a rebellion of the serfs in Czarist Russia, and survives for romance to triumph in the finale in Paris. Arthur Hammerstein hired the 90-strong Russian Art Choir to join in some of the Russian- flavoured songs, which included "Song of the Flame", "Vodka", "Cossack Love Song", "Far Away", "Tartar" and "Woman's Work is Never Done". For Gershwin, operetta was a new venture and many of his Jazz Age followers were critical. But, for the record, Song of the Flame ran 25 performances longer than Tip Toes, composed by Gershwin alone, which opened on Broadway the same week. After one performance of Song of the Flame, Stothart got bawled out by Arthur Hammerstein for piling so much brass into the orchestra-pit that the female voices were swamped. (In Broadway's pre-microphone era, singers had to really sing to be heard above the orchestra!) This obvious concern for sonority contrasts with the popular belief that Stothart preferred the tea-room ensembles featured in his early dramatic film scores. Warner Bros.-First National produced a film musical of Song of the Flame in 1930, starring Bernice Clair and Alexander Gray (the musical director, Edward Ward, was later a colleague of Stothart's at M-G-M).

Arthur Hammerstein had always wanted his own Broadway theatre and, in 1927, had one built on 53rd Street to the most grandiose specifications. The Hammerstein Theatre (in the Thirties it was re-christened the Manhattan) opened on November 30, 1927, with Golden Dawn, an extravaganza which achieved 184 performances. Herbert Stothart composed a good part of the score and, to complete it, he adapted some music by the Hungarian operetta composer Emmerich Kalman (1882- 1953) and the Austrian Robert Stolz (1886-1975). Oscar and Harbach wrote the book and lyrics. Golden Dawn, choreographed by Busby Berkeley, was set in German West Africa during the First World War. It starred Metropolitan Opera soprano Louise Hunter, and featured in a small part 23- year-old Archie Leach (Cary Grant) fresh from the London stage. A screen version was made by Warner Bros.-First National in 1930, starring Broadway baritone Walter Woolf (known as Walter Woolf King in later films) and Noah Beery.

In 1928, Arthur Hammerstein booked a Silent movie, made in the USSR, to follow Golden Dawn at his theatre, and gave Stothart the task of composing suitable accompanying music. The film was entitled THE END OF ST. PETERSBURG, and Stothart's illustrative and atmospheric score was the first he wrote and conducted for a motion picture. Stothart's last Broadway show, Good Boy, opened at the Hammerstein Theatre, New York, on September 25, 1928. He composed the music in collaboration with Harry Ruby (1895-1974): the lyrics were by Bert Kalmar (1884-1947) and Oscar Hammerstein II· the libretto about country folk adrift in the big city, was by Otto Harbach and Henry Myers; and the dances were staged by Busby Berkeley. Good Boy had a good run of 253 performances. The hit number was "I Wanna Be Loved By You", sung by the star Helen Kane, who sang it again (with Debbie Reynolds miming) in M-G-M’s biopic of Kalmar and Ruby, THREE LITTLE WORDS (1950): Marilyn Monroe revived it in SOME LIKE IT HOT in 1959.

Herbert Stothart’s beloved wife Dorothy, had died tragically in 1924, at the height of his Rose Marie success. In March 1929, he married her sister, Mary Wolfe. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's production bosses, Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg, were in New York City at the time, seeking talent for their new Talkies, particularly their musicals (Mayer had also journeyed east for the inauguration of his friend, President Herbert Hoover). They offered Stothart a five-year contract as General Music Director, to preside over the M-G-M music department, organize and conduct the background scores. Stothart signed the contract on May 6, 1929, and boarded a train west to California with Mary. He also took along his (and Dorothy's) nine-year-old daughter, Carol (Herbert Jr. and Constance, his children by Mary, were born in Beverly Hills in the Thirties). His contract was repeatedly renewed, and he was to work exclusively for M-G-M Pictures at Culver City near Hollywood for the remaining twenty years of his life.

