The Magnificent Elmer Read online

  Elmer had been hired to write the movie’s score and the result was the hottest sound since he had brought jazz to Otto Preminger’s Man with the Golden Arm. There was a lot of perilous jazz around the year they filmed Sweet Smell of Success. And of course, Elmer knew New York well. We had lived two miles north of the action of the story. “The section is between Columbus Circle and Times Square,” observed Elmer, “and in that tiny area careers were made and destroyed by the gossip columnists.” Elmer’s music reflected the anguish that was in the air.

  The movie was American film noir of the highest order, and it created the most exciting words and music team you’ll ever see—words by Clifford Odets, music by Elmer Bernstein.

  The movie presents the bitter relationship between J.J. and Sidney Falco, Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis. For ninety minutes you sit and watch two despicable guys tearing one another to pieces with their bile and cynicism.

  Elmer really took to this setting, and Clifford really took to this Manhattan melodrama. Clifford stretched the two-week assignment to four months, deconstructing every one of Julie Epstein’s scenes and virtually every one of his sentences.

  In capturing the big city Elmer and I had deserted for Hollywood, I thought that Sweet Smell captured better than any film I’d ever seen the atmosphere of Times Square, the excitement of big-city journalism. When I urge friends to see the movie, as I do to this day, the main incentive is the chance they’ll have to hear Clifford’s pungent dialog and Elmer’s wonderful music. We live today in an age of digital magic and special-effects illiteracy. So you will have to forgive my special affection for good words and good music; I was corrupted early by them.

  A lot of people took some cheap swipes at Clifford Odets for “selling out” to Hollywood, for wasting himself on the celluloid city. Arthur Miller, a pretty fair playwright himself, was never one of Clifford’s detractors. He never blamed him for squandering his gifts on screenplays, or for not returning to his roots in the theatre. “I mean,” said Miller, “to what theatre was he supposed to remain faithful? There was very little to return to—only show business and some real estate.”

  Watching Clifford Odets huddled over a typewriter in a prop truck on Broadway was a graphic reminder of what was for me the greatest by-product of marriage to a successful Hollywood composer—the propinquity to genius. As wonderful as it was to see Clifford at parties in an old tuxedo and a vest and a martini in his hand, he was more romantic still in that prop truck at 3 a.m.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ART ISN’T EASY

  “Movie producers have to ask for changes.

  It is how they justify their existence.”

  —Budd Schulberg

  Hollywood, as everybody knows, is the great defrauder of genius, enticing it away from purity and virtue with counterfeit promises and easy money. Of course, this is not quite true. All this talk about Hollywood as the giant money pot, where the gravy train never stops, is a lot of nonsense.

  Take the case of Elmer. Here was a man of immense talent whose music had moved millions. He had written the music for The Magnificent Seven, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Escape, The Man With the Golden Arm, The Ten Commandments. Yet his work to a lot of directors was just a dispensable product on the open market, to be approved or rejected.

  Elmer’s unused work offers an absorbing picture of a Hollywood system that often ran amuck, squandering talent right and left. Here is a brief review of Elmer’s rejected music that occurred at the collision points of trade and talent.

  Martin Scorsese threw out Elmer’s complete score for Gangs of New York. Robert Redford threw out Elmer’s complete score for A River Runs Through It. Roland Joffe rejected Elmer’s score for The Scarlet Letter. Charles Shyer rejected Elmer’s score to the Julia Robert’s romantic comedy Love Trouble. Robert Houston rejected Elmer’s entire score for Murder in Mississippi. Pat O’Connor threw out Elmer’s score for Daniel Day Lewis’ Stars and Bars. William Richert rejected Elmer’s score for A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon. The Disney studio threw out his score for the coming-of-age drama with John Cusack, The Journey of Natty Gann. Marty Ritt discarded his score to the Walter Matthau romantic comedy Casey’s Shadow about a boy and his race horse.

  I was overcome by puzzlement at this long inventory of rejection. So I consulted a composer friend with long experience in these sanguinary affairs.

  “How could they do that?” I asked. “I mean, he was Elmer Bernstein, for God’s sake.”

