Henry Mancini: An Appreciation

When I think of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, two things come to mind: Audrey’s Holly Golightly character eating (a cruller? bear claw?) and drinking coffee outside early in the a.m., and Henry Mancini’s beautiful, immortal score. The film is remembered more for "Moon River" than for almost anything else, though for me Audrey Hepburn's reputation as a top-notch actress was also cemented in this film. She expressed her appreciation for Mancini’s score in a note to him:

Dear Henry,

I have just seen our picture- BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S- this time with your score.

A movie without music is a little bit like an aeroplane without fuel. However beautifully the job is done, we are still on the ground and in a world of reality. Your music has lifted us all up and sent us soaring. Everything we cannot say with words or show with action you have expressed for us. You have done this with so much imagination, fun, and beauty.

You are the hippest of cats—and most sensitive of composers!

Thank you, dear Hank.

Lots of love,

Audrey

Henry Mancini (1924-1994) owned the early 1960s, musically speaking. While the baby boomers were scalding the air with rock music, the "Greatest Generation" needed something that they could enjoy and Mancini was their man. The composer was popular with the public and beloved by his peers. Mancini won three Oscars in 1961-62: Best Song (“Moon River”) and Score for Breakfast at Tiffany’s in addition to a nod for the song "Bachelor in Paradise." He was awarded Best Song again in ‘62 for Days of Wine and Roses. Mancini compositions would receive Oscar nominations in 1963 ("Charade"), '64 ("Dear Heart"), and '65 ("The Sweetheart Tree"). His memorable melodies played continually on the radio and would continue to do so for the next forty years. Mancini’s reputation was never much with the terminally “hip” baby boom generation and he became known as an Easy Listening lightweight, due to his popularity among the older generation and his "heavy rotation" on “Beautiful Music” stations in the 1970s. Mancini’s arrangement of Nino Rota’s Love Theme from Romeo & Juliet made that composition his own.

In the years after his death from cancer in 1994, Henry Mancini's work received newfound popularity and his melodies earned a kitschy, yet hip reputation. It's a pity he wasn't around to appreciate the wave of adulation the mid-1990s "Lounge Music" revival brought, as it made believers out of the baby boomers who had previously thought of Mancini as "Schmaltzy" or "Old-Fashioned." His music became the epitome of Rat Pack-era cool. I never saw him or his music that way, because even when his music is swinging, there’s an undeniable pathos to Mancini, and it’s in most everything he composed. With that in mind, his music doesn't seem so ideal for alcohol consumption, even if those RCA albums were supposed to be for happy cocktail parties. People also seem to think that Breakfast at Tiffany’s was just a comedy, but it wasn’t (have these people seen the movie?) and Henry Mancini's work was never strictly loungey pop music. It could be enjoyed as such, there's always something more there. He was a quiet, self-effacing man, and guarded his emotions, yet that sensitive personality was often present in his music.

Speaking at a tribute for composer Jerry Goldsmith, Mancini was quoted as saying, “Frankly, he [meaning Goldsmith’s talent] scares the hell out of us.” That compliment could also be applied to Mancini. He was a singular combination of classy sophistication and tasteful melodicism, sort of a George Cukor of Composition. Mancini’s melodies could break your heart (Soldier in the Rain), scare the hell out of you (the ominously hip “Experiment in Terror”), or make for fun party music ("It Had Better Be Tonight"; "A Shot in the Dark"). His session men were the best West Coast Jazz musicians, he had a great "white bread" chorus which gave Ray Conniff's gaggle of better-known warblers a run for its money, and he sold millions of excellent easy listening/soundtrack albums. Mancini could also claim that film music legend John Williams (Jaws, Star Wars) was a Mancini acolyte. But we didn't really know how good this guy was until his better film scores were issued on CD, not the easy listening re-records from the 1960s-70s, but the actual tracks as heard in the films, like A Touch of Evil and Wait Until Dark, and yes, even Breakfast at Tiffany's. (the music heard on the LP is markedly different from what is heard in the film; a release of the actual underscore is unlikely because Paramount shows no interest in releasing or liscensing releases of their film score library). These works are a step towards revising Mancini's legacy and removing the undeserved, idiotic appellation, "lightweight tunesmith." Time has proven him to be fine dramatic composer and the absence of melody in today's film scores only make those of us who loved Mancini's music adore his work all the more, because no one has replaced him.

And that’s the truth, my huckleberry friend…

The Maestro, Henry Mancini

Gloria Grahame: An Appreciation

I'm not sure when this picture of Gloria Grahame (1923-1981) was taken, but it's probably 1954, when she appeared in two little-known crime dramas: Naked Alibi and Human Desire. She's clearly at the peak of her sex appeal, but the Noir vixen was also at a career peak in 1954.

I'll admit that Gloria Grahame's obvious, physical charms are what initially got me interested in her, but having seen nearly all of her 1950s work, I've come to realize that Grahame's 1950s screen credits compare favorably with many of her better-known contemporaries, including an absolutely stellar year in 1952. It's a shame she isn't better known outside of Film Noir circles, where she's revered. Grahame won me over with her onscreen vulnerability, her likability--even when she plays a truly awful character-- and with a voice like no other. She invariably enlivens any scene she's in and makes watching Noir all the more exciting.