During the 1920s, Stothart's Broadway partner, Oscar Hammerstein II, had written lyrics and books for successful shows with other composers, such as Jerome Kern - Sunny (1925), Show Boat (1927) and Sweet Adeline (1929) - and Sigmund Romberg - The Desert Song (1926) and The New Moon (1928). The Great Depression following the October 1929 Stock Market crash eventually affected Broadway, and Oscar wrote occasionally for films in the Thirties (THE NIGHT IS YOUNG, with Romberg; GIVE US THIS NIGHT, with Erich Wolfgang Korngold; HIGH, WIDE AND HANDSOME, with Kern; etc.). In the Forties he teamed up with composer Richard Rodgers, and they created the phenomenal stage and screen hits, Oklahoma!, The King and I, South Pacific, The Sound of Music, etc. In 1930, Oscar's uncle, Arthur Hammerstein, produced a musical film in Hollywood, THE LOTTERY BRIDE (starring Jeanette MacDonald and released through United Artists), based on an operetta called Bride 66, set in the Wild North, with a libretto (for a change) by Herbert Stothart and music by Rudolf Friml.

Stothart gradually made the adjustment from being a man of the theatre, to being a man of the cinema. His first task at M-G-M was composing four songs ("The Rogue Song", "The Narrative", "When I'm Looking at You" and "The White Dove", all with lyrics by Clifford Grey) for THE ROGUE SONG, starring Metropolitan Opera baritone Lawrence Tibbett. After conducting the M-G-M orchestra in his first "take", Stothart had to exchange his regular baton for a much thicker one, because Douglas Shearer, the head of the sound department (and Thalberg's brother-in-law), discovered the recording equipment was picking up the swishing sound made by the former.

Most studios could not afford to do much expensive re-shooting after a film was completed: but M-G-M, the richest in Hollywood, could and often did. The brilliant and painstaking Irving Thalberg (1899-1936) brought many a movie back to Culver City after its initial preview, for entire sequences to deleted and others filmed and added. Consequently, Stothart found himself involved in a fair amount of re-scoring.

In Stothart's time, Metro's "A" pictures were lavish and glossy, most of them rich in the old fashioned virtues of romance, charm, humanity and sentiment: and Stothart's warm-hearted music, refined, carefully structured and easy on the ear, worked extremely well in them. Tender, lucid melodies, played by soft, glamorously-crooning strings, became his trademark, clarifying motives and intensifying emotion, especially in bitter-sweet romances such as Greta Garbo's CAMILLE, - Joan Crawford's THE GORGEOUS HUSSY and Irene Dunne's THE WHITE CLIFFS OF DOVER. He was good at musically delineating essential character. Some examples: his sinister tonal portrait of the “umble" scoundrel Uriah Heep (Roland Young) in DAVID COPPERFIELD; his eerie limbing theme for the one-legged pirate, Long John Silver in TREASURE ISLAND (the first Talkie swashbuckler); his roseate, aspiring leitmotif for the eager, hopeful title character in DAVID COPPERFIELD (as a child, Freddie Bartholomew: as a man, Frank Lawton); and, in the same film, his lovely, sweeping hymn for the faithful, self-sacrificing Agnes Wickfield (Madge Evans).

Stothart's most luxuriant orchestral sounds effectively built tension (notably in THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO and John Ford's THEY WERE EXPENDABLE)… heightened atmosphere (e.g., in the sequence depicting Napoleon's retreat from Moscow in Garbo and Charles Boyer's CONQUEST: for his effects in Thalberg’s MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, starring Clark Gable and Charles Laughton, Stothart augmented a 100-piece orchestra with Hawaiian guitars, native tom-toms and male and female choruses)....added continuity to the action (the storming of the Bastille in Paris and other montages in A TALE OF TWO CITIES, starring Ronald Colman: the numerous episodes of DAVID COPPERFIELD, THE ROBIN HOOD OF EL DORADO, etc.)... accentuated dramatic points (in THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, 1944, whenever the hideously degenerating portrait flashes on the screen - the only sequences in colour - Stothart's orchestral "stabs" chill the listener to the marrow: compare Franz Waxman's musical device for the similar shock revelation of a horror painting in THE TWO MRS. CARROLLS, 1947)....authentically evoked the pomp and circumstance of bygone days (in QUEEN CHRISTINA, MARIE ANTOINETTE, CONQUEST, etc.)… and coloured exotic locales: on a trip to Mexico in 1934 to experience the actual "sound" of the country before scoring VIVA VILLA (set south of the border), Stothart took a particular liking to a local folk song he heard sung over a small radio station, tracked down its source, and made something special of the tune in his VIVA VILLA score; called "La Cucaracha", the song soon became a universal hit and is still around today.

