Blog Post

Hugo Friedhofer

Anthony Thomas

Source: Films in Review Vol XVI No 8

Publication: October 1965, pp 496-502

Publisher: National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. Copyright © 1965 All rights reserved.


Visit the representative website of Hugo Friedhofer - Go to site

“I think Friedhofer has a better understanding of film music than any composer I know. He is the most learned of us all, the best schooled, and often the most subtle.” Thus David Raksin, himself a respected veteran writer of film music. Although Raksin’s sentiments are shared by many Hollywood musicians, Hugo Friedhofer’s name is practically unknown to the movie-going public. To explain Friedhofer’s lack of fame Raksin proffers this: “Virtue may be its own reward, but excellence seems to impose a penalty upon those who attain it. Composing something that isn’t a repetition of what’s been done before, cultivating differences from others, seeking out what is special, requires extra effort, extra time, and a little more indulgence from producers. Those who want scores ‘not good but by Thursday’ often prefer to promote men whose qualification is that they deserve it less.”

Hugo Friedhofer arrived in Hollywood in July ’29 and has composed the scores of some 70 films. He also contributed to the scores of 70 others. Indeed, he has worked as collaborator, adapter, arranger, orchestrator and utility composer* on more films than he can remember and in the highly specialized field of orchestration Friedhofer is regarded as The Master. He orchestrated more than 50 Max Steiner scores, and was the only man Erich Korngold fully trusted to touch his music (he orchestrated 15 of Korngold’s 18 film scores). Friedhofer’s film music activities have been so various it is impossible to compile a complete list of all the films he has worked on.

Friedhofer has not gone unrecognized by his peers. His score for THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES won an Academy Award in ’46, and he was nominated for an Oscar for eight other scores. He himself thinks a nomination is more of a recognition than an Oscar, since a nomination results from the votes of composers and an Oscar from the vote of the Academy’s whole membership. The scores for which he was nominated, in addition to THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES: THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW, THE BISHOP’S WIFE, JOAN OF ARC, ABOVE AND BEYOND, BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL, BOY ON A DOLPHIN, AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER and THE YOUNG LIONS. This list does not include the score Friedhofer values most, that for ONE EYED JACKS, Marlon Brando’s pretentious and unsuccessful Western.

Friedhofer was born in San Francisco on May 3, 1901, and was the son of a cellist. His father had also been born in San Francisco but had taken his musical education in Dresden, where he met his wife, also of a musical family. Friedhofer dropped out of school at 16 - he had been an art major - and got a job as an office boy. Later he worked in the designing department of a lithograph firm, and at night studied painting at the Mark Hopkins Institute. He recalls a voracious appetite for reading, which, along with his feeling for art, are quite apparent on entering his Hollywood Hills home today. One entire wall of his living room is a bookcase, and paintings are in every room.

His father had started him on the cello when he was 13, but it wasn’t until he was 18 that his interest in music predominated over his interest in painting. Once he had chosen between the two he studied seriously and within two years was able to earn his living as a musician - casual engagements at first, then steady work in movie theatres, two years with The People’s Symphony, which had been set up in opposition to the San Francisco Symphony, and, in ’25, a berth with the orchestra of the Granada Theatre, which Friedhofer describes as “one of that decade’s most ornate film cathedrals.”

It did not take Friedhofer long to realize that he had more interest in what the other instruments were doing collectively, i.e., in orchestration, than in being a performing cellist. And so, concurrent with his various jobs as a cellist, he studied harmony, counter point and composition with the Italian teacher-composer Domenico Brescia, a graduate of, and fellow pupil with Respighi at, the Conservatory in Bologna. Brescia later became head of the music department at Mills College, a post he held until his death in ’37. Friedhofer’s studies stretched over a five year period, at the end of which time he was able to put aside his cello and obtain work as an arranger for stage bands.

By that time sound had come to the movies and a violinist friend, George Lipschultz, who had become music director at the Fox studios, offered Friedhofer a job there as an arranger. The first film on which Friedhofer worked was the musical called SUNNY SIDE UP, and he stayed at Fox for five years, until it merged with 20th Century. Then, after a few months of free-lancing as an arranger, he was hired as an orchestrator by Leo Forbstein, head of the music department at Warners.

