Just wanted to clear up a couple of points made by Roger Hecht:

>Probably true, but I do recall two famous exceptions, as far as directors
>are concerned.  One was Hitchcock's conflict with Herrmann over the
>latter's brazen (and I thought brilliant) score to Torn Curtain.  I'm sure
>most people have heard the story of how Hitchcock heard some of it played,
>was shocked at the orchestral complement, etc., and ordered a new, mediocre
>score by John Addison.

The reason for that was that Hitchcock, who was feeling pressure from the
studio execs, had asked for a score with a hit pop song, a la "Three Coins
in the Fountain" or "Goldfinger" (by the way, you can use that melody for
a title song - "Torn cur-tannnnn").  Herrmann instead did his customary
thing of ignoring the director and providing what he felt the movie needed.
Hitchcock actually showed up for the recording session, probably because
he had gotten wind of what Herrmann was up to, and publically fired the
composer in a humiliating way.  This led to Herrmann's leaving Hollywood
for England.  It wasn't until young turks like Scorsese and Da Palma
started directing that Herrmann worked again in American films.  His film
career shrank to England and Europe.

>Herrmann had something similar happend to him in a film with Truffaut
>(sp).  There was this scene of a handkerchief (I think) falling slowly to
>the ground someplace in Italy.  Herrmann wrote exquisite music to accompany
>it, but Truffaut demurred, thinking the music too intrusive in sound.  He
>replaced it with some "harmless" Vivaldi.

That was due to a disagreement between Truffaut and Herrmann about the
dramatic nature of the scene for The Bride Wore Black.  Truffaut wanted
something light, symbolized by the flight of a handkerchief dropped from a
murder scene and borne by the winds over roofs of Paris.  For Herrmann, it
was more like an amputated limb from a battlefield.  I agree with Truffaut.
I consider Herrmann certainly one of the finest film composers this
country's produced.  Yet, if he had a fault, it was a Gothic sensibility
that tended to go over the top. This became more pronounced as he grew
older.  Composer David Raksin ("Laura," "Forever Amber," "Force of Evil,"
"The Bad and the Beautiful," among many others) remembers seeing with
Herrmann the Albert Finney/Lauren Bacall "Murder on the Orient Express,"
score by Richard Rodney Bennett.  There's a memorable sequence with the
train pulling out of Victoria (is it?) Station to a wonderful, Ravellian
slow waltz.  It's considered one of the great music sequences in postwar
film, and Raksin enthused over it to Herrmann.  Herrmann growled that it
was terrible, in his opinion.  "That train is a Train of Death!" By that
remark you know *exactly* how Herrmann would have written it.  Bennett
emphasizes the elegance of the movie itself - the opulent sets and
photography, the star turns - the subcutaneous knowledge that this is an
Agatha Christie mystery rather than a "real" murder - fun, rather than
serious.

>There was a remarkable documentary about Herrmann that described these
>incidents.  It included one scene from Torn Curtain that was scored with
>Herrmann's music, and the scene from the Truffaut film was also available.
>In my opinion, both directors made a terrible mistake.  (The Herrmann score
>to Torn Curtain was recorded on London years ago.  It was not his best
>music, but it was striking, inventive, and, far better than Addison's.
>It might have made a great deal more of that movie, too.)

I saw that documentary too.  I agree about Hitchcock.  The Torn Curtain
score would have helped that movie immeasurably.  Some great scenes make
less than their full impact because of the score Hitchcock used.  Actually,
the best scene in that movie, in my opinion, was the one with no music at
all - Paul Newman's murder of the security cop. While I agree that the
Vivaldi was a lame substitution for Herrmann's sequence in The Bride Wore
Black, in the context of the entire film, I think Truffaut was right
about the tone of the sequence.  And, of course, he *was* the director.
Herrmann's trouble was that he really couldn't abide direction of his own
work.  Paul Schrader, scriptwriter of Taxi Driver, told me of Scorsese and
himself meeting with Herrmann to discuss the music for the film.  Both of
them knew Herrmann's work in great detail and *wanted* Herrmann.  They
began to run the film and timidly suggested music for the opening sequence.
Herrmann cut them off.  If you hired him, you got what *he* thought
appropriate.  *He* was the expert and the court of last resort as far as
music was concerned.  Scorsese hired him anyway, with great results.

I recommend, if you can find it, Steven C.  Smith's marvelous A Heart
at Fire's Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann, published by
University of California Press, 1991, ISBN 0-520-07123-9.  Incidentally,
according to his dust-jacket photograph, Smith looks a great deal like me.

Steve Schwartz