David O. Selznick produced VIVA VILLA. Early in 1933, Thalberg had to take a long holiday for health reasons. Selznick, who was then Louis B. Mayer's son-in-law, was brought into M-G-M from RKO-Radio as a replacement producer. His arrival was opportune for Stothart's creative character. RKO's music chief, Max Steiner, had opened Selznick's eyes to the great power music could wield in screen drama (in films like SYMPHONY OF SIX MILLION, BIRD OF PARADISE and KING KONG). “A great friend of music," Steiner called him. Stothart really went to town on his scores for Selznick's M-G-M productions: NIGHT FLIGHT, VIVA VILLA, DAVID COPPERFIELD, VANESSA - HER LOVE STORY, ANNA KARENINA and A TALE OF TWO CITIES. He included some Tchaikovsky in his ANNA KARENINA score, at Selznick's behest - "None But the Lonely Heart" for Sergei (Freddie Bartholomew), "Humoresk" to accompany the croquet game, and "Eugene Onegin" at the opera - but many other pieces, such as the shrieking locomotive music mounting to a crescendo near the end (repeated in his score to THE GOOD EARTH), and the mellifluous Anna (Garbo) and Vronsky (Fredric March) romantic theme, are Stothart originals. Thalberg returned to work in 1934, and Selznick departed the following year to form his own film company, releasing through United Artists. Years later, when Selznick was wanting a score for GONE WITH THE WIND, he said in a telegram to John Hay Whitney dated November 9, 1939: ''l do not feel there is anyone scoring pictures who is in the same class with Stothart and Steiner." (Max Steiner managed to complete his Warner Bros. commitments in time to score GONE WITH THE WIND, otherwise it is clear Selznick intended giving the job to Stothart.)

To many a film, Herbert Stothart added an appropriate ethnological flavour by working into his score the traditional airs, carols and chanteys of the country in which it was set, or from which the characters came. Sometimes he remoulded these melodies (for instance, in NATIONAL VELVET, his variations on "Greensleeves", the 16th century tune purportedly composed by King Henry the Eighth of England), but always retained their spirit in his interesting and tasteful arrangements. In NORTHWEST PASSAGE, starring Spencer Tracy, he used “Over the Hills and Far Away” (brought to New England by British settlers) as occasional underscoring for the epic trek through Mohawk country by Rogers' Rangers in 1759 (John Gay had utilized the tune before him in The Beggar's Opera in 1727). It alternated with his own stalwart, swinging Rangers' March. He garnished the Candlelight Club sequence of WATERLOO BRIDGE with a beautiful, velvety, 3/4 waltz arrangement of "Auld Lang Syne". The melody turns up in more buoyant form in DAVID COPPERFIELD, characterizing David's friend, the grandiloquent but debt-ridden Wilkins Micawber (W. C. Fields). In the same film, one of the first of many to contain his musical impressions of England, Stothart quotes the whimsical "Charlie ls My Darling" for Clara Peggotty’s bashful suitor, Barkis ("is willin' "): the carols "The First Nowell" and "I Saw Three Ships" (both with fine choral trimmings) constitute a good part of the overture. His QUEEN CHRISTINA score has Scandinavian folk characteristics here and there, becoming Hispanic-tinged during the love scenes between Christina (Garbo) and Don Antonio, the Spanish Ambassador (John Gilbert). Stothart ingeniously adapted Oriental rhythms and instrumentation for his scores to THE PAINTED VEIL (Garbo), THE GOOD EARTH (Paul Muni and Luise Rainer), DRAGON SEED (Katharine Hepburn), KISMET (Colman and Marlene Dietrich), etc.