Under Forbstein’s astute command Warners maintained the most formidable musical group ever assembled by a film studio. Its stars were Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Max Steiner, Franz Waxman, Adolph Deutsch and several other excellent musicians, and Friedhofer hoped he would soon be one of them and compose his own scores. But throughout the eleven years he spent at Warners he was not given one assignment as a composer. Forbstein realized Friedhofer was a superb orchestrator and paid him liberally to orchestrate Korngold and Steiner scores.

“Forbstein was no musician to speak of,” Friedhofer says, “but be was a good executive and organized Warners’ music department so well it could practically run itself. We were all cogs in his well-oiled machine. I was servicing Korngold and Steiner to everyone’s complete satisfaction, so why change things? Working conditions were good, I was well paid, and I suppressed my creative ego until I could do so no longer.” However, in between Korngold and Steiner assignments, Friedhofer was occasionally able to do work for other studios, and in ’37, through Alfred Newman, for whom he had worked at Fox, Friedhofer was commissioned by the Goldwyn Studio to write the score for the Gary Cooper vehicle called THE ADVENTURES OF MARCO POLO.

Friedhofer’s first full-length score is a fine piece of work and was well received by Hollywood musicians, but Friedhofer did not get another chance as a composer until ’42. Forbstein, who was interested in Friedhofer only as an orchestrator, did make two concessions: he raised Friedhofer’s salary, and gave him a screen credit. Friedhofer’s first Warner credit was on Korngold’s THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD. Of Korngold Friedhofer has this to say: “His contribution was enormous and he influenced everyone working at that time. He was the first to write film music in long lines, great flowing chunks, that contained the ebb and flow of mood and action, and the feeling of the picture. Of course his assignments - those gorgeous spectacles - were pushovers for his kind of music. Some critics thought he lowered himself by writing for films, but he didn’t think so. He was excited by the medium.”

What Friedhofer learned from Korngold or Steiner he was able to translate into his own musical language and his music doesn’t sound at all like theirs. As do most Hollywood composers, he has a special affection for Steiner. “Real film music began with Max,” Friedhofer says. “Many of the techniques were invented by him, and many of his devices have become common practice. His is true mood music, unobtrusive background that is also connective tissue, subtle and sensitive.” Steiner is not always accurate, however. Friedhofer considers THE CAINE MUTINY score little more than a musical recruiting poster for the Navy and says it misses the point of the film (i.e., Queeg’s neurosis). Steiner’s much heralded music for THE TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE also gets a low rating from Friedhofer. He thinks pre-Hispanic Mexican musical themes should be used in films about Mexico, not music with Spanish idioms. He also says Steiner’s TREASURE music “didn’t match the barrenness of the landscape or the stark tragedy of the protagonists. The score was all wrong - I can lie about almost everything in the world except music.”

Steiner had once been an orchestrator and knew the value of Friedhofer from personal experience. He would indicate in his sketches the effects he wanted and leave it to Friedhofer to fill in. In his first ten years at Warners Steiner scored an average of eight or nine pictures a year, and the success of this large volume of work is partly attributable to Friedhofer. Steiner wrote the score for GONE WITH THE WIND (three hours of music), the background music for Intermezzo, and “Symphonie Moderne” for FOUR WIVES, all within a period of twelve weeks. He claims to have been taking benzedrine through it all. Friedhofer worked closely with him on GONE WITH THE WIND, developing thematic material and injecting a few fragments of his own.

The need for the orchestrator in film music is obvious and snobs in other areas of music who sneer at film composers who “aren’t capable of doing their own orchestrating” are absurd. A composer like Korngold would hardly have employed an orchestrator had it not been a matter of time. When Friedhofer scored THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES he used several orchestrators, and he has orchestrated few of his own scores since. Friedhofer claims a musician either has a knack for orchestration or he hasn’t. He says the same about his own ability to look at a film and know immediately what it needs musically. Friedhofer also has a wider sense of music than any other composer writing for films, and can place himself musically in any geography, and, without actually quoting local material, simulate the musical color of any environment.

