What, more Victor Mature!? (what could I be thinkin')

I was never particularly fond of the sword and sandal, 1940s-50s films. The religious background rankled my atheistic dogma. But in retrospect, if only for the music, there was a lot of good stuff. Demetrius and The Gladiators (1954) was a sequel to The Robe (1953), and both enjoyed a wonderful Caligula as portrayed by Jay Robinson, as well as Mature's Demetrius. The Robe's Alfred Newman, however, was replaced by Franz Waxman who demonstrates a wonderfully light and accurate style, much more modern then Newman's (this could also be a function of direction, but as Newman was his own music director and head of the department, I give him less leeway on these things). Waxman's God doesn't need to shout and bellow his greatness. The most wonderful aspect of this score is the sound of the orchestra in early stereo, it is so good that it is almost distracting as the musical parts, making their way from one voice of the orchestra to the other, move across the screen. He did Rear Window in the same year.

Hugo Friedhofer was the original Hollywood music dog. He orchestrated for everyone at Warner, Steiner and Korngold included, and then he started being offered films of his own, by Alfred Newman at Fox and others. He was big with the Newman's, brother Emil was music director on Joan of Arc (1948)(and Jerome Moross was orchestrator, he went on to fame as composer of The Big Country (1958) and The Cardinal (1963)). It's a pretty good score, it was nominated for an Oscar (but then the fact that The Hours was nominated for an Oscar pretty much demeans that honor). But the score has its real clunkers. For example: at 10:00 in, Joan runs up a hill and falls at a shrine where she prays, as she falls to her knees the music keeps climbing by switching to the brass (it is dutifully ducked almost to inaudibility by the mixers), then goes on to all sorts of business that constantly clashes with her monologue. This problem could have been instigated by the wish of the director (the last of Victor Fleming of Gone With The Wind fame), the music might have been cut in from elsewhere as the director didn't like the original music (or there hadn't been any). In both those cases, as a card carrying member of the Motion Picture Editors Guild, I would like to think that the music editor might have done a better job. Who knows, maybe they liked it? Yet what makes Friedhofer my kind of Hollywood workin' stiff, is his lack of musical ego. Probably his best score, his Oscar, The Best Years of Our Lives, was done in a pastiche of Copland as ordered, Joan of Arc, two years later, is in a different style again. He did what was needed, or what was asked for, hopefully they were the same, that is a professional in my book.