The 1950s proved to be an impressive decade for the actress, who began making her presence known in 1946 with her role as Violet in It's a Wonderful Life. She made a bigger impression playing a b-girl in 1947's Crossfire. The role earned the 24-year-old her first Oscar nomination. Grahame would begin the 1950s in Nicholas Ray's haunting In a Lonely Place, one of the director's best films and Grahame's rendering of the film's last lines is one of the most effective moments in all of Film Noir: "I lived a few weeks while you loved me." Ray and Grahame later married, but that union was destroyed when Grahame began an affair with Ray's 13 year-old son from a previous marriage.

"I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me."

1952 would prove to be Gloria Grahame's finest year. She won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for The Bad & the Beautiful, playing a flighty southern belle who cheats on her screenwriter husband. Grahame was Jack Palance's conniving girlfriend in Sudden Fear, co-starring Joan Crawford. Grahame further added to her credentials with her appearance in the year's Best Picture winner, The Greatest Show On Earth. Another iconic crime drama, 1953's The Big Heat, showcased Grahame as a spurned gangster's moll. In 1955, she would be absolutely charming as "Ado Annie" in the otherwise bloated film adaptation of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma! Grahame ended the decade with an odd but memorable part in 1959's Odds Against Tomorrow, where, in a near-cameo role, she is aroused by the cruelty of Robert Ryan's nasty character.

"We're all sisters under the mink."

Gloria Grahame was impressive during the 1950s, starring in several Noir classics, winning an Oscar, appearing in a Best Picture winner, and even warbling in a musical. Despite those accomplishments, it's her work in crime dramas that have proven to be her enduring legacy. Given the cultish appeal of Film Noir, it is unlikely that Grahame will receive a widespread renaissance, but to those who've seen her work, she's a fondly-kept secret.

Dana Andrews: An Appreciation

I was twenty when I first became aware of Dana Andrews . His performance in 1946's The Best Years of Our Lives was nothing short of amazing. If I had discovered his movies when I was, say, 10 or so, he no doubt would have joined the likes of Lee Marvin and Steve McQueen as the cinematic heroes my friends and I emulated at the playground. That is, minus all that drinkin' and carousin'; that aspect of cinema tough guys didn't register to this fifth grader. And given the number of war movies Andrews (1909-1992) starred in, he would have been wildly popular among my World War II-obsessed friends. I was mesmerized by Andrews’ screen presence and saw right away that his appeal wasn’t in the way he delivered his lines, but rather his reactions to events around him. Everything the viewer needed to know about a Dana Andrews character was registered on his face. When I started reading up on Best Years’ Oscar wins, I was disappointed, but not surprised, that Andrews didn’t get nominated for the film-- or anything else-- during the course of his career. I knew then that I had a new movie hero. I’m a sucker for an underdog.

Whenever I think of Dana Andrews, two images come to mind: The scene from The Best Years of Our Lives in the soon-to-be-scrapped bomber and how his character confronts his wartime trauma while reliving the sheer terror of that experience; and Where the Sidewalk Ends, when Andrews’ character, after accidentally killing a suspect, stays up the entire night at the police precinct ruminating about what to do. The worn out look on his face come morning is simply brilliant.

As I saw more of his films, I realized that Andrews was his own man; he wasn’t explosive or menacing like the tightly-wound Robert Ryan, and he lacked the smart-alecky disposition of another favorite, Glenn Ford. And even when Andrews is playing a man on the edge, he doesn’t erupt like Ryan might, but instead boils from within, so deep that it only faintly registers on his face, but it’s so well done that I shake my head with amazement at his ability to burn so subtly. Maybe that's reading more into Andrews’ performances than what's actually there, but whatever it is that he’s trying to convey comes across loud and clear and registers right away, even in my chickpea-sized brain. He has some moments in Fallen Angel (1945) where it’s blatantly obvious what is going on in his character’s head, especially when it involves luscious Linda Darnell’s character, Stella. Andrews came of age during a time when men were expected to keep their emotions under wraps, Andrews is able to show the viewer what his character is feeling and thinking without saying a word. I’m blown away by his style, which never-- despite the claims made by some movie buffs-- comes off as “wooden.”

Now, since I’m (ostensibly) an adult, I see Dana Andrews in a different light and with that a whole new wave of associations. I’ve read much about that WWII generation and with the death of my own relatives, it’s obvious to me that Andrews is representative of the “Greatest Generation.” His tightlipped, keep-a-lid-on-his-emotions persona reminds me of my grandfather. Every time I see a Dana Andrews movie, my Generation Envy kicks in and I can’t help but think of how I’d have behaved had I lived in Dana’s time and gone through the things that men like my grandfather went through during their service in World War II. For me, my fascination with that generation is also what makes Dana Andrews so appealing.

The man had his share of personal battles. He was an alcoholic, having overcome that addiction by the late-sixties. Andrews briefly gave up acting to become the president of the Screen Actors Guild (1963-65) and then upon his return, toiled in some truly dreadful horror and cult movies during the 1960s & 1970s, and appeared in numerous TV movies. Like another Twentieth Century Fox star, Henry Fonda, Andrews would spend that decade in films unworthy of his talent and stature. However, unlike Fonda, Andrews would not enjoy a comeback. There would be no career-capping Oscar win, nor any Lifetime Achievement Awards. Andrews would die in 1992, essentially forgotten. I was acutely affected by his death. Upon learning the news, I immediately thought of that Best Years bomber scene and how it held so much meaning for me and realizing that this actor-- completely unknown to many under the age of fifty-- was a treasure. I haven’t seen every one of his movies, but I have yet to be disappointed by anything he’s done. I know that there’s something more going on in a Dana Andrews performance than what the character says, and his brilliance is such that he doesn’t have to say anything at all.