{"id":56,"date":"2013-01-31T06:00:47","date_gmt":"2013-01-31T06:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/neilsinyard.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/?p=56"},"modified":"2024-10-17T07:15:18","modified_gmt":"2024-10-17T06:15:18","slug":"hitchcock-vs-herrmann-the-story-behind-the-break-up-of-cinemas-finest-directorcomposer-partnership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/neilsinyard.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/?p=56","title":{"rendered":"Hitchcock vs Herrmann: the story behind the break-up of cinema\u2019s finest director\/composer partnership"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by NEIL SINYARD<\/p>\n<p>I have called this talk \u2018Hitchcock versus Herrmann\u2019 because I want to tell the story behind the break-up of what to me is the cinema\u2019s finest director\/composer collaboration. But first I\u2019d like to show two short extracts by way of introduction. The first represents the highpoint of their collaboration and is very famous:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\"  id=\"_ytid_81596\"  width=\"584\" height=\"329\"  data-origwidth=\"584\" data-origheight=\"329\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0WtDmbr9xyY?enablejsapi=1&#038;autoplay=0&#038;cc_load_policy=0&#038;cc_lang_pref=&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;loop=0&#038;rel=1&#038;fs=1&#038;playsinline=0&#038;autohide=2&#038;theme=dark&#038;color=red&#038;controls=1&#038;\" class=\"__youtube_prefs__  epyt-is-override  no-lazyload\" title=\"YouTube player\"  allow=\"fullscreen; accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen data-no-lazy=\"1\" data-skipgform_ajax_framebjll=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The second is undoubtedly the partnership\u2019s low-point and I guarantee that no one will have seen this sequence in this precise form in the cinema:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\"  id=\"_ytid_91336\"  width=\"584\" height=\"329\"  data-origwidth=\"584\" data-origheight=\"329\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/l5zAhKmGLSc?enablejsapi=1&#038;autoplay=0&#038;cc_load_policy=0&#038;cc_lang_pref=&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;loop=0&#038;rel=1&#038;fs=1&#038;playsinline=0&#038;autohide=2&#038;theme=dark&#038;color=red&#038;controls=1&#038;\" class=\"__youtube_prefs__  epyt-is-override  no-lazyload\" title=\"YouTube player\"  allow=\"fullscreen; accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen data-no-lazy=\"1\" data-skipgform_ajax_framebjll=\"\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<em>[Please note that, although Neil&#8217;s text describes the version of the <em>Torn Curtain<\/em> opening scored by Bernard Herrmann, the extract on this webpage is currently the version with John Addison&#8217;s music. The Herrmann version is, however, available on the DVD release of <em>Torn Curtain<\/em>.]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The first extract was, of course, the famous shower-murder in <em>Psycho<\/em>, made in 1960, the murder accentuated by perhaps the most celebrated musical cue in film history, Herrmann\u2019s famous screaming violins that highlight the heroine\u2019s screams but also the stabbing knife. The second extract was the credit sequence of <em>Torn Curtain<\/em>, made in 1966, and some of you might have noticed that it says \u2018Music by John Addison\u2019. Actually the music you heard was by Bernard Herrmann, arguably the most notorious piece of film music ever written because it brought to an end &#8211; and an abrupt and hostile end &#8211; this great director\/composer partnership. The orchestra liked it: indeed, after they\u2019d played it, they burst into spontaneous applause, so it came as something of a surprise to them that, when Hitchcock heard it, he was angry and upset, cancelled the remainder of the session, and severed a partnership that had served him well &#8211; nay, brilliantly &#8211; over 11 years and 9 films. My talk then is centrally concerned with what happened on that fateful day in March 1966 (surely the most dramatic recording session in Hollywood history) and why it happened. It is a complex and even mysterious story with some still unanswered questions, but very revealing about the individual personalities of two extraordinary artists and of two competing egos and insecurities. I also want to assess different accounts of what happened, offering my own interpretation but basing this too on what people who were close to the event have told me. But to understand it fully, one needs to contextualise it a bit; and in this regard, I want to say a few things about the partnership of Hitchcock and Herrmann in its prime.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/neilsinyard.