His score for THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES is honest Americana; that for VERA CRUZ, is vigorously Mexican; his music for BOY ON A DOLPHIN is suggestive not only of the beauty of the Greek islands but also of the sensations of diving in water. In THE SUN ALSO RISES he captured the spirit of post World War I Paris as well as the pageantry of the festivals in Pamplona (he says the score for SUN was his most difficult technically). He wrote a delicate love theme in an Indian mode for THE RAINS OF RANCHIPUR, and an entirely different kind of Indian music for the excellent Western called BROKEN ARROW. He suggested medieval England in THE BANDIT OF SHERWOOD FOREST, and turbulent France in JOAN OF ARC. For THE YOUNG LIONS he wrote a score that is militant and savage yet devoid of bravura about the glory of war. There is not any kind of film Friedhofer hasn’t scored.

Queried about his style, Friedhofer squirms and denies he has striven consciously for a personal style. He thinks of himself as being in the mainstream of modern music “but not far out.” He was schooled in the German masters, grew up in the jazz-impressed ’20s, and is particularly fond of Spanish, Mexican and Latin music (why, he doesn’t know). His friends say he has recognizable musical characteristics and that his style is noticeably mordant. Frederick Sternfeld, of the music department of Dartmouth, has analyzed several Friedhofer scores for his classes and come up with chatter about “Hindemithian quality” and “a lineal dissonance.” With characteristic bluntness Friedhofer says of his film scores: “I write ’em as I hear ’em. When I walk into the studio I’m not an artist so much as a plumber.”

As are all film composers, Friedhofer is constantly being asked for his definition of film music. He dislikes such pontificating and says there is no definition. But, when pushed a little, he will say film music should be governed entirely by the visual, and that each picture has its own needs. It is absurd, lie says, to assume that music must always be in the background, for there are times when music can step out or should be dominant. Most of the time it can’t and would defeat its purpose if it did. Friedhofer agrees with Virgil Thomson’s advice to a young composer: “Never make the mistake of over estimating an audience’s taste, but don’t under-estimate its intelligence either.” Friedhofer thinks this especially applies to film scoring. He also feels film music has had an effect on the concert hall, if only because many have subliminally absorbed contemporary musical idioms from films without being aware of it and are therefore receptive to modern concert pieces they wouldn’t accept had film music not prepared the way.

In the perpetual war between producers and composers Friedhofer has fared well, and has had less music scrapped than his colleagues. “Possibly,” he says, “because I’ve been chicken, and gauged the calibre of my man before hand.” He sympathizes with producers because their job forces them to act omniscient. “The omniscience of producers isn’t taxed as much in the fields of writing, photography and acting as it is in music, which seems to be a closed shop to them,” says Friedhofer. “In many instances they are forced, in order to save face, to assume a profundity about music they don’t possess.” Film music, he adds, must not be compared with concert music, for its purpose, and therefore its texture, is different. Producers, like the public, are usually unmindful of this.

Friedhofer does not agree with those who say film music composers are never given enough time. Composers of the baroque and pre-classic era had to work fast, he points out, and were forced to turn scores out regularly whether they felt like it or not. They, too, had no time to second guess. When Papa Haydn got another order from Prince Esterhazy he first knelt in prayer, then spat on his hands and wrote another masterpiece. Film composers should have a similar attitude, even though their chances of turning out master pieces are less, due not so much to lack of genius as to the fact that a film composer’s work is always determined by the nature of the film, obliging him to curtail material he might like to expand.

Friedhofer has no regrets about being a film composer: “A strange snobbery toward this business exists, but it exists largely among composers who haven’t been asked to write music for films,” he says. But Friedhofer does write concert pieces and constantly studies musical theories with which he doesn’t agree and listens to music he doesn’t enjoy (“I like to hear what the enemy is up to”). As late as ’54 he took a refresher course in counterpoint at USC. He believes writing film music would benefit any composer. The time factor, he says, is excellent discipline and forces a composer to say what he has to say trenchantly.