Stothart regularly consulted the knowledgeable George G. Schneider, M-G-M's music librarian, an expert on historical references to music of any age, and the origins of little-known folk songs of any region. With Schneider's researching help, Stothart was able in his scores to hint at the musical style of ancient times and, on occasion, to reconstruct the actual music of the period dealt with in a film. For example, for parts of his ROMEO AND JULIET score, Stothart restored to life some medieval English madrigals and 16th century Palestrina and Gregorian church music. This score was not entirely to Irving Thalberg's liking (he was always quick to condemn any music he considered to be intrusive in dramatic films). Thalberg supervised ROMEO AND JULIET, starring his wife Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard, through all the stages of its two-million-dollar production, treating it as his masterpiece. He was on hand when it was edited, and when it was scored and dubbed. He fetched Stothart back nearly a dozen times to alter his score, before finally okaying it. ROMEO AND JULIET was the last film Thalberg completed. He died, aged 37, on September 14, 1936, less than a month after the film's New York City premiere.

Herbert Stothart excelled in converting old stage operettas and musicals into screen entertainment. In 1933 he worked as musical director and adapter on the first of his sixteen Jeanette MacDonald film musicals, THE CAT AND THE FIDDLE (taken from Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach's Broadway hit). Most of these became box-office record-breakers, and had updated lyrics by German-born Gus Kahn (1886-1941) or the young American team of Bob Wright and Chet Forrest (later successful on Broadway with their shows written around classical music such as Grieg, Song of Norway, and Borodin, Kismet, etc.). Nelson Eddy (1901-1967) co-starred with Miss MacDonald (1907-1965) in eight of them - NAUGHTY MARIETTA, ROSE MARIE, MAYTIME. THE GIRL OF THE GOLDEN WEST (my favourite of these: one segment features Stothart's most unusual piece of orchestration - Charley Grapewin blowing down an empty whiskey jug in accompaniment to Jeanne Ellis, the MacDonald character as a young girl, singing Romberg's "Shadows on the Moon"), SWEETHEARTS, NEW MOON (previously adapted by Stothart for Grace Moore and Lawrence Tibbett in M-G-M's 1930 film version), BITTER SWEET and I MARRIED AN ANGEL: and these, nearly all produced by Hunt Stromberg, were particularly popular.

MAYTIME, set in old Paris and New York, was the top international profit-maker of 1937, Sigmund Romberg's "Will You Remember?" was retained from the original operetta of 1917. "Sambre et Meuse", the marching song of Napoleon's armies, is gloriously sung by Jeanette in French, with a row of military drummers beating out the rhythm. Along with excerpts from operas by Meyerbeer, Delibes, Verdi, Bellini, etc., there is a quite brilliant ten-minute opera, Czaritza (sung in French near the end), which Stothart created out of tunes from Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony and Romeo and Juliet. In the film's story, it is composed by a character named Trentini for opera star Marcia Mornay (Jeanette MacDonald), who marries impresario Nazaroff (John Barrymore) out of gratitude, but falls in love with opera baritone Paul Allison (Nelson Eddy). Sound craftsman that he was, Stothart shaped Czaritza (about Catherine the Great of Russia) to achieve the maximum dramatic effect, highlighting Nazaroff's murderous jealousy as he witnesses on the stage the outpouring in song of Paul and Marcia's obvious grand passion.

THE FIREFLY (MacDonald without Eddy), set in Spain in Napoleon's time, was also a knock-out at the 1937 box-office. Rudolf Friml's original 1912 operetta did not contain "The Donkey Serenade". It was heard in public on February 12, 1924, at the same Paul Whiteman concert at the Aeolian Hall, New York, for which Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" was commissioned). Stothart arranged and developed it, injecting a Spanish strain. Wright and Forrest wrote some snappy lyrics tying it in with the film's action and, as "The Donkey Serenade", sung by Allan Jones, it became the high spot of the picture (and a big hit on record). The song has been included in all subsequent stage revivals of The Firefly.

