The Screen Credits That Weren’t
Publication: Pro Musica Sana 67 (2012)
Publisher: Miklós Rózsa Society
Copyright © 2012. Text reproduced by kind permission of the Miklós Rózsa Society
Would you believe, no, better, is it conceivable that one of the greatest screen composers' career was built not only on his genuine phenomenal talent, but when asked by the head of a studio what films he had scored, he invented two picture titles which not only he had not composed, but which two films had never been made. This he had to do, for the plain truth was that he had never written a film score, nor, according to his own admission, had not the foggiest idea how to write for films.
I was living in London at the time, in a roomy flat at 20 Gunter Grove, near the Embankment in Chelsea. I was a lowly music student at London's Trinity College of Music, making a fair living, illegally, since I had no Labour Permit, making piano arrangements for Lawrence Wright, better known as Horatio Nicholls, Jimmy Campbell, Will Gross, and other Denmark Street songwriters. The tab was 5 pds sterling per, and with the dollar at 5 to the pound, this was “big money!“ The Savoy Hotel bandleader, a marvellous chap named Carroll Gibbons, gave me my first few Society style dance orchestrations to do, which he also broadcast over Radio Luxembourg, and the BBC. I recall I made 10 pds each for those, so I was swimming in the filthy lucre.
At this identical moment the screen composer (see first paragraph) was living in a small Paris apartment on the ground floor, street level, across the street from a whorehouse, eking out a modest living writing song choruses and fanfares for a chap named Monsieur Solar, at about 50 francs each. What Solar did with them, before our composer friend got world famous, no one knows, nor really cares. But it was a miserable existence for a composer who knew his real worth, a young genius who had already written, and had published and performed a set of Symphonic Variations, with Breitkopf & Haertel in Leipzig doing the former, and Bruno Walter doing, the second! Not bad for a 27 year old! (Except that 50 frs was only $ 2.00 U.S., 8 shillings UK).
The question whether the young man ever crossed the street and entered the Maison de Joie will torture many a reader of this tale, but we have it on impeccable authority, namely his own, that he never did. However, when not knocking out leadsheets for Monsieur Solar, he sat in his window and watched a never-ending stream of pimps bringing customers to the bordello, but always with the amusing innocence that all good pimps and purveyors must exhibit: they pretended not to have been there before, steering their quarry past the address, returning, searching, ad libbing that they really were not sure where that place was, when our composer had seen them daily, half a dozen times, and in each case piloting their customer to the door, and after another unsure glance at the house-number, then a reassuring nod, entering. Minutes later the pimp would leave, having pocketed his commission, often counting it a few meters down the street, to make sure the Maison had not shortchanged him.
But what has all this
"histoire gaie" to do with the screen credits that weren't? We are coming to that.
Having gotten tired of this unworthy musical work, and also of the parade of pimps to and fro in front of his window, the young composer, not as yet a screen composer, but who would rank with Steiner, Newman, Korngold, yes, even Tiomkin, asked an older friend, a former symphony and opera conductor living in Paris, whether he would give him a letter to his young son, a student in London Trinity College.Yes, he wanted to try his luck across the Channel, where a famous Hungarian film mogul had created a huge complex of stages in Denham, outside of London.
The conductor wrote out the son's address: 20 Gunter Grove, Chelsea, told him it was near the river, and that no doubt aforementioned son would let the composer stay with him until he got settled, got a job writing films, preferably for the mogul, and started making better money than Monsieur Solar's primitive fanfares and songs, 8 shillings a piece!
And so, quick dissolve to Chelsea, where our screen composer rings the doorbell at 20 Gunter Grove. The chap opening the front door was delighted to have this already distinguished houseguest, who had been published by Breitkopf, and performed by Walter. What an honor, what a privilege. And the 2 story flat was roomy, though cold: it had only a fireplace in the huge living room, and a gas fire upstairs in the bedroom. The other bedroom had goornisht, which is French for nothing. Only a bed, a wardrobe, a chair. And so this became the abode for our yet unnamed world-famous screen composer. Who, as we have pointed out, had yet to write his first score.
"Do you know anybody in the music department at Denham?" may have been the question directed at me (for l was the young chap renting 20 Gunter Grove, and now sub-letting the cold, dank second bedroom to my new friend) Well, I had met the music head of the studio, a young Scot from Stirling, a pupil of Malcolm Sargent, who, when offered the job as Music Director, had refused, but recommended his 21-year-old student, Muir Mathieson. And my fame as an American "jazz arranger" having been proclaimed by Carroll Gibbons had so impressed young Muir that he gave me, also illegally of course, all the dance music to do which the studio needed.
I promised my new houseguest I would take him to Denhan, by tube and bus, and introduce him to the young Scot. First stop, since it was lunch time, was a trip across the road to a pub, the Lame Bull, where Muir astounded us by downing, first, two jiggers of his native brew from Glasgow, then a couple of bitters, followed by another Scotch. Neither my houseguest nor I drank; we thought we would eat but not drink our lunch. Not Muir! In the States he would barely have been old enough to be served at a bar, but the British aren't that particular. Muir got sloshed while we ordered some steak and kidney pies.
Result: he loooved my new friend and houseguest, and back in his office he had him give a recital for his secretary, Miss Doris Silver, and his assistant, a Mr. Freddie Lewis. He then sobered up a wee bit, and got a French director, who was planning a picture on the lot, on the phone.