Friedhofer has been married twice, and had two daughters, one of whom died of leukaemia in ’55. He is a man of considerable humor, and his comments are much sought after at parties and gatherings of musicians. He is a-political. Although associated with film music since the screen acquired sound, he has no intention of quitting movies and retiring. At 63 he is healthy and alert, and is aghast at any implication he is a senior citizen. And he is rather pleased to be regarded as the kind of composer other composers turn to.

* The terms “adapter” and “arranger” often intertwine. To adapt is to tailor a piece of music composed for another purpose - e.g. a part of a symphony - in order to make it fit a scene. To arrange is to change the clothes of a piece of music - something scored for one instrument or one vocal range is arranged so it can be performed by another instrument or vocal range, a sonata can be “arranged” into a concerto, a melodic sketch into something bigger. This last involves orchestrating of a kind that makes use of an orchestrator’s own inventions (Morton Gould making a 5 minute rhapsody out of a Jerome Kern song). Friedhofer’s film music orchestrations were not of this kind. He executed a composer’s instructions, and a Korngold score came out sounding like Korngold, not Friedhofer. But whenever lesser composers provide merely one-note melodic lines. Friedhofer, in building these into orchestral pieces, would utilize his own inventiveness.




Charles Gerhardt & Classic Film Scores

by Pascal Dupont • 10 May, 2024
Charles Allan Gerhardt English version adapted by Doug Raynes - FRENCH VERSION AND COLLECTION had a reputation as a great conductor, record producer and musical arranger. His major work at RCA on the Classic Film Scores series earned him recognition from film music devotees of Hollywood’s Golden Age, as well as other renowned conductors of his day. Born on February 6, 1927 in Detroit, Michigan, Charles Gerhardt developed a passion for music and percussion instruments from an early age. At the age of five, he took piano lessons, and by the age of nine, had established a solid reputation as an orchestrator and composer. He spent his early school years in Little Rock, Arkansas, then after 10 years, having completed his schooling, moved with his family to Illinois for his military duties, he served in the U.S. Navy during World War II as a chaplain's aide in the Aleutian Islands, then became an active member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He went on to study at the University of Illinois, at the College of William and Mary, and later at the University of Southern California. Throughout his time at school Gerhardt was attracted not only to music, but also to the sciences. Passionate about the art of recording, he joined Westminster Records for five years, until the company ceased operations, and then joined Bell Sound. One day, he received a phone call from George Marek to meet with the heads of Reader's Digest, to discuss producing recordings for their mail-order record business; a contact that was to secure his musical future and a rich career spanning more than 30 years. Gerhardt's first job for Reader's Digest was to produce a record; “A Festival of Light Classical Music”; a 12 LP box set that he produced in full. One of Gerhardt's finest projects was the production of another 12 LP box set, “Les Trésores de la Grande Musique (Treasury of Great Music)”, featuring the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by some of the leading figures of the day: Charles Munch to Bizet and Tchaikovsky, Rudolf Kempe to Strauss and Respighi, Josef Krips to Mozart and Haydn, Antal Dorati to Strauss and Berlioz, Brahms 4th Symphony by Fritz Reiner and Sibelius’ 2nd Symphony by Sir John Barbirolli. In the 1950s he conducted works by Vladimir Horowitz, Wanda Landowska, Kirsten Flagstad and William Kapeli. In the early 1960s, Gerhardt lived in England, where he made most of his recordings, but kept a foothold in the United States, mainly in New York. Often, when he went to the United States after a period of recording sessions, he would stop off in Baltimore and spend some time listening to cassettes of his new recordings. Gerhardt loved percussion instruments, especially tam-tams. One of his favorite recordings was the Columbia mono disc of Scriabin's Poem of Ecstasy, with Dimitri Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic. He had great admiration and respect for the many conductors he worked with, starting with Arturo Toscanini, with whom he worked for several years before the Maestro's death. It was Toscanini who suggested that Gerhardt become a conductor, which he did! His career as an orchestra director began when he had to replace a conductor who failed to show up for rehearsals. It was a position he would later occupy for various recording sessions and occasional concerts. His classical recordings