To end BROADWAY SERENADE (again MacDonald without Eddy), Stothart adapted and embellished Tchaikovsky's song, "None But the Lonely Heart", into a lush, ten-minute symphonic poem for full orchestra and voices (lyrics by Wright and Forrest). In the drama the musical work reconciles the singer heroine (Jeanette) with her ex-husband, the ostensible composer (portrayed by Lew Ayres). To think up and direct an appropriate scenic background for the music, producer-director Robert Z. Leonard called in Busby Berkeley, who had worked with Stothart on Broadway, and had become famous for choreographing Warner film musicals. Berkeley's typically spectacular contribution had Miss MacDonald singing "For Ev'ry Lonely Heart", while walking down a tall column of stairs surrounded by a large chorus wearing the masks of classical composers. It was one of the very few occasions in screen history in which the action of a film was adjusted to accommodate the music.

In the late Thirties, mainly because of Metro's huge financial returns from the MacDonald-Eddy film musicals, Louis B. Mayer gave Herbert Stothart more or less a free hand with his scores. Stothart's name began appearing on single credit-title cards. As musical director of the widely acclaimed Judy Garland fantasy THE WIZARD OF OZ, Stothart won the 1939 Best Original Score Academy Award. Besides his arrangements of the Harold Arlen tunes (on M-G-M soundtrack album S-3996ST) and Sir Henry Bishop's "Home Sweet Home”, the film contains some splendid descriptive and mood-invoking music composed (and conducted) by Stothart. He had previously been Oscar-nominated for his MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1935) and MARIE ANTOINETTE (1938) scores. His music for WATERLOO BRIDGE (1940) gained him another Oscar nomination (his Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor love theme, a lilting waltz-tune, is an extension of a fragmentary piece he used in 1935 in A TALE OF TWO CITIES to back Donald Woods bidding au revoir to Elizabeth Allan on the foggy Dover quayside).

In 1940, Stothart scored PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, the first of his eight Greer Garson films (three of them co-starring Walter Pidgeon). He received further Oscar nominations for two of these deeply-moving scores (both in films directed by Mervyn LeRoy), RANDOM HARVEST (1942) and MADAME CURIE (1943). A suite from another, MRS. MINIVER (1942), is included in Stanley Black's new LP, "Film Spectaculars, Vol. 6: Great Stories from World War II" (Decca Phase Four PFS 4350). In the 1950 sequel, THE MINIVER STORY, Miklos Rozsa adapted Stothart's touching themes from the original, crediting him.

The other principal score composers at M-G-M in Herbert Stothart's time included: Dr. William Axt (an old Broadway operetta conductor and Silent movie scorer, who retired in 1939*), Edward Ward (who transferred from Universal in 1935, and left M-G-M for United Artists in 1940), Franz Waxman (who joined Metro in 1936, and left for Warners in 1942), David Snell (who started at M-G-M as an orchestrator), Bronislau Kaper (promoted from the M-G-M song-writing team in 1940) and Lennie Hayton (ex-dance band leader).

Charles Maxwell, Stothart's chief arranger (and sometimes part score composer) in the early days, left Metro in 1936 to work for Louis Silvers, musical director of the newly-formed 20th Century-Fox company. From then on, Stothart's orchestrators at various times were: Murray Cutter (who left M-G-M for Warners in 1946, worked for Korngold on DECEPTION and became Max Steiner's orchestrator for nearly twenty years), Daniele Amfitheatrof and George Bassman (who both became score composers), Leonid Raab, Leo Arnaud, Paul Marquardt, Wally Heglin, Maurice de Packh, Robert Franklyn, Albert Sendrey, etc.

Herbert Stothart counted most of these among his friends, and also music librarian George Schneider, lyricist Gus Kahn, musical director Georgie Stoll and other M-G-M musicians and technicians. Mike MacLaughlin, his sound mixer, was his best friend. Other Hollywood friends of Stothart and his wife included: Albert Lewin (Thalberg's associate producer and later a director, who had been a professor of English literature at Wisconsin University) and his wife Mildred, the novelist and actor Jim Tully, the author Will Durant and his wife, and Alma and Eduardo Ciannelli (Alma, Stothart's sister-in-law, the eldest of Georgia Wolfe's five daughters, had married Ciannelli, an Italian opera singer, who played Emile La Flamme in Rose Marie on Broadway, and won fame for his gangster portrayals in Hollywood films in the Thirties).

