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Authors: Pearl Bernstein Gardner, Gerald Gardner
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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
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
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