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A quick search gives no results that a thread about Mr. Gershenson had been opened on this board before. So, inspired by MMM's rececent thread on a *somehow* related topic (see http://fsm.rciwebhosting.net/board/posts.cfm?threadID=47426&forumID=1&archive=0), it made me start the first official FSM Gershenson thread myself.
Of course, we have the entry in IMDb:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0314829/
where we find long lists of his work, mostly as a musical supervisor/conductor (302 entries). He's listed there as a composer, too. But just for six films.
There seems to be quite little information available about Mr. Gershenson's life.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0314829/bio
Surprisingly, there's no Wikipedia entry to be found so far.
Who was the man behind the name? How was it to work for him at Universal studios? Just curious...
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I think he was the head of the Universal music department (similar to Johnny Green at MGM and Alfred Newman at Fox). I could be wrong, though.
Of couse, you find that information on IMDb:
"Hired by Universal Pictures for its music department, he was made the department head in 1940. Gershenson's name appeared on virtually every Universal film made as music supervisor from 1949 until his retirement in 1969 after Angel in My Pocket (1969)."
I figure he took credit for whatever he could in his position. Was he a fine musician or just an very efficient administrator?
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Posted: |
Jan 9, 2008 - 2:35 PM
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By: |
MMM
(Member)
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Ray is right about Gershenson's production credits. He either produced or executive produced well-known sci-fi/fantasy/horror titles like HOUSE OF DRACULA, MONSTER ON THE CAMPUS, and the great THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES, as well as CURSE OF THE UNDEAD, and to a much lesser extent, THE LEECH WOMAN.
Joe ran the music department from the late forties until the sixties, and his credit is seen on countless films from the forties and fifties instead of a composer's credit. This is partly due to the fact that Gershenson used multiple composers on many films, but also because it was Gershenson's choice to do that, including when he didn't have to. By giving more than one composer the "job," studio politics allowed for only the music department head to get credit. Enough said. There were also times when only one composer wrote the score but still didn't get credit. When a composer did get credit, Gershenson's name was right up there on the screen with theirs, and having a lot of letters in it, it usually dominated the screen.
Gershenson's credits for musical director or music supervisor covered both his executive tasks as well as the fact that he often conducted the scores. And he was a more-than-competent conductor. But he was not a film composer, and the only cue sheet and score credits I've seen for him have to do with lyrics for rather "slight" songs -- sometimes comic throw-aways.
In Gershenon's oral biography he talks about how he loved his composers and would do anything for them. That included some things that were decidedly not to the composers' benefit, which I won't go into at this point. One thing he did do was try to keep his composers under wraps, telling them that he would take good care of them and that they should never fraternize with directors and producers on the lot. This was done so that the composers wouldn't have opportunities to mingle and perhaps find work outside Universal. The composers were requested to eat together at the commissary and things like that.
Gershenson also talked about how he would "audition" the composers when a number of them would write a theme and he would have to decide which to "okay." This was pretty much fanciful thinking. The composers wrote what they wrote and it was seldom discarded. None of them even recalled such auditions, or if they occurred at all, they were minimal and the composers found such events to be rather amusing. Making musical decisions regarding how to score a picture was mainly the composers' job. As for making choices about what tracked (library) music to use, that also fell to the composers, and sometimes to Gershenson's assistant Milton Rosen.
The "unique sound" mentioned did not come so much from Gershenson, but rather it was a combination of Universal's Stage 10, the staff of composers that were constantly used (Stein, Lava, Salter, Skinner, Roemheld, Gertz, Mancini, Scharf, etc.), the medium-sized orchestra made up of the particular players, and orchestrators like David Tamkin and Charles Maxwell.
To sum up, I would say that Gershenson was a savvy businessperson. He was a more-than-capable film conductor, a great judge of talent (this is something many people agree on), but he was not a film composer.
Some members of his family stated that Joe cared little about himself and put everybody before him. That might have been true at home, but on the studio lot, Gershenson, like many others in similar positions, was a driven individual who had his own interests and those sometimes took precedence over the interests of others, in particular the composers working for him. The composers respected him for what he did well, but they also knew that there were times when they could have been taken care of a little better than they were.
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There is of course the oft-told story of how Jerome Moross, when asked in an interview why he himself didn't personally conduct 'The War Lord', said, " ... because the musical director of the studio insisted on doing that because otherwise, he had no job ..."
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Ray is right about Gershenson's production credits. He either produced or executive produced well-known sci-fi/fantasy/horror titles like HOUSE OF DRACULA, MONSTER ON THE CAMPUS, and the great THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES, as well as CURSE OF THE UNDEAD, and to a much lesser extent, THE LEECH WOMAN.
Joe ran the music department from the late forties until the sixties, and his credit is seen on countless films from the forties and fifties instead of a composer's credit. This is partly due to the fact that Gershenson used multiple composers on many films, but also because it was Gershenson's choice to do that, including when he didn't have to. By giving more than one composer the "job," studio politics allowed for only the music department head to get credit. Enough said. There were also times when only one composer wrote the score but still didn't get credit. When a composer did get credit, Gershenson's name was right up there on the screen with theirs, and having a lot of letters in it, it usually dominated the screen.
Gershenson's credits for musical director or music supervisor covered both his executive tasks as well as the fact that he often conducted the scores. And he was a more-than-competent conductor. But he was not a film composer, and the only cue sheet and score credits I've seen for him have to do with lyrics for rather "slight" songs -- sometimes comic throw-aways.
In Gershenon's oral biography he talks about how he loved his composers and would do anything for them. That included some things that were decidedly not to the composers' benefit, which I won't go into at this point. One thing he did do was try to keep his composers under wraps, telling them that he would take good care of them and that they should never fraternize with directors and producers on the lot. This was done so that the composers wouldn't have opportunities to mingle and perhaps find work outside Universal. The composers were requested to eat together at the commissary and things like that.
Gershenson also talked about how he would "audition" the composers when a number of them would write a theme and he would have to decide which to "okay." This was pretty much fanciful thinking. The composers wrote what they wrote and it was seldom discarded. None of them even recalled such auditions, or if they occurred at all, they were minimal and the composers found such events to be rather amusing. Making musical decisions regarding how to score a picture was mainly the composers' job. As for making choices about what tracked (library) music to use, that also fell to the composers, and sometimes to Gershenson's assistant Milton Rosen.
The "unique sound" mentioned did not come so much from Gershenson, but rather it was a combination of Universal's Stage 10, the staff of composers that were constantly used (Stein, Lava, Salter, Skinner, Roemheld, Gertz, Mancini, Scharf, etc.), the medium-sized orchestra made up of the particular players, and orchestrators like David Tamkin and Charles Maxwell.
To sum up, I would say that Gershenson was a savvy businessperson. He was a more-than-capable film conductor, a great judge of talent (this is something many people agree on), but he was not a film composer.
Some members of his family stated that Joe cared little about himself and put everybody before him. That might have been true at home, but on the studio lot, Gershenson, like many others in similar positions, was a driven individual who had his own interests and those sometimes took precedence over the interests of others, in particular the composers working for him. The composers respected him for what he did well, but they also knew that there were times when they could have been taken care of a little better than they were.
Many thanks for this overview, MMM!
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