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Sinyard_HitchcockHerrmann-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"Sinyard_HitchcockHerrmann\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-60\" \/><\/p>\n<p>On the face of it, it might seem an odd pairing: Hitchcock a droll Cockney Catholic, who after a string of brilliant English thrillers such as <em>The 39 Steps<\/em> and <em>The Lady Vanishes<\/em> had gone to Hollywood at the invitation of producer David Selznick in 1939 to make <em>Rebecca<\/em> and who had settled in America; Herrmann a volatile Jewish New Yorker of prodigious musical talent as conductor as well as composer, and for the concert-hall as well as the movie screen and incidentally a great Anglophile: he loved English music and English literature. They came together, though, through a colossal mutual professional respect; a shared sense of humour (Herrmann\u2019s widow, Norma, told me that when I asked her what she thought was the secret behind their successful partnership: \u2018They had a very similar sense of humour,\u2019 she told me, \u2018quite dark and mischievous\u2019); a certain similarity of outlook (both nurturing under defensive exteriors a deeply romantic sensibility); and similar aesthetic goals. Herrmann thought that the key to good film music was the ability of the composer to seek out and intensify the inner emotions of the characters, not just to illustrate and accompany the drama but to get inside it (if you can\u2019t do that, he thought, then you shouldn\u2019t be writing music for films in the first place); and that corresponded to Hitchcock\u2019s aesthetic of conveying psychological intensity not through histrionic display but through cinematic means of composition and montage.<\/p>\n<p>When they teamed up in the mid 1950s, both were on a career high. Having been in Hollywood for 15 years, Hitchcock was now established as a major player. He had just made one of his greatest films, <em>Rear Window<\/em> (1954); had launched his hugely successful television series <em>Alfred Hitchcock Presents<\/em> which, through his witty introductions and conclusions, had made him a star in his own right, which undoubtedly enabled him to make controversial films like <em>Psycho<\/em> on the basis of his name alone; and, significantly, was being hailed not simply as the \u2018Master of Suspense\u2019 but a major artist- an auteur, indeed- by the young critics and budding film-makers of the magazine <em>Cahiers du Cin\u00e9ma<\/em>, who were soon to form the nucleus of the French Nouvelle Vague: Francois Truffaut, Jean-luc Godard, Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\"  id=\"_ytid_59441\"  width=\"584\" height=\"329\"  data-origwidth=\"584\" data-origheight=\"329\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/226TtyMrJH8?enablejsapi=1&#038;autoplay=0&#038;cc_load_policy=0&#038;cc_lang_pref=&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;loop=0&#038;rel=1&#038;fs=1&#038;playsinline=0&#038;autohide=2&#038;theme=dark&#038;color=red&#038;controls=1&#038;\" class=\"__youtube_prefs__  epyt-is-override  no-lazyload\" title=\"YouTube player\"  allow=\"fullscreen; accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen data-no-lazy=\"1\" data-skipgform_ajax_framebjll=\"\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n[<em>Please note that the video of Herrmann extracts above was not part of Neil&#8217;s presentation but is included here as illustration.<\/em>]<\/p>\n<p>Similarly with Herrmann. Having begun his professional career as a staff musician for CBS radio and collaborated with a boy wonder by the name of Orson Welles, he had accompanied Welles to Hollywood and begun his film music career in spectacular style with his score for <em>Citizen Kane<\/em>, which was a musical milestone as well as a movie masterpiece, because it broke away from the lush Europeanised romanticism of composers such as Korngold and Max Steiner that had dominated Hollywood soundtracks in the 1930s and created a much starker sound that often involved an innovative use of the orchestra: in Howard Goodall\u2019s phrase, he replaced sentiment with anxiety. Straight after <em>Kane<\/em>, he won an Oscar for his score for <em>The Devil and Daniel Webster<\/em>; and one of his typically Gothic scores of the mid-1940s, <em>Hangover Square<\/em> even prompted a fan letter from a 15-year-old Stephen Sondheim. During the 1940s he was trying to divide his time between his concert and cinema engagements and between composing and conducting but was now in such demand by the studios that the concert and conducting ambitions were having to take a back seat. This frustrated him in some way because he was a formidable musician whose real love was conducting (he never quite forgave Andr\u00e9 Previn for landing the post of principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra &#8211; he would have loved that job). Which career path should he choose? His widow Norma Herrmann once showed me a copy of the score he had of Stravinsky\u2019s Symphony in 3 Movements which he had asked Stravinsky to sign, and the inscription reads: \u2018To the excellent musician and conductor, Bernard Herrmann. Cordially, I. Stravinsky.\u2019 For a 20th century musician, an inscription such as that from Stravinsky would be like a reference from God: I doubt whether Stravinsky would have done that for Herbert von Karajan.<\/p>\n<p>Herrmann completed his opera based on <em>Wuthering Heights<\/em> in 1951, but by the mid 1950s, he was in such demand as a film composer that his path had been chosen for him. When Hitchcock came along, the partnership \u2018jelled\u2019 immediately, with Herrmann catching the tone of Hitchcock\u2019s macabre comedy thriller, <em>The Trouble with Harry<\/em> to perfection with a witty, alternately playful and portentous score that really added to the fun; then scored <em>The Man who Knew Too Much<\/em> and <em>The Wrong Man<\/em> with an appropriately menacing tread, sometimes flamboyant, sometimes eerie and troubled; and then the Golden Period, between 1958 and 1960, when we had three masterpieces of film direction and film scoring one after the other- <em>Vertigo<\/em> (1958), <em>North by Northwest<\/em> (1959) and <em>Psycho<\/em> (1960), the latter being perhaps their ultimate collaboration in terms of success and impact: it\u2019s noticeable that Herrmann\u2019s name comes up second on the credits just before Hitchcock\u2019s, as if emphasising his importance.