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Most, if not all of you, will be way ahead of me here, but this is my story.
After many years of watching TV on a second-hand, hanging-by-a-thread Sylvania set so old that it didn't have a plug in back for a DVD attachment, last November I finally upgraded, as I've long dreamt of doing, to a big juicy flat screen. And, as I always knew it would be, one of the distinct pleasures with my new set-up has been watching westerns on a big screen where they belong with all that Technicolor scenery and action.
So tonight I was flipping channels and landed on the Encore Western channel, catching the tail end of a 1951 Randolph Scott western with, to my pleasant surprise, a latter-day performance by Joan Leslie, one of my favorite Forties ingenues. I stuck around for the next feature, THE MAN FROM COLORADO, an unusual Forties oater starring Glenn Ford as a psycho-sadistic federal judge and William Holden as his buddy, the town Marshal. The ever reliable George Duning scored this one, in a familiar western sound of that period, but with some unusual echoing instrumental effects to suggest the Ford character's psychosis. I'd never seen the film before, though I'd long been aware of its existence.
I did not recognize the name of the movie immediately following, FACE OF A FUGITIVE with Fred MacMurray in the title role, but I thought I'd give it a try. This one, like the previous two, was a Columbia Pictures product, this time vintage 1959. It grabbed my attention from the very beginning, with the main title's unusual opening Coplandesque chords, evocative of the lonely prairie. I immediately hoped it wasn't a Columbia library score, for two reasons: I waned to know the name of this fine composer, and I wanted to hear throughout the film more of his classy music, rather modern, I thought, for a modestly-budgeted western from this period. Happily, it was indeed an original score, and happily it was credited to Jerrald Goldsmth.
The rest of the score lived up to the promise of its overture. One particularly striking and effective moment occurs in the climactic ghost town shoot-out, when MacMurray falls through a roof and lands on an old player piano, setting off a honky tonk piano roll which keeps slowing down and speeding back up again, an eerie distortion effect. I've resolved to keep a lookout from now on for more scores by this talented young composer. I'm very glad to bring him to your attention, and I hope we all will hear more of his music in the future.
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Collectable bottle-caps --
"LOL Manderley," we used to call him...
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Y'know, if you'd actually like an album of this one you can make your voice heard here:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/DFSRGVB
I voted for it!
Yavar
Thank you, Yavar.
But, one question: Who reads this thing? What's it all about?
Frankly, when I found that I could vote for only one title, (as opposed to, say, ranking them in order of preference), I voted for "THRILLER!"
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As a matter of fact, I must have it, because I distinctly remember buying it.
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Thanks.
I hope this is like DANCING WITH THE STARS, where I can vote more than once...? If so, I'll gladly go back and vote for BLACK PATCH/FACE OF A FUGITIVE.
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I think it's one vote per computer for both surveys...
Yavar
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Too bad. (For the record, on the phone you can vote multiple times for DANCING/STARS. Computers, maybe not, I don't know).
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Indeed, zooba -- and thanks again for extracting that Youtube suite for us. I'd seen the film before and liked the music but it wasn't until I heard your suite that I realized just how much I wanted it to be released!
Yavar
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