Stothart's beguiling, Irish-styled song, "Sweetheart Darlin' " (lyrics by Gus Kahn), from PEG O’ MY HEART (starring Marion Davies), was chosen to represent the year 1933 on the World Records-EMI LP (SH 367) released in England in 1977, called "Those Dance Band Years: 1923-1936" ("Bands Across the Sea"), taken from original 78s. The song is nicely played (straight, no jazz) by Ben Selvin and his Orchestra with refrain by Selvin: There is even a Stothart-type sweet violin solo near the end.
The published Stothart-composed film songs I have not already mentioned include: “Charming”, “March of the Old Guard”, “ The Shepard’s Serenade” and If He Cared”, all with lyrics by Clifford Grey (in DEVIL MAY CARE); “My Kind of a Man”, lyrics by Grey and Rice (in THE, FLORADORA GIRL): "Cuban Love Song" and “Tramps At Sea”, both composed in collaboration with Jimmy McHugh and with lyrics by Dorothy Fields (in CUBAN LOVE SONG); "Chidlins" and "A Child Is Born”, both with lyrics by Hall Johnson (in THE PRODIGAL); "Headin' Home", lyrics by Ned Washington (in HERE COMES THE BAND), “Wilt Thou Have My Hand", a pretty setting of a poem by Elizabeth Barrett (in THE BARRETTS OF WIMPOLE STREET, 1934: Bronislau Kaper used the song again in the 1957 remake, crediting Stothart); "Amour, Eternal Amour", lyrics by Bob Wright and Chet Forrest (in MARIE ANTOINETTE); "One Look at You" and "High Flyin'", both composed with Edward Ward and with lyrics by Wright and Forrest (in BROADWAY SERENADE); "How Strange", composed with Earl Brent, with lyrics by Gus Kahn (in IDIOT'S DELIGHT); "Ride, Cossack, Ride", lyrics by Wright and Forrest (in BALALAIKA), etc.

For various publications, Stothart wrote some revealing and instructive articles on film scoring, e.g., "II problema della musica nel film storico" in Number 17 of "Cinema", published in Rome, Italy, in 1937: and the chapter entitled "Film Music" in the book "Behind the Screen", edited by Stephen Watts, published by Arthur Barker Ltd., London, England, in 1938. In the latter, Stothart describes, Max Steiner's score for THE INFORMER as "masterful": there is a good photo of Stothart on page 142.

Scoring THE GREEN YEARS (1946), set in Scotland, stirred in Herbert Stothart a longing to see the country or his forefathers, especially as he was scheduled to score HILLS OF HOME, which was also to have a Scottish locale. During his visit to Scotland in mid-1947, he was taken ill and, two months after his return to Hollywood, he suffered a serious heart attack. In 1948, cancer of the spine was diagnosed. The last film scores he composed were for HILLS OF HOME, BIG JACK and THE THREE MUSKETEERS (Universal's Charles Previn, and ex-Broadway colleague, was called in to conduct). THE THREE MUSKETEERS, containing some themes by Tchaikovsky and completed with the orchestral assistance or Albert Sendrey (acknowledged in the credit titles), is a rousing, effervescent score - an amazing achievement for Stothart, considering the circumstances. Also in 1948, Stothart composed two symphonic poems (not for films): "Heart Attack" (which favourably impressed German composer Arnold Schoenberg, who lived nearby, when Stothart played it for him on the piano) and " The Voices or Liberation" (sung by the Roger Wagner Chorale before a distinguished audience that included Eleanor Roosevelt).

Herbert Stothart died on February 1, 1949. He had played a luminous and imaginative part in the Golden Ages of both Broadway and Hollywood. His name is written large in film music folklore. Many of the pictures he scored, the prestige products of a studio that was never cheese-paring, survive as popular classics, receiving special showings in cinemas and on television all over the world.

*Editor’s note: William Axt continued to write film music up to 1944, contributing to scores for Dragon Seed (Stothart & Colombo) and Lost in Harem (Amfitheatrof & Snell).