<\/p>\n<p>BUT: with hindsight, it\u2019s possible to see that the <em>Psycho<\/em> collaboration contained hints of future discord, areas of disagreement that here had been successfully resolved but might have left niggling feelings of disquiet. For example, it is well known that Hitchcock had originally not wanted music for the shower murder whilst recognising that the whole film depended on the effectiveness of that scene &#8211; everything leads up to it and everything that follows is dependent on its impact, so if that sequence didn\u2019t work, then the whole film would go down the drain, as it were. Herrmann came up with those screaming violins, perhaps the most immediately effective cue in film music, and in essence proved Hitchcock wrong, which generally was not a wise thing to do. Still, to give Hitchcock his due, he deserves credit for giving way on this point (when Herrmann with typical mischief reminded him that he\u2019d said he didn\u2019t want music for this scene, Hitchcock replied, \u2018Improper suggestion.\u2019); and, in fact, I was once on a radio programme with writer\/director Peter Bogdanovich who\u2019d attended the New York premiere of <em>Psycho<\/em> when little was known about the film and he said the audience was screaming so loudly during the shower murder that he never heard the music, so maybe Hitchcock was right after all. At one point Hitchcock was getting cold feet about the film and was thinking of cutting it down to an hour to show as one of his television specials and it was Herrmann particularly who persuaded him not to do that and that it was one of his major films; and what particularly persuaded him was seeing the complete film with the score. In short, Herrmann was becoming very important, the danger of that being that he might be stealing some of his thunder (and Hitchcock was notoriously loath to give credit to his collaborators). In the end, with <em>Psycho<\/em>, everything worked out triumphantly, but his next film <em>The Birds<\/em> had a mixed critical and commercial reception (Herrmann on that film being more of a technical consultant as it didn\u2019t have a conventional score); and then when <em>Marnie<\/em>, which had one of Herrmann\u2019s full-blown romantic scores, flopped with critics and public, being regarded as clumsy and old-fashioned (it has been re-evaluated since), the Hitchcock\/Herrmann partnership was put under stress as never before. Things came to a head over <em>Torn Curtain<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><p>There is no doubt that Hitchcock was under considerable pressure from the heads of Universal Studios to commission a score for his new film that was commercially exploitable, which was becoming a feature of films at that time. They had seen how Henry Mancini\u2019s \u2018Moon River\u2019 had boosted the popularity of <em>Breakfast at Tiffany<\/em>\u2019s and Maurice Jarre\u2019s \u2018Lara\u2019s Theme\u2019 had added to the appeal of <em>Dr Zhivago<\/em>; and there was the widespread feeling in the industry in the mid-1960s that the conventional symphonic score of Hollywood\u2019s heyday was now a bit old-hat. The pressure on Hitchcock would have been intensified by his terror, as Herrmann\u2019s widow has described it to me, of what he called \u2018the whizzkids\u2019 and of being thought old-fashioned and out of touch with the tastes of the contemporary audience. Before he\u2019d always seemed ahead of the game, particularly with <em>Psycho<\/em>, which had been enormously popular and ahead of its time and had confounded the critics, many of whom had condemned the film at the time and had been compelled to eat their words. Was he losing his touch? Was a new strategy required?<\/p>\n<p>So initially Hitchcock\u2019s decision to keep faith with Herrmann could be seen as being commendably loyal, particularly as Herrmann was a notoriously cantankerous character who made no secret of his contempt for the studio\u2019s attitude to, and ignorance of, film music. Conversely, I think it would be wrong to suggest, as the critic of <em>The Times<\/em> did when reviewing a concert of Herrmann\u2019s film music in 2006, that the relationship foundered during <em>Torn Curtain<\/em> because \u2018Hitch\u2019s lordly ways had, it seems, been gnawing way at Herrmann for some time.\u2019 I don\u2019t think that is so- if anything, it\u2019s more true the other way round. Whatever the niggles over the <em>Psycho<\/em> experience, the swiftness and finality of their falling-out over <em>Torn Curtain<\/em> seems to have taken Herrmann completely by surprise. Another misconception (reiterated by Howard Goodall in an otherwise splendid programme he did on Herrmann\u2019s music for Channel 4) has been the suggestion that, after the <em>Torn Curtain<\/em> debacle, Herrmann was seized on by Francois Truffaut to write the score for <em>Fahrenheit 451<\/em> (1966). In fact, Herrmann had been commissioned for the Truffaut film before the Hitchcock; and indeed there is a letter by Truffaut to Hitchcock (18 November, 1965) which deepens the mystery of their subsequent split. \u2018In London,\u2019 Truffaut wrote, \u2018I met Bernard Herrmann who will be writing the score for <em>Fahrenheit 451<\/em>. We had a long talk together about you and I feel that, in him, you have a great and genuine friend.