  “Well, yes, there’s that.”

  “All this music was written and recorded?”

  “Every bar,” said my friend.

  “Then why?”

  “What is the one thing that all these films had in common?”

  “What did they have in common?” I asked.

  “They were a mess.”

  “Ah-hah!” I said.

  “They were desperate to try to fix things. What could they do? Re-imagine the concept? Rewrite the script? Hire new stars?”

  “They threw out the music,” I said.

  “Ah-hah!”

  ***

  As hurt as Elmer was when his music was jettisoned in its entirety, he was almost more aggrieved when a producer, with little judgment about such matters, would order him to alter it, to mangle it. He would have liked to say: Keep your hands off my music. Don’t change it. Don’t improve it. It works.

  It was something that one could not really say to a movie producer. As Budd Schulberg remarked: “Movie producers have to ask for changes, it is how they justify their existence.”

  Elmer’s favorite composer anecdote was about Billy Rose, the bantam theatrical producer and impresario. He was assembling a Broadway musical called Seven Lively Arts. It would contain samples of all the lively arts, comedy, drama, music, ballet, everything. The music would be supplied by Igor Stravinsky, Benny Goodman, and Cole Porter. Rose thought that everything was improvable under his golden touch. He thus cabled Stravinsky: YOUR MUSIC GREAT SUCCESS STOP COULD BE SENSATIONAL SUCCESS IF YOU WOULD AUTHORIZE ME TO HAVE ROBERT RUSSELL BENNETT IMPROVE YOUR ORCHESTRATIONS.

  Stravinsky cabled back:

  SATISFIED WITH GREAT SUCCESS.

  ***

  In Hollywood, even when you win you lose. For in each category of the Oscars, among the five nominees are four who will lose and one who will win. I haven’t tabulated the numbers, but after years of such rejection, Elmer seemed like the most nominated and least awarded composer in film history. Here is the box score.

  In 1955 Elmer was nominated for Best Musical Score for The Man with the Golden Arm. And the Oscar went to Alfred Newman for Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing.

  In 1960 Elmer was nominated for his score to The Magnificent Seven, and he lost to Ernest Gold for his score to Exodus.

  In 1962 Elmer was nominated for To Kill a Mockingbird and lost to Maurice Jarre for Laurence of Arabia.

  In 1966 Elmer was nominated for Hawaii, and lost to John Barry for Born Free.

  In 1983 Elmer was nominated for Trading Places, and lost to Bill Conti for The Right Stuff.

  In 1993 Elmer was nominated for Age of Innocence and lost to John Williams for Schindler’s List.

  In 2002 Elmer was nominated for Far from Heaven and lost to Elliot Gondeldthal for Frida.

  ***

  Why all the fuss about the Academy Awards? Well, the Oscars is a very American institution. There is something special about all that wealth and monomania packed into one theater. Indeed, whenever you put a thousand celebrities into one place—all those self-absorbed stars, directors, agents, and producers—you get a really pleasant combination of gossip, panic, spite, and sham.

  There is something special about the first anything. If you are a writer, it is the first time you see your words in print; if you are a teenager, it is your first kiss; if you are a baseball player, it is your first home run. And if you are a moviemaker, it is your first Oscar ceremony. I remember our first one very well. Elmer had been nominated for the mus
ical score for The Man with the Golden Arm.

  One of the first things I noticed was the way they put all the nominees for the same award together. A convenience to the TV cameramen? A nod to envy and pathology? A threat to mental health? Whatever the reason, there seated cheek and jowl were the five nominated composers and their wives, all grinning in terror. There, in a tight group, were Max Steiner, Alfred Newman, Alex North, George Duning, and my darling Elmer.

  George Duning, who had said yes to Harry Cohn at Columbia, became a staff composer, and wrote the nominated Picnic, as well as the unrecognized Three Stooges in Space; Alfred Newman had written the score for Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, a piece of featureless mush from Fox; Alex North had been nominated for the music to Tennessee Williams’ The Rose Tattoo; Max Steiner had written the score for MGM’s Battle Cry, which was based on the first novel of my old high school beaux Leon Uris; and Elmer had written the driving jazz score to Golden Arm.