"Jacques", he intoned, "Muir Mathieson heah. You know, the music chap. I have a genius in my office, a Hungarian composer, who would be splendid for your film. Would you come by and hear him play his stuff?" Let's make this short. "Jacques" came, heard, and was conquered. The film he was shooting was a pseudo-Russian epic starring Marlene Dietrich anal Robert Donat, entitled. KNIGHT WITHOUT ARMOUR, but he thought our young friend should see the studio head first.
There was only one rub: the mogul, being a Hungarian, and a sycophant where his own brothers were concerned, (all by the way talented, not necessarily like Mayer's Gantse Mishpocha, which originally gave MGM its lettering,) was rumored to "hate" fellow Hungarians, of which our young friend was one. But a meeting was arranged, forthwith.
So now we are in the Hungarian mogul's office, where the young composer was politely ushered into a lovely leather armchair. But in English! No Hungarian spoken here, even between "landsmen"! In his heavily accented English, he asked the composer what films he had done. And in equally accented English he was told the Big Lie, the Fabrication, the unheard of made-up screen credit of two documentaries, neither of which had ever seen the light of day, not to say the emulsion of 35 mm film. Here are the two beauties: SHEPHERD'S LIFE and LAKE BALATON. Made in Budapest, by a small independent. What independent? That the mogul, being the most illustrious Hungarian in the film industry, swallowed this, is hard to believe, for surely he must have known that these two titles had never come from the Beautiful Blue Danube, where he and his brothers had migrated from. But apparently he never checked.
And so history was made, and the most fabulous career was begun on what so many of us in the film business (for it is a business) have at times been guilty of, lying a little bit about our accomplishments until those accomplishments, in truth speak for themselves, and soon give us a recognizable name which then becomes a saleable commodity, and we end up in the Motion Picture Almanac with two or more inches of emmes honest- to-God screen credits, where your name appears on a big screen and your barber, who up to then has always called you "Next!" now knows your name as he has seen it up there at the neighbourhood movie house, or more recently in replays on television.
And Miklós Rózsa’s barber has not called him
"next!" for at least 4 decades. And so, happily, ends this story of the only little white lie that most accomplished screen composer has ever committed in his fruitful life.
Afterword
Albert Sendrey’s recollection was provided by the musicologist William Rosar, editor and publisher of the Journal of Film Music, who interviewed Sendrey before his death.
Albert Sendrey (1911–2003) was a Chicago-born composer-arranger-orchestrator, educated in Leipzig and London, who toiled anonymously in the Hollywood dream factory from the 1940s to the 1970s. He worked, often uncredited, on such films as THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, THE GREAT CARUSO , AN A MERICAN IN PARIS, GUYS AND DOLLS, and FINIAN’S RAINBOW, and later in Las Vegas, notably as Tony Martin’s arranger and accompanist. He is said to have composed the music for Fred Astaire’s famous “ceiling dance” in ROYAL WEDDING. Trained in Leipzig, Sendrey also composed original music, including three symphonies and other works. (I find no record of public performances, and Sendrey’s name does not appear in Grove or Baker’s.) His father, Alfred Sendrey (or Aladár Szendrei, 1884–1976), was known as an opera conductor in Europe and America and was director of the Leipzig Symphony when Rózsa lived in that city. He migrated to Paris (1933), New York (1941), and Los Angeles (1945). He too was a composer and was particularly noted for writing several books on the history of Jewish music.
Bibliography of Jewish Music (1951),
David’s Harp: The Story of Music in Biblical Times (1964),
Music in Ancient Israel (1969), and
Music in the Social and Religious Life of Antiquity (1974).
It would be pedantic to footnote Mr. Sendrey’s fascinating piece. The variances from Miklós Rózsa’s familiar account hardly need to be pointed out to readers of this journal. They illustrate the inescapable difficulty of establishing a definitive account of events that took place more than half a century ago. In Rózsa’s telling Jacques Feyder (who was Belgian, not French) reencountered Rózsa in London in the summer of 1936. This was during the run of the ballet Hungaria. Rózsa had been in London since the previous autumn. Rózsa never described his initial meeting with Alexander Korda. In his version, the whole thing was set up by Feyder, with reference to Rózsa’s supposed acquaintance with Vincent Korda. At this remove it is impossible to determine the exact truth, let alone the sequence of events. Nevertheless, a few details warrant comment for the unsuspecting reader.
Goornisht is Yiddish for “it’s hopeless; nothing helps.” Gantse mishpocha signifies “the whole family.”
Bruno Walter did take up the
Theme, Variations, and Finale, but he did not give the second performance. That was Charles Munch (Budapest, 1934). Walter conducted it in Amsterdam later the same year.
In association with
© 2016 / 2024 CINESCORES CENTER
Visit the representative website of Hugo Friedhofer - GO TO SITE
WE WOULD LIKE TO SPECIAL THANKS FOR THE PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINTS
DIMITRI TIOMKIN OFFICIAL WEBSITE - MIKLOS ROZSA OFFICIAL WEBSITE
FRANZ WAXMAN OFFICIAL WEBSITE - BERNARD HERRMANN OFFICIAL
LUC VAN DE VEN - SOUNDTRACK!
UNIVERSAL PICTURES - FOX STUDIO - MGM PRODUCTIONS
WARNER
BROS - PHOTOS GENERAL ALL RIGHTS RESERVED >
DISCLAMER
NEWS
