I still have the Varese Club release of Seven Cities of Gold/Rains of Ranchipur, great examples of Hugo Friedhofer (& I see you can buy it for £25 on eBay UK). I haven't listened to it for a while, I think I'll give it a spin.
I still have the Varese Club release of Seven Cities of Gold/Rains of Ranchipur, great examples of Hugo Friedhofer (& I see you can buy it for £25 on eBay UK). I haven't listened to it for a while, I think I'll give it a spin.
Even SAE has this as a min copy but its only 4 tracks about 15minutes. The Krtizerland has a whole cd devoted to it roughly around 45 minutes. I'am interersted in that edition.
Having acquired this gorgeous 2CD set a while back- I managed to get a sealed set and what a delightful music treasure this is. The Stromberg/Morgan rerecorded highlights are excellent on their own but the original is the real deal. Even though the whole score is in mono which is what survived along with 5 cues in Stereo which sound incredible.
One of the music source cues 'Dholak Geet' (meaning Song Celeberation) I was very surprised to hear had been perfected notated in the Indian music style. Uusually the source music for Middle eastern/Indian Sub-Continent or Oriental films tend to be very much cliched with the composer emulating the eastern sound whilst trying to notate it according to their western knowledge and hence making it sound almost comical. (the only coposer I feel who had properly mastered the correct use of Indian/Arabic and Oriental style source music is Maurice Jarre since he had proper training of their notations at the Paris Conservatory) But here its almost as good as the original which made me think that the melody used is probably inspired by an actual recording accentuated by glockenspiel. I wish a stereo dub had survived of this cue. Hoping someday the full stereo score can be found and restored.
The movie is a recent discovery and it was very intriguing to know that all the exterior shots of India are actually shot entirely in my country's Lahore, Pakistan. In a few spots I could find the Pakistan National flag along with the Union Jack specially at the Lahore Train Station. Interestingly enough another film shot in Lahore, Pakistan was BHOWANI JUNCTION which had the cast of Ava Gardner and Stewart Granger visit our new country back then. My Grandfather's brother who was in the Pakistan Army at that time had his battlion assist in the film's milliatry related scenes. Both Ava Gardner and Grnager were his house guests during the shoot.
The film crew stayed at Falleti’s Hotel and room 55; the two room suite where later in the shoot Ava stayed, was later named Ava Gardner Suite. Apparently she was chased by a bat while taking a bath and she ran out completely naked screaming. A hotel staff had to rush out and give her a towel while the other chased the bat away with a tennis racket. Much later in 1967 Marlon Brando also stayed at this very hotel and is considered a land mark place for a lot of who's who of the era.