\u2019 It is a reminder that the break-up was not simply a professional blow but, for both men, a devastating personal loss. Herrmann was undoubtedly one of Hitchcock\u2019s closest friends in the film community, and vice-versa. They went shopping together, apparently; would wash up together after meals; and crucially, would confide in each other and exchange confidences about their private lives- and at that particular time, both of them had quite a lot to exchange. During the filming of <em>Marnie<\/em>, Hitchcock had become infatuated with his leading lady, Tippi Hedren, and although accounts might differ as to how far this infatuation went, it certainly ended unhappily (\u2018She said something that no one is ever allowed to me,\u2019 he told his authorised biographer, John Russell Taylor, \u2018she referred to my weight\u2019). At the same time Herrmann was experiencing the collapse of his second marriage and going through a very painful divorce. So I\u2019ve no doubt Truffaut was right: there was a great bond and friendship there, which makes the break-up all the more extraordinary.<\/p>\n<p>The exchange of telegrams between them about the upcoming score make interesting reading. Although remaining loyal at this stage to Herrmann, Hitchcock had expressed his disappointment at the composer\u2019s most recent score for the film <em>Joy in the Morning<\/em> (1965), which he\u2019d found repetitive and derivative, and demanded a different approach that recognised, as had European film makers, a new audience that was, in his words, \u2018young, vigorous and demanding\u2019 and required a score that had \u2018a beat and a rhythm.\u2019 \u2018If you cannot do this,\u2019 he concluded, \u2018then I am the loser\u2019 (words that, one could say, would come back to haunt him). Herrmann seemed unfazed by this and responded with enthusiasm: \u2018Delighted to Compose Beat Score for <em>Torn Curtain<\/em>. Always Pleased to Have your Views.\u2019 Hitchcock immediately got a production assistant to cable back: \u2018These are not views: these are requirements.\u2019 Whether Herrmann quite understood what Hitchcock was getting at is a moot point; directors are not always good at conveying to composers what it is they\u2019re after. (Anecdotally, I can remember interviewing the director Fred Zinnemann during the making of his last film, the mountaineering drama, <em>Five Days One Summer<\/em> when he\u2019d had a falling-out with his composer, Carl Davis: he\u2019d wanted a small intimate score, he said, and Davis had composed for an orchestra of Richard Strauss\u2019s Alpine Symphony proportions, and I remember thinking: how could they have misunderstood each other so completely?) It\u2019s not clear to me whether Herrmann did think he was delivering what Hitchcock wanted or went away and did his own thing, thinking that that this was the fix the film needed. (As he used to put it: \u2018You expect a doctor to make you well: you don\u2019t expect him also to make you rich.\u2019) Were Hitchcock\u2019s requirements specific enough? He told Herrmann that the score should be modern, that he had very definite ideas about where the music should go, and that there shouldn\u2019t be too much of it. Herrmann had simply responded: \u2018Please send script indicating where you desire music- can then begin composing.\u2019 Hitchcock had told him that \u2018the main title should be exciting, arresting and rhythmic\u2019. One could certainly argue that Herrmann\u2019s main title music was all of those things: what it was not, however, was melodically memorable or obviously commercial. Herrmann went away and wrote the score. In March 1966, the Goldwyn studios in Los Angeles were booked for two days for the recording of the score, with Herrmann conducting. And then all hell broke loose.<\/p>\n<p>Versions of precisely what happened that day have tended to differ. In broad terms, Herrmann started recording the score with the orchestra and the session was going well. Indeed, after the playback of the title music, the musicians had burst into spontaneous applause, a rare tribute from seasoned Hollywood musicians, who would have been accustomed to Andr\u00e9 Previn\u2019s cryptic summary of the film composer\u2019s perennial dilemma: \u2018Do you want it good or do you want it Thursday?\u2019 However, as soon as Hitchcock appeared on the scene, the atmosphere changed. His first sight of Herrmann\u2019s orchestra would have startled him, because it was typically unconventional: 12 flutes, 16 horns, 9 trombones, 2 tubas, 2 sets of tympani, 8 celli, 8 double basses, and no violins &#8211; he must have wondered where his hit song would have materialised out of that combination.<\/p>\n<p>But there is question: why was he there in the first place? Was it his usual practice of attending recording sessions? (I\u2019ve been told that he wasn\u2019t at the recording sessions of <em>Psycho<\/em>, for example.) In his biography of Hitchcock, Patrick McGilligan writes that \u2018Hitchcock kept an appointment with Herrmann in late March to listen to the first recording of the music\u2019. However, an article on the Bernard Herrmann website by Steve Verlieb in 2002 states that: \u2018Hitchcock who must have been warned by his spies about the performance, arrived unannounced on the stage accompanied by his assistant Peggy Robertson to listen to the newly recorded cues.\u2019 If I incline towards this second interpretation rather than the first, it\u2019s for two reasons: 1) Norma Herrmann told me that Herrmann as a rule didn\u2019t like directors turning up at his recording sessions, for he thought they had no business there (they\u2019d done their job, leave him to do his); his ideal was someone like Truffaut, who would just arrive, wish everybody good luck, and then disappear; and 2) if Hitchcock had been invited, why wasn\u2019t he there at the start of the session, particularly as he\u2019d made specific requirements about the main title music? Also, if he\u2019d been invited, would Herrmann have started without him? These are not conclusive arguments, but they do tend to suggest to me that Hitchcock\u2019s arrival was unexpected.<\/p>\n<p>Well, whether Herrmann was expecting him or not, he seemed unperturbed and asked the engineer to play back what they had recorded, at which point, according to McGilligan, \u2018the director didn\u2019t get very far before shutting the recording off\u2019. A row broke out between director and composer in front of the other musicians, in which Hitchcock declared that the score was exactly the kind of score he hadn\u2019t wanted and cancelled the session on the spot. \u2018Where\u2019s the theme song?\u2019 Hitchcock apparently demanded of Herrmann: not love music or romantic music, as has sometimes been suggested, but a hit song, a \u2018number one\u2019, as he put it, and he kept demanding. \u2018Where\u2019s the theme song?\u2019 \u2018I know this,\u2019 Norma Herrmann told me, \u2018as Benny used to say in later years with the greatest contempt in his voice, \u2018Theme song! Theme song!\u2019 Hitchcock then walked out (though the principal horn player Alan Robertson told Norma Herrmann that it was Herrmann who had stormed out first) and went over to Head Office, apologising for what had happened, confirming the cancellation of the next day\u2019s recording session and offering to pay Herrmann\u2019s salary out of his own pocket to atone for his mistaken loyalty in hiring him in the first place. What has always struck me as extraordinary about that chain of events is that, for Hitchcock, it seems so out of character. Everyone who knew Hitchcock- and it\u2019s confirmed by every interview about him I\u2019ve ever seen or every book on him I\u2019ve read- agreed that he was a man who hated confrontations (it was one of Ingrid Bergman\u2019s grouses; \u2018You can never have an argument with that man, he just walks out of the room\u2019); and yet, in this instance, according to some accounts, he seems to have gone our of his way to provoke a confrontation and to cause maximum embarrassment in the process.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_30\" style=\"width: 360px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-30\" src=\"http:\/\/neilsinyard.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Sinyyard_TornCurtain_farmscene-e1359410383179.png\" alt=\"No music for Gromek&#039;s killing: Torn Curtain\" width=\"350\" height=\"197\" class=\"size-full wp-image-30\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-30\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">No music for Gromek&#8217;s killing: <em>Torn Curtain<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<p>Later that day Hitchcock rang Herrmann, who was still in the recording studio in a state of shock. They resumed their argument, Hitchcock furious with Herrmann for disobeying instructions and Herrmann angry with Hitchcock for capitulating to the wishes of studio bosses. Hitchcock would have been particularly cross also because the composer had written music for a brutal murder scene when the director had expressly told him not to: this was a sensitive matter when one recalls that Hitchcock had not wanted music for the shower murder in <em>Psycho<\/em> &#8211; clearly he did not want to be proved wrong twice. To prove him wrong once might be a misfortune; to prove him wrong twice looks like carelessness. And incidentally there\u2019s an odd sub-text to this: the music Herrmann used for this was music he\u2019d used years before for the Hitchcock TV episode \u2018Behind the Locked Door\u2019: whether Hitchcock recognised this is unknown, but if he had, it would certainly have made even madder, because it would have confirmed his belief that Herrmann was beginning to repeat himself. Herrmann, though, would have probably said, as he had of the <em>Psycho<\/em> incident: \u2018If you don\u2019t like it, don\u2019t use it.\u2019 In any event, according to Herrmann\u2019s biographer, Steven Smith: \u2018Both voices were rising; and the conversation quickly ended. It was Hitchcock and Herrmann\u2019s last.\u2019 That last statement, incidentally, is not strictly accurate, as I will shortly explain.<\/p>\n<p>So: how to interpret what happened? Had Herrmann betrayed Hitchcock\u2019s trust by ignoring his requirements and going along with his own instincts rather than those of the director? Or had Hitchcock behaved with rudeness and insensitivity towards one of his most loyal and prestigious collaborators? It has never been entirely clear whether Herrmann quit or was fired; and there are other mysteries connected with the event that seem to go way beyond simply the question of creative differences, and I\u2019ll just mention three things:<\/p>\n<p>(1) If Hitchcock was so insistent on requiring a commercially exploitable score, why had he commissioned Herrmann in the first place? Herrmann was not incapable of accomplishing this, but he wouldn\u2019t necessarily be your first choice. The positive reading of Hitchcock\u2019s motive would stress loyalty to, and confidence in, his composer-friend. The negative &#8211; indeed paranoid &#8211; reading of his motive would suggest that he was deliberately setting up a confrontation. If so, why? I\u2019ll return to that in a moment.<\/p>\n<p>(2) Also, even thrown by the sight of Herrmann\u2019s orchestra and disliking what he had heard, why did he not at least listen to the score in its entirety? This was Herrmann\u2019s own argument: the sessions have been booked, the musicians will still need to be paid, why don\u2019t we just carry on and finish, and if you still don\u2019t like it, then throw it out? (He might have added that, after all, audiences didn\u2019t exactly go out of the theatre whistling the theme from <em>Psycho<\/em> but no one would dispute the importance of the music to that film\u2019s success.) Hitchcock wouldn\u2019t hear of it. Again defenders of Hitchcock might say that, having expressed his displeasure so forcefully, he could hardly be expected to go back on it: he\u2019d look a bit of a fool if he said at the end of it all \u2018Actually I quite like it now\u2019. But to me this detail highlights the most extraordinary aspect of the affair: not the fact that the score was rejected but the way it was rejected, which in my view was-and still is- unprecedented. After all, umpteen scores have been thrown out in different circumstances and replaced, but this is something else. There is no other occasion I can recall where a director has halted a recording session in mid-flow after hearing only one section; berated the composer, who is not some newcomer but the finest in the business, in front of the other musicians; and essentially rejected the complete score without hearing it. And this coming from one of the foremost of all director\/composer partnerships and involving two great artists who had previously been great friends. I honestly can\u2019t think of anything quite like this in the annals of movie history.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_29\" style=\"width: 360px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-29\" src=\"http:\/\/neilsinyard.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Sinyard_TornCurtain_composercredit-e1359410405213.png\" alt=\"The on-screen composer credit for Torn Curtain\" width=\"350\" height=\"197\" class=\"size-full wp-image-29\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-29\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The on-screen composer credit for <em>Torn Curtain<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<p>(3) After ditching Herrmann, why did he replace him with John Addison, a perfectly competent film composer but who was no more likely to come up with a \u2018popular\u2019 film score than Herrmann? There were certainly more obvious choices, and we do know that, for example, Dimitri Tiomkin, who had worked with Hitchcock before and had a good track record of popular hits (<em>High Noon<\/em>, <em>High and the Mighty<\/em>, <em>Friendly Persuasion<\/em>, <em>Green Leaves of Summer<\/em> amongst them) agitated for the job. The obvious choice, if available, would have been Henry Mancini, not only one of the most popular composers of the day but extremely adept at writing music for thrillers (<em>The Grip of Fear<\/em>, <em>Charade<\/em>). The irony here is that Hitchcock was later to commission Mancini to write the score for his 1972 film, <em>Frenzy<\/em>, but then rejected it because, he said, it sounded it sounded too much like Bernard Herrmann. Anyone who has heard some of Mancini\u2019s score and compared it with Ron Goodwin\u2019s replacement might feel, with me, that Hitchcock made the wrong choice &#8211; again.<\/p>\n<p>In a television documentary entitled <em>Music for the Movies: Bernard Herrmann<\/em>, a number of the interviewees, like Claude Chabrol, for example, see the break-up between Hitchcock and Herrmann as entirely Hitchcock\u2019s fault, and that indeed he may even have engineered the showdown, though personally I think that might be taking paranoia a little too far. However, I do believe that certain ingredients of potential conflict had been bubbling for some time and, on this fateful day, boiled over. In the documentary the great film musicologist and arranger, Christopher Palmer, who was very close to Herrmann, suggested that Herrmann was becoming too important and perhaps getting too big for his boots; and Hitchcock, feeling as insecure as only a man with a man with a massive ego can feel, was determined in this instance to demonstrate who was boss and in as public a manner as possible. The person most critical of Hitchcock in the documentary was the composer David Raksin (composer of great film scores for films such as <em>Laura<\/em>, <em>The Bad and the Beautiful<\/em> etc.) who also seemed to suspect a set-up. \u2018He was determined to humiliate Benny\u2019 he said, (Herrmann was known to his friends as \u2018Benny\u2019) and he described Hitchcock of having, as he put it, \u2018the loyalty of an eel\u2019, showing no gratitude towards the man whose music had so enriched his movies. As a film composer himself and a close personal friend of Herrmann\u2019s, Raksin could be seen as a partial witness; but he was quite close to the event, Herrmann having showed him parts of the score prior to the recording (\u2018I was amazed at the quality\u2019, Raksin told me). Raksin also saw Herrmann and the leader of the cello section on the day of the recording session, Edgar Lustgarten, on the day of the recording session after the argument had happened, when Herrmann was badly shaken. In a letter to me, Raksin told me how he, Lustgarten and their wives had invited Herrmann to dinner that evening and had tried to cheer him up, but when Herrmann started to offer \u2018a kind of loopy defence of Hitchcock\u2019, as Raksin put it to me, he lost his temper with him, feeling that he was wrongfully defending the director for an act of gross insensitivity, cruelty and ingratitude.<\/p>\n<p>We might never know the full story of what happened that day. Who was in the right? Would Herrmann\u2019s score have made a difference to the film\u2019s reception and perception? (It got mixed reviews but was moderately successful at the box-office.) Typically Herrmann seemed musically to be seeking out the film\u2019s darker sub-text and endeavouring to get behind these cardboard tv characters, as he called them. Would the film have been able to sustain that or would the score have proved too heavy for the material? The rejected score survives and has indeed been recorded in its entirety twice, which is more than the score that was actually used. One scene in the film interests me particularly as providing a clue as to what Herrmann thought the film was about. It\u2019s near the end, where the hero, an American scientist played by Paul Newman, is on the run in East Berlin with his fianc\u00e9e (Julie Andrews). He\u2019s pretended to defect to East Berlin in order to steal a secret formula from a top East German scientist, not, it seems, out of any patriotic motive but for his own purposes: the film has an odd Faustian sub-text about a hero who might be selling his soul for ultimate knowledge. As we join the film, they are hiding in a theatre during a ballet performance prior to making good their escape to the West, but they have been spotted by the star-ballerina (Tamara Toumanova) in mid-pirouette. Until now, in a running joke in the film, she has always found herself upstaged at airport arrivals and news conferences by Newman\u2019s defecting, defective scientist, and now is her chance for revenge. But what particularly interests me in the scene is the music:<\/p>\n<p><em>[The extract discussed in Neil&#8217;s text, the theatre scene from <em>Torn Curtain<\/em>, is currently unavailable.]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Very Hitchcockian, that: when Paul Newman shouts \u2018Fire!\u2019 and causes panic in the auditorium, some of you might have been reminded of the Royal Albert Hall sequence in <em>The Man Who Knew Too Much<\/em> (1956) when Doris Day\u2019s scream halts a concert performance and foils an attempted political assassination. The music is very resonant, coming from Tchaikovsky\u2019s tone-poem \u2018Francesca da Rimini\u2019, inspired by an episode from Dante\u2019s <em>Inferno<\/em> in which the souls of two lovers are swept into the flames of hellfire. Whose choice was it? There\u2019s no doubt in my mind that it was Bernard Herrmann\u2019s and would have been made before the two fell out. My conviction about this point, incidentally, has been confirmed by correspondence with Norma Herrmann, who thought the same. \u2018It makes sense anyway,\u2019 she told me, \u2018because on the wall of his study is an old engraving of Francesca&#8230;.Benny bought it during the Depression as the music was a great favourite of his. He used to walk past it and stop and conduct in front of it, singing very badly.\u2019 My feeling is that, just as Wagner\u2019s Liebestod from <em>Tristan and Isolde<\/em> was Herrmann\u2019s key to the mood and theme of his great score for Hitchcock\u2019s Vertigo, he sensed that Francesca da Rimini fitted the mood and theme of <em>Torn Curtain<\/em>, interpreting what Hitchcock had delivered not as a simplistic tale of heroism and democracy (which is how a number of critics disdainfully read it) but as a subversive tale of hellfire and damnation. Think of the credits of the film: fire and smoke billowing out on one side of the screen, faces writhing in agony on the other, as if they are souls in purgatory. Whether Hitchcock saw the material in quite that way is another matter.<\/p>\n<p>It has often been asserted that the two never spoke to each other again after that disastrous day and that Hitchcock actually hid behind his office door when Herrmann once turned up unannounced. However Norma Herrmann (she married Herrmann in 1968) told me that she was actually present at an occasion when they met again, when Herrmann gave Hitchcock a recording of his opera of <em>Wuthering Heights<\/em>; and she also showed me an affectionate inscription by Hitchcock to Herrmann when Herrmann asked him to autograph his copy of Francois Truffaut\u2019s book-length interview with Hitchcock, and that was dated 1967: i.e. after the <em>Torn Curtain<\/em> bust-up. Herrmann was to continue to speak admiringly of Hitchcock in interviews; by contrast, Hitchcock in public was never again to mention Herrmann\u2019s name, if it could be avoided. When one interviewer was brave enough to ask him if he would work with Herrmann again, he replied: \u2018Only if he did as he was told.\u2019 In personal terms, the one who came off worst was definitely Herrmann. He was deeply wounded by the split; genuinely surprised it had happened; and hoped that his superb 1969 recording of orchestral suites from Hitchcock\u2019s films, with its affectionate \u2018Portrait of Hitch\u2019 derived from themes from <em>Trouble with Harry<\/em> would serve as an olive-branch: but to no avail. But what about professionally?<\/p>\n<p>The irony is that, although many believe it was Hitchcock more than Herrmann who was to blame for their falling-out, it was Hitchcock who suffered the most from their parting. He was never again to secure a film score remotely in Herrmann\u2019s league (John Williams\u2019s charming score for <em>Family Plot<\/em> was the nearest) and his films were diminished as a result. By contrast, after a few lean years, Herrmann was re-discovered in the early 1970s by the Movie Brats and particularly championed by Brian de Palma and Martin Scorsese. He wrote a thunderously romantic score for De Palma\u2019s <em>Obsession<\/em>, a virtual re-make of <em>Vertigo<\/em> when the Hitchcock film was out of circulation because of a prolonged copyright dispute and where Herrmann\u2019s score seems almost like a passionate homage to himself and to his Hitchcock past. And poignantly, as another reference to his Hitchcock past, the very last notes of his final film score for Scorsese\u2019s <em>Taxi Driver<\/em> quote the three-note madness motif of <em>Psycho<\/em> to suggest the continuing unresolved psychosis of the Robert De Niro character, ironically acclaimed as a hero after his rampage of righteous slaughter has almost inadvertently rescued a teenager from a life of prostitution but where the man is still clearly profoundly disturbed. (\u2018He\u2019s gonna do it again,\u2019 said Herrmann, explaining that musical touch at the end, \u2018he\u2019s gonna do it again.\u2019) Completing the recording session for <em>Taxi Driver<\/em> on Christmas Eve 1975, Herrmann retired to his room in a Los Angeles hotel and died that same night. The film is dedicated to his memory.<\/p>\n<p>Herrmann thought of film music as \u2018the connecting tissue between the screen and the audience, reaching out and enveloping all into one single experience.\u2019 That is very close to Hitchcock\u2019s aesthetic of using all the elements of the film apparatus to envelop an audience in an emotional experience. \u2018Ours not to reason why,\u2019 he would say, \u2018ours just to scare the hell out of people.\u2019 And yet: he moves us, as well as terrifies us; and in this, particularly in masterpieces like <em>Vertigo<\/em> and <em>Psycho<\/em>, he is helped immeasurably by Herrmann\u2019s music, which seemed so imaginatively and innovatively attuned to the fraught psychological landscape of Hitchcock\u2019s world. What a pity it was that this quite remarkable partnership should have ended so abruptly and dramatically in rancour and regret, though, given two such powerful personalities, perhaps it was inevitable. At its finest, though, in my view, it was a director- composer relationship (and there have been many great ones) unmatched in film history for dramatic flair and cinematic symbiosis. Or, to put it more simply, they brought out the best in each other &#8211; and in their respective fields, that best is better than practically anyone else\u2019s best.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/neilsinyard.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Sinyard_PartnersinSuspense_promo.jpg\" alt=\"Sinyard_PartnersinSuspense_promo\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-59\" \/><br \/>\n<em>This piece is taken from Neil Sinyard&#8217;s keynote address at the conference Partners in Suspense &#8211; Bernard Herrmann and Alfred Hitchcock that was held in York in 2011. That talk was entitled &#8221;The Loyalty of an Eel&#8217;: some reflections on the incomparable partnership of Hitchcock and Herrmann and the reasons behind their falling-out over <em>Torn Curtain<\/em>&#8216;.&#8217; <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by NEIL SINYARD I have called this talk \u2018Hitchcock versus Herrmann\u2019 because I want to tell the story behind the break-up of what to me is the cinema\u2019s finest director\/composer collaboration. But first I\u2019d like to show two short extracts &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/neilsinyard.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/?p=56\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[86,53,52,87,51,54,48,88,50,97,90,91,49,55,47],"class_list":["post-56","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-talks","tag-alfred-hitchcock","tag-alfred-hitchcock-presents","tag-andre-previn","tag-bernard-herrmann","tag-carl-davis","tag-dimitri-tiomkin","tag-film-music","tag-francois-truffaut","tag-fred-zinnemann","tag-henry-mancini","tag-igor-stravinsky","tag-john-addison","tag-psycho","tag-taxi-driver","tag-torn-curtain"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/neilsinyard.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/neilsinyard.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/neilsinyard.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/neilsinyard.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/neilsinyard.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"http:\/\/neilsinyard.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":939,"href":"http:\/\/neilsinyard.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions\/939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/neilsinyard.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/neilsinyard.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/neilsinyard.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}