include works by Richard Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Ravel, Debussy, Walton and Howard Hanson. Hired by RCA Records, he transferred 78 rpm recordings of Enrico Caruso and other artists to 33 rpm. He took part in recordings by soprano singer Kirsten Flagstad and pianist Vladimir Horowitz. He worked with renowned conductors such as Fritz Reiner, Leopold Stokowski and Charles Munch, from whom he learned the tricks of the trade. Still at RCA, he assisted Arturo Toscanini, with whom he perfected his conducting skills. Then, in 1960, he produced recordings for RCA and Reader’s Digest in London, and joined forces with sound engineer Kenneth Wilkinson of Decca Records (RCA's European subsidiary), The two men got on very well and shared a passion for recording and sound quality, making an incredible number of recordings over a 30-year period. Also in 1960, RCA and Reader's Digest entrusted him with the production of a 12-disc LP box set entitled “ Lumière du Classique (A Festival of Light Classical Music) ”, sold exclusively by mail order. With a budget of $250,000, Gerhardt assumed total control of the project: repertoire, choice of orchestras and production. He recorded in London, Vienna and Paris, and hired such top names as Sir Adrian Boult, Massimo Freccia, Sir Alexander Gibson and René Leibowitz. The success of this project, in terms of both musical quality and sound, earned him recognition from his employers. Other projects of similar scope followed… A boxed set of Beethoven's symphonic works with René Leibowitz and The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. A boxed set of Rachmaninoff's works for piano and orchestra with Earl Wild, Jascha Horenstein and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the above mentioned 12 LP disc set “Trésor de la Grande Musique (Treasury of Great Music)” with the Royal Philharmonic conducted by some of the greatest directors of the time: Fritz Reiner, Charles Munch, Rudolf Kempe, Sir John Barbirolli, Sir Malcolm Sargent, Antal Dorati and Jascha Horenstein, with whom Gerhardt had sympathized. In January 1964 in London, Gerhardt joined forces with Sidney Sax, instrumentalist and conductor, to form a freelance orchestra. This successful group went on to join the National Philharmonic Orchestra of London, an impressive line-up that would later become Jerry Goldsmith's orchestra of choice. With Peter Munves, head of RCA's classical division, he conceived the idea of recording an album devoted exclusively to the film music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, one of his favorite composers. Enthusiastic about the project, Munves gave Gerhardt carte blanche, and was offered a helping hand by George Korngold, producer and son of the famous Viennese composer, who owned all the copies of his father's scores. The Adventure Began : The Sea Hawk: Classic Film Scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold. For this first disc, Gerhardt selected 10 scores by Korngold, which he recorded in the Kingsway Hall Studio in London, renowned for its excellent acoustics. The disc thus benefits from optimal recording conditions, favoring at the same time the performances of the National Philharmonic (and its leader, Sidney Sax), a formidable orchestra made up of London's finest musicians and freelance soloists. Each album was recorded in the same studio, with Kenneth Wilkinson as sound engineer and George Korngold as consultant/producer. As soon as it was released, the album's success received strong acclaim in classical music circles and received a feature in Billboard No. 37, a first in this category in December 1972. It took no less than a year to sell the first 10,000 copies in all the specialist record suppliers and the album went on to sell over 38,000 copies, making it the fifth best-selling album in the “classical” category in 1973. On the strength of this success, Peter Munves and RCA entrusted Charles Gerhardt with the production of further discs devoted to other world-renowned composers of Hollywood music. The program includes several albums dedicated to Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold plus one each to Miklos Rozsa, Franz Waxman, Dimitri Tiomkin and Bernard Herrmann, followed by 3 volumes associated with specific film stars such as Bette Davis, Errol Flynn and Humphrey Bogart. Then, a disc devoted to Alfred Newman, a composer who was a pillar of the famous Hollywood sound, who Gerhardt admired and had met: “Newman was a charming man, full of good humor. He was friendly, fun and always had a joke. With his eternal black cigar in hand, he was a composer by trade, down-to-earth, discussed little about himself but was a first-rate advisor in my life. “ Gerhardt would consult certain composers in advance about how to recreate suites from their works, or when this wasn't possible, he would rearrange the suites himself and submit them to the