  I remember our preparations for the Oscar that year.

  “I could buy a dress for the Oscars for two hundred dollars, or buy the fabric and a pattern and make it for one hundred.” I unpacked the portable sewing machine I had brought West for just this kind of situation.

  If you will cast your mind back to 1955, you know that Marty swept the Oscars, winning best actor, best director, best picture, best nearly everything. Elmer lost to Alfred Newman for Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing. I lost the best gown award to an extra from Republic Pictures. And that was the ’55 Oscars in a nutshell, a fitting receptacle.

  The most exciting moment for me? It was when the ceremony ended and the horde of famous folks strode up the red carpet, in triumph or humility, and boarded their stretch limos. It was then that the platoon of valets in serried ranks assembled, hustled off to bring the cars. It was then that Little Pearly stood unabashedly by the valet’s podium.

  “Mr. Peck’s car,” said the chief usher.

  And I watched breathlessly as Mr. Peck slid into the back seat.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THOROUGHLY MODERN ELMER

  “Thousands of voices saying silently:

  ‘Let it be me… but if not me, not him.’”

  —Bob Hope at the Oscars

  Stop the presses! Alert the media! Elmer was finally nominated for an Oscar and won. Was it a tale of searing injustice? A challenge to the human spirit? A story of high adventure? Not exactly. It was a movie about a flapper with bobbed hair in twenties America.

  Thoroughly Modern Millie was the only score Elmer ever wrote that won the Academy Award. “To think,” he mused, “I lost with To Kill a Mockingbird. I lost with The Magnificent Seven. I lost with The Man with the Golden Arm. Then when I finally won it was with, of all things, Thoroughly Modern Millie.”

  Millie was the only major score Elmer ever wrote that has never been recorded in its entirety. Coincidental? I don’t think so.

  Elmer loved the music of the twenties, and in scoring the Ross Hunter spoof, he put a lot of love and nostalgia into his work. “I had a wonderful kind of Paul Whiteman sound in that score,” he recalled. “There were no highs and no lows, it was like the old radio sound. It was a very tinny sound of the period and I worked hard to get it. And then Ross Hunter recorded it with Andre Previn and a thousand strings.”

  Mind you, I love Elmer’s delightful theme, which thankfully was included in a collection of his work released by Film Music Masterworks three years after his death. This compilation was the only collection in which any of his Millie music ever appeared, with its wonderful gaiety and spirit.

  ***

  The music of the twenties had always held a special appeal for Elmer. When we first returned to New York from our new home in Hollywood, it was to catch up on the shows on Broadway. We saw Herman Wouk’s Caine Mutiny Court Martial, Maxwell Anderson’s Bad Seed, and Clifford Odets’ The Flowering Peach. And of course there were the musicals. By this time we were able to afford tickets to see complete shows, unlike during our impecunious days in a walkup. We saw all of The Pajama Game, Fanny, and Threepenny Opera. But the show we enjoyed the most was The Boy Friend, the buoyant British musical for which Sandy Wilson wrote the songs. Feuer & Martin, who were like a brand name for hit musicals in those days, brought The Boy Friend to America as one of their extraordinary string of smashes, most of them by Frank Loesser and Cole Porter.

  Elmer was delighted by the sound of the show, the twenties-era moaning saxophones that got standing ovations for the overture. Elmer loved the music and the beat, the banjos and the wood blocks. Cy Feuer had found a young music-hall performer named Julie Andrews to star in The Boy Friend, and a few years later, film producer Ross Hunter was determined to make his own takeoff of the twenties. He signed Julie Andrews to star, and when he was unable to secure the screen rights to The Boy Friend, he concocted his own send-up of the jazz age. He called it Thoroughly Modern Millie.

  The movie soundtrack album, if you listen to it today, includes the title tune, by Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn, a few authentic songs of the twenties such as “Baby Face” and “Poor Butterfly.” And if you listen very carefully, you can even hear bits of Elmer’s score, struggling to be heard.

  “And the Oscar goes to Elmer Bernstein for the score to Thoroughly Modern Millie—”

  Almost worth waiting for.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  FINE AND DANNY

  “The pellet with the poison’s in the vessel with the pestle.”

  —Danny Kaye

  The phone call from Danny Kaye had come when Elmer was suffering from the depredations of the blacklist—what Elmer chose in later years to dismiss as the grey list. The call from Danny Kaye was a definite Eureka moment.

  Elmer pointed to the phone receiver, I picked up the extension and listened to the actual voice of Danny Kaye. Danny was to star in The Court Jester for Sam Goldwyn. “The pellet with the poison’s in the vessel with the pestle,” Danny would famously say. He needed Elmer as a rehearsal pianist to work with him on the movie. His wife Sylvia Fine, was the brilliant, protean woman who many said had created Danny, writing the dazzling comedy and music that had fueled his career. Sylvia needed someone to translate her tunes in the movie into genuine songs. Danny’s bravura performances of Sylvia Fine’s witty patter songs brought out all that was best in Danny. His career would last fifty years and embrace seventeen films, most notably The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Inspector General, Hans Christian Anderson and The Court Jester. He also received the French Legion of Honor. “They’re giving that to everybody,” Danny laughed.

  Danny and Sylvia looked on Elmer and me as the new kids on the block. We were at every party the Kayes threw. Those parties were where the movers and shakers in town flowed in and out. Glenn Ford, Jack and Mary Benny, Truman Capote, Lauren Bacall, Laurence Olivier, Clifford Odets. The cast of characters was constantly changing and always stimulating.

  Danny got some tips from Elmer on the physicality of conducting a symphony orchestra. These enabled Danny to be authentic as well as hilarious when he appeared as a guest conductor with virtually every major symphony orchestra in America in behalf of their musicians’ pension funds, raising over ten million dollars. Watching Danny from backstage at the Los Angeles Philharmonic was a delight. He would appear in glistening tails, gripping a quiver of batons. He would judiciously select one, lose it in his first gesture, take another and conduct the orchestra. He mimed an argument with the first violinist, conducted the audience in a greeting, then flawlessly lead the orchestra in a medley of Ravel, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, Beethoven, and John Philip Sousa.

  ***

  Danny had a passion for the things that interested him. He was fascinated by medicine, Chinese food, piloting his own plane, and the Los Angeles Dodgers. I loved the moments when Danny, Elmer and I would arrive at Dodgers Stadium. As we walked down the long corridor to our seats, the crowd would part like the waters of the red sea in the DeMille epic, and then close as inexorably after us.

  As we w
atched batting practice, Danny once recounted to us how Sam Goldwyn presented him with the script for one of his favorite films, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. “Mr. Goldwyn sits there with his right forefinger pressed firmly against his nose, he hands me this red binder and he says, ‘It’s a good role for you, Danny.’ And I say I’m looking forward to reading it. And Mr. Goldwyn says, ‘The only trouble is, it’s a little blood and thirsty.’ And I say, ‘I am flabber and gasted.’”

  Elmer asked Danny if the story he had heard from Garson Kanin was true. When the famous playwright had first been interviewed by Goldwyn for a junior writer’s job, an impassioned Goldwyn had explained why he loved making movies. “It’s not the money or the power,” said Goldwyn. “It’s an education! Right now I’m making a movie about a man you’ve never even heard of—Alexander Hamilton.”

  Elmer and Danny couldn’t keep from talking shop. One evening they were grousing about the vacillation and indecision of Hollywood producers.

  “D’ya know the man who’s made the greatest impact on the movie business during last thirty years?” said Danny.

  Elmer weighed the question. “Mayer? Zanuck? Goldwyn?”

  Danny shook his head. “He wasn’t a movie mogul. He was a man named Zeke Bonura and he played first base for the Old Washington Senators.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “It’s true,” said Danny solemnly. “Zeke Bonura was the worst fielding first baseman in baseball, but every year he ended the season with the best fielding average in the major leagues.”

  Elmer was skeptical. “That isn’t possible, Danny. The worst fielder and the best fielding average? How is that possible?”

  “Because,” said Danny, “he understood one rule in baseball better than anyone else. You can’t be charged with an error unless you touch the ball.”