A Letter from David Amram
Dear Daniel:
In 1962 (sixty-four years ago) when John Frankenheimer chose me to do the whole score for The Manchurian Candidate and sent me the printed version of the screen play, I was thrilled to be asked to work on such an unusual film but wondered how this could possibly be done as a major film in Hollywood.
When the film’s young director asked me what I thought about the screenplay and if I had any ideas about what music could do to support the film, he said…
“Just remember two things when you are doing the score. This is NOT a traditional film to support popcorn sales or to fill up drive in movie theaters.
“Here is what you need to know.
”#1 This is not a Chinese war movie
“# 2 The film will tell you what to do.”
The film DID tell me what to do, and John Frankenheimer, Frank Sinatra and all in charge allowed me to do it.
Over the years, John and I remained friends and he always congratulated me for continuing to pursue what I loved to do as a classical composer of symphonies, opera and chamber music, a conductor and a performer of jazz and global roots music.
He congratulated me for daring to forgo the golden opportunity of becoming a Hollywood hack who functioned as a foreman, hiring ghost writers to actually write and orchestrate scores, while taking credit for it, and not allowing whatever gifts I had to wither on the vine.
I never could understand how John understood and was able to deal with the world that he was in, until I read David Cairns’ brilliant piece for The Chiseler.
https://chiseler.org/post/190100471631/neg-sparkle-1
His essay addressed the magic of cinema as a way of telling the story.
Since lIke most of us brought up during the Great Depression, I learned how to read and write by devouring comic books and discovered a way to see the world beyond our farm in Feasterville Pennsylvania by selling old bottles so that I could buy a ticket to go with other kids to a Saturday matinees at the movie theater few miles from our farm in Frankfurt Pennsylvania and live a new life through the magic of the silver screen.
These fantasies during the 30s became a reality for all of us.
And they helped us all, when we graduated from comic books to reading the classics about how Homer recounted how Odysseus had to be chained to the mast so that he wouldn’t jump over board when he heard the sirens singing and swim ashore to join the endless party of getting high and chasing ancient Greece’s starlets of yesteryear.
Because of those films that were done about ancient times, even though they were a Borshst Belt version of Antiquity, when we read Homer in school, we could make up a film in our own minds while we were reading. They had already become our reality so we could re-edit them into making them part of our own experiences, even if they only occurred in our imaginations after we got home and dreamed about them.
This made many of us understand, later in life, that Homer knew that once you have ever had even an imaginary taste of instant ecstasy, like the one that Odysseus had, when he and his fellow sailors heard those sirens singing and beckoning them to abandon ship and come ashore to hang out with them.
Odysseus had already been warned that once you heard them, you were hooked, and therefore you were lucky, you could be bailed out before you became strung out!! This made us understand why Odysseus took the goddess Circe’s advice and had himself chained to the mast of his ship by his fellow seamen so that he wouldn’t jump overboard and swim to shore to party up a storm and never be see again!
You also asked me about Elia Kazan’s Splendor in the Grass…
It would take hours to go over all the events that occurred from the time before May 7 of 1960, when Kazan had his first meeting with everyone to start work on “Splendor in the Grass’; all the different events that occurred for a year before that, and the next few months when making the film…getting the great musicians, some of Dixieland’s original players, like Buster Bailey (born in 1902) and other jazz virtuosos, pioneers and great chamber music and classical soloists to make the symphonic and classical music sound CLASSICAL..not like Hollywood schmaltz commercial crap!!
This was something Kazan and William Inge (who wrote the screen play) and I all wanted!!! Kazan loved jazz and ALL sincere music from the heart…. Chopin, Beethoven, Gershwin, Lester Young, Greek and Turkish music et al. He felt the same way about music for his films as he did about acting, cinematography, set designs, costumes, the script, lighting, locations etc. He was a real artist and storyteller. I loved working on the film and was even in one scene; and he wanted me there when making the film so that I could sense what it was about!
It was Warren Beatty’s first film ever. And since he was totally unknown, we hung out and nobody hounded him when he sat in on a lot of my jazz gigs as a very accomplished pianist. By coincidence, I had played with the Arlington Virginia Civic Symphony as a teenager in the late 1940’s and his father who was an insurance salesman played violin with them.
He and Natalie Wood were young and full of life and the whole cast was a joy to work with!!
Cheers til we speak
David
(STILL a promising young composer)
The Chiseler is proud to announce the upcoming arrival of David Amram’s wonderful memoir: "David Amram: The Next 80 Years ’ Routledge Press 2022.