composers for approval. "Some critics complained that my suites were too short, but my aim in the case of each album was to present a well-split 'portrait' of the composer, highlighting his many creative facets". Although Korngold, Newman and Steiner were no longer around to lend their support, Gerhardt was lucky enough to still work with Herrmann, Rózsa and Tiomkin as consultants who turned up at the recording studio to lend a hand. Gerhardt also had the idea of creating albums focusing on a single film star. Three specific volumes were devoted to music from the films of Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn and Bette Davis. Although these albums suffer from too great a diversity of genres, they still offer the chance to hear and discover rare and previously unpublished compositions. The best conceived album was arguably the one devoted to Bette Davis. Conscious of the important role played by music in her films, the legendary actress took part in the conception of the album, knowing that it favored scores by Max Steiner designed for Warner Bros. The Collection Begins ! Gerhardt's passion for certain composers knows no bounds, but he soon envisages a disc devoted to Miklos Rozsa, including suites for “Spellbound” and “The Red House”, one of his favorite scores, which he will exhume to create one of the longest suites in the series. At the same time, he received various fan wish lists and films to watch, such as “The Four Feathers”, which he had never seen and which gave him the opportunity to discover a splendid score by Miklos Rozsa that he had never heard before. He was disappointed, however, not to be able to conceive a longer “Spellbound” sequel for rights reasons. Despite RCA's full approval, Gerhardt realized that it was not easy to record film music in its original form, as few were ever edited, played and made available for rental. For The Sea Hawks album, things were simpler, as Georges Korngold had copies of his father's scores, and Warner Bros had also archived material in good condition. From the outset, Gerhardt encountered other major problems in the search for and discovery of scores hidden away in other studios, often with the unpleasant surprise of discovering missing or incomplete conductors, or others heavily modified by orchestrators during recording sessions, or the surprise of discovering, in certain cases, instrumentation information noted in shorthand on the edges of the conductor score. For the disc dedicated to Max Steiner, for example, the conductor score for “King Kong” had disappeared from the RKO archives, having been shipped in 1950 to poorly maintained warehouses in Los Angeles where it had become totally degraded and illegible. With the help of Georges Korngold, Gerhardt was able to reconstruct a substantial suite from the piano models left by Steiner at the time. This experience was repeated when the conductor score for Dimitri Tiomkin's “The Thing” was discovered in the same warehouse, in an advanced state of disintegration. Fortunately for Gerhardt, Tiomkin, who was still alive, had been able to provide precise piano maquettes with orchestration information in shorthand, revealing a complex and highly innovative style of writing. Tiomkin always composed at the piano, inscribing very specific information and signs on the edges of the scores in pencil, an ingenious system of his own invention that was difficult to decipher. “Revisiting the score of ‘The Thing from Another World’ was a complex task, involving experimental passages and an unorthodox orchestra. You can understand that I had a huge job on my hands. When I approached the recording sessions, it was not without some trepidation. However, the composer present made no criticism or comment on my work, and was delighted. He was delighted.” For “Gone With The Wind”, Steiner was against the idea of remaking a complete soundtrack, as he felt that too many passages were repeated. It was an opportunity for him to revisit his own score, integrating his favorite melodies. This synthesis gave him the opportunity to revitalize his music by eliminating the least interesting parts of the score. Conceived as long suites or isolated themes, the discs reflect the essence of the composers' work. The “Classic Film Scores” series by Franz Waxman, Bernard Herrmann and Miklos Rozsa etc will become a big hit with collectors. For Gerhardt, this will be an opportunity to unearth forgotten or rare scores such as Herrmann's “The White Witch” and “On a Dangerous Ground”, Hugo Friedhofer's “The Sun Also Rises” and early recordings for Waxman's “Prince Valliant” and Rozsa's “The Red House”, all with new, impeccable acoustics. For “Elisabeth and Essex”, Erich Korngold had already prepared a suite in the form of an Overture, which was given its world premiere in a theater. The suite for “The Adventures of Robin Hood” also pre-existed. Franz Waxman created his own suite