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Sex and the Single Girl/The Chapman Report (1964/1962)
Music by Neal Hefti, Leonard Rosenman
Sex and the Single Girl/The Chapman Report Sex and the Single Girl/The Chapman Report Sex and the Single Girl/The Chapman Report
Click to enlarge images.
Price: $16.95
Limited #: N/A
View CD Page at SAE Store
Line: Silver Age
CD Release: October 2007
Catalog #: Vol. 10, No. 13
# of Discs: 1

Two Warner Bros. Records LPs come to CD from the era of the "swinging sixties" sex comedy—and drama. Sex and the Single Girl and The Chapman Report were Warner Bros. films adapted from popular books about the once-taboo subject of sex.

Sex and the Single Girl (1964) was inspired by Helen Gurley Brown's 1962 best seller, an advice book for young women to help them enjoy their single lives. As the book was essentially plotless, the film concocted a story about a fictional "Helen Brown" psychologist (Natalie Wood) whose hit book makes her a target for a sleazy tabloid editor (Tony Curtis). Mistaken identities and slapstick give way to true love in the classic screwball-comedy tradition.

Sex and the Single Girl marked the feature debut of Neal Hefti, best-known today for his memorable TV themes to Batman and The Odd Couple. Hefti made a lasting mark in the Mancini era of sophisticated adult comedy, and Sex and the Single Girl is chock-full of delightful pop confections with jazzy grooves and irresistible melodies. The re-recorded Warner Bros. album includes Hefti's vocal and instrumental arrangements of the film's title theme composed by director Richard Quine.

The Chapman Report (1962) was adapted from a 1960 novel by Irving Wallace inspired by the Kinsey Reports, academic works about human sexuality (by Dr. Alfred Kinsey) which caused a stir in conservative 1950s society. The film features a group of "Chapman" researchers who survey the sex lives of upscale Southern California suburban women, including troubled characters played by Jane Fonda, Shelley Winters, Claire Bloom and Glynis Johns. Legendary "women's director" George Cukor helmed the picture.

Scoring The Chapman Report was the excellent symphonic composer Leonard Rosenman, who blended his usual expertise with modern atonality (for the psychological aspects of the characters' neuroses) with driving jazz (as if a nod to the conventional association of jazz with sex), particularly for the driving main title and a terrifying gang-rape of Bloom at the hands of jazz musicians. Rosenman wrote distinct themes for the four women, ranging from pathos to comedy to atonality, and blended jazz, melody and avant garde expressionism with his usual panache. It is a terrific score.

Both of these works were re-recorded by the composers for the LPs, maintaining the integrity of the orchestrations while adapting many cues for record presentation. The albums have been remixed from the original three-track 1/2" masters for optimal stereo sound quality. The LP for The Chapman Report concluded with Rosenman's pop arrangements of his themes to the James Dean films East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause; these have been retained, placed after a newly discovered alternate edit of his record version of the Chapman Report main title. Liner notes are by Lukas Kendall.

Neal Hefti Scores on FSM
About the Composer

Neal Hefti (1922-2008) parlayed a big band and songwriting career into an influential run as a film and TV composer largely in the 1960s, when he wrote the famous "Batman" and "The Odd Couple" themes. He had a knack for melody and instrumental color in the Mancini-era of sophisticated pop/orchestral scoring for "light" adult subject matter—but he could also do other genres, as with the western Duel at Diablo. Everything he laid his hands on ended up with a polished, fresh and tuneful sound.IMDB

Leonard Rosenman Scores on FSM
About the Composer

Leonard Rosenman (1924-2008) was an accomplished 20th century American composer with a major career in film and television. He was an up-and-coming New York concert composer when his friendship with James Dean lead to his groundbreaking 1955 scores for East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause; his score for The Cobweb that same year is acknowledged as the first to be based on twelve-tone music. His other film projects include Fantastic Voyage, the 1978 Lord of the Rings, Cross Creek and Star Trek IV; his television work includes Combat, Marcus Welby, M.D. and Sybil. Rosenman made no apologies for his modernist style and was outspoken about using his film projects as testing grounds for concert works. IMDB

Comments (12):Log in or register to post your own comments
Here's your chance to hear Rosenman like you've never heard before. I thought that Main Title Theme was not his arrangement, it's so unlike him. So lounge-y, so 60's!

Here's your chance to hear Rosenman like you've never heard before. I thought that Main Title Theme was not his arrangement, it's so unlike him. So lounge-y, so 60's![/endquote]

The Main Title is completely different in the film itself—the OST exists at WB in mono, but we weren't able to license at the time for the CD (which was the album re-recording):

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3BvRNeOZrg[/youtube]

Lukas

...The Main Title is completely different in the film itself...
Lukas[/endquote]

My better-half often chooses a selection of music (albums) and I try to name ... this album's Main Title theme always beats me: I start off thinking it's Jerry Goldsmith but can't name the score, then consider Lalo Schifrin ...

However, I'm certain I'll get it next time ... it's not an album I choose to play (so many others to choose from!)
Mitch

There's also his still unfortunately unreleased score to "The Bramble Bush":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh_lnuxWJQg


And of course he did some jazz/stuff with a beat on "Holmes and Yoyo".

I just watched The Chapman Report and actually forgot FSM put out the score--nobody scored nymphomania like Lenny!

I just watched The Chapman Report and actually forgot FSM put out the score--nobody scored nymphomania like Lenny![/endquote]

The main title is a masterpiece of the nervous/angular/longhair school.

Here's your chance to hear Rosenman like you've never heard before. I thought that Main Title Theme was not his arrangement, it's so unlike him. So lounge-y, so 60's![/endquote]

The Main Title is completely different in the film itself—the OST exists at WB in mono, but we weren't able to license at the time for the CD (which was the album re-recording):

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3BvRNeOZrg[/youtube]

Lukas[/endquote]

3 comments:

1) That's a trippy-dippy time warp main title. I love it!

2) Cloris Leachman is in this film!! Awesome!

3) Holy cow, based on an Irving Wallace novel? This film must have been quite the shocker.

Oh no, I thought I would have the honour of being the first to comment on this 2007 release, but I see that David (in Berkeley) got in there first. Still thirteen years late, David.

Did I ever tell you that a month or more ago I asked you to recommend some FSM releases which the fishmonger's mother-in-law had secreted in her ample bloomers? Well, this is the next in a fascinating series of "pocket reviews" I'm doing, in the hope of generating some conversation about old and forgotten things. We forget so quickly. I have already posted my rabbits regarding THE WRECK OF THE MARY DEARE/ TWILIGHT OF HONOR and THE LAST RUN/ CROSSCURRENT/ THE SCORPIO LETTERS. Now it's time for this. I hope I can control my rabbit. It may be slightly incontinent but that's real life, folks.

SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL is quite a joy. Lightly swinging and breezy for the most part, as befits the film and Hefti's style. Love the flute played by Buddy Collette. There's a bit of THE ODD COUPLE in there too, and even a Beach Boys parody (I think). Not too keen on the Fran Jeffries vocals, but it's just that I'm not much into that kind of showbizzy razzmatazz. Still, Hefti's arranging skills take my mind away from her interpretation. One question - I see that director Richard Quine is credited as having written the song version of the Main Title (Track 3 on the CD), and also that the final track of the LP/CD is an instrumental version of the Quine-penned theme. How much did he actually contribute, because I was playing "guess the composer" down the telephone with my brother the other night, and I mistakenly put on that final track. He still said "Neil Hefti". I suppose that Hefti's arranging was distinctive enough to overpower the Quineisms, whatever they were.

For those in the know, how would you rate Hefti as an arranger? Just taking his period with Sinatra, was he one of your favourites or kind of middling compared to May, Jenkins, Costa, Jones etc?

It's a very good listen, in fact I was doing the housework to it today and saw myself as either Tony Randall or Jack Lemmon. For some reason surely.

THE CHAPMAN REPORT is one I remember buying for about 25 quid at 58 Dean Street in about 1980. That's about a million pounds today. The very curious thing is that when I heard it on CD I had no memory of ever having heard it before. On re-evaluation I like it very much. I was however slightly disappointed that Rosenman didn't do any tone pyramids at all (but you'll hear one in the "original" Main Title linked to earlier in the thread). And no dum-dum-dum-dums either. Quite a lot of his trademark misterioso, wandering, impressionistic tone colours though, which I love. But it's mostly quite melodic. One or two comedy tracks seem out of place on the album, and I can't really imagine them matching the film's content, but I haven't seen it, so...

My favourite track is possibly 19, "Naomi and Musician", which opened Side Two on the old LP. Fantastic sax and guitar on that dramatically intense piece. One more thing - although LK's liner notes say that for the most part it's faithful to the original score (tapes still available in mono!), the Main Title is very different. That's the understatement of the year 2007! There's also an album version of "Teresa's Theme", for the Glynis Johns character. For a moment I thought the CD had skipped back to the Hefti score.

But that Main Title! