 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
My latest speaking-truth-to-power epistle to the Los Angeles Times was printed in today's edition. It was a double pleasure, I confess, to correct their semi-snobbish music critic, and to share with contemporary readers the wit of the great Mr. K.:
Earlier film score composer greats
In his background information on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” [“Can’t Quite Slip Off to ‘Dream’-land,” Nov. 4], Mark Swed claims that Erich Wolfgang Korngold “became the first of the great symphonic soundtrack composers.” It takes nothing away from Korngold to point out that by the time he wrote his first original film score for “Captain Blood” in 1935, acknowledged masters Max Steiner (“King Kong”) and Alfred Newman (“Street Scene”) had already been plying their trade for years.
A story goes that when Steiner and Korngold had both been working at Warners for a decade, Steiner kidded Korngold by claiming, “Your music has been getting worse, and mine has been getting better. Why do you suppose that is?” Replied Korngold, “That’s because you are stealing from me and I am stealing from you.”
Preston Neal Jones
Hollywood
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Nobody tops you, Preston! 
|
|
|
|
|
|
Damn, where's my "humble" emoticon?!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