for “A Place in the Sun”, which was also performed in concert. Dimitri Tiomkin, Miklos Rozsa and Bernard Herrmann acted as consultants and contributed arrangements to their scores. For the continuation of “White Witch Doctor”, Bernard Herrman added percussion to link the different musical tableaux. He did the same for the different parts of “Citizen Kane”. Miklos Rozsa saw an opportunity to add a male choir to the suite from “The Jungle Book”, based on an idea by Charles Gerhardt. For the record dedicated to Errol Flynn, Gerhardt re-orchestrated the theme “The Lights of Paris” from Hugo Friedhofer's “The Sun also Rises”, as the original was no longer available. “I wanted to go back to that time and systematically explore the very substance of the great film scores of the late 30s and 40s, sending them back directly to their images as dramatic entities. The desire to rediscover tunes we know and to take into account the contexts in which they were originally used. I decided to recreate these scores with their original orchestrations, and this could only be done by returning to the ultimate sources, as the composers had originally conceived them.” Keen to open up the collection to other genres, such as science fiction, Gerhardt dedicated two further albums to the series in 1992. The first featured contemporary sequels to “Star Wars” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, promoting the work of John Williams, a leading composer of new film music. Then another called “The Spectacular World of Classic Film Scores”, presenting a disappointing compilation of scores that had already been recorded, except for the creation of a sequel to Dimitri Tiomkin's “The Thing From Another World” and Daniele Amfitheatrof's rarely heard theme “Dance of the Seven Voiles” from Salome. In 1978, the collection was published in Spain by RCA Cinema Treasures. In the USA and Europe, the Classic Film Scores LP series was reissued in the early 80s with a black art deco cover and colored star index. All Volumes in the First Series Were Reissued : By the end of the '80s, the series was running out of steam, and Charles Gerhardt planned to relaunch his collection with albums dedicated to famous American actresses, a new volume for Max Steiner and the Western, a volume reconstructing the score of Waxman's “The Bride of Frankenstein”, followed by volumes devoted to Alex North, Hugo Friedhofer, Victor Young and Elmer Bernstein... But RCA would not support Gerhardt in these projects, preferring to release the collection on CD for the first time. In early 1990, RCA asked Gerhardt to supervise and co-produce the collection, which he saw as an opportunity to revisit some of the volumes, inserting tracks that had not appeared on the LPs or extending certain suites. The volume devoted to Franz Waxman, “Sunset Boulevard”, was the first to be released. The CD did not benefit from any particular promotion, but sold very well, as did the other CDs that followed... A collection marked by a new design in silver pantone. The CDs series was reissued in 2010, still under the RCA Red Seal label, but distributed by Sony Music Entertainment. RCA Victor's Classic Films Scores series represents a unique collection in the history of film music recordings. 14 recordings of rare quality, produced by Georges Korngold and Charles Gerhardt to become one of the revelations of the reissue phenomenon. Other Concepts... Later, Gerhardt spent most of his time in London, continuing to make recordings. After retiring from RCA in 1986, he returned to independent work for Readers Digest and other record labels, a position he held in production and musical supervision until 1997. Since 1991 he had lived in Redding, California. In later years, he did not appear professionally, refusing all public invitations because of his desire to remain discreet. In his entourage he was close to three cousins, Lenore L Engel and Elizabeth Anne Schuetze, both living in San Antonio, and cousin Steven W Gerhardt of St. Pete Beach, Florida. In late November 1998 Charles Gerhardt was diagnosed with brain cancer and died of complications following surgery on February 22, 1999. He was 72 years old. Thus ends this tribute to Charles Gerhardt and the most famous collection of film music records: The Classic Film Scores series.

Exodus

by Doug Raynes • 24 Jan, 2024
Following on from Tadlow’s epic recording of El Cid, the same team – Nic Raine conducting and James Fitzpatrick producing – have turned their attention to a completely different type of epic film for the definitive recording of Ernest Gold’s Academy Award winning score for Otto Preminger’s Exodus (1960). The score is something of a revelation because aside from the main theme, the music has received little attention through recordings. Additionally the sound quality of the original soundtrack LP was disappointing and much music was deleted or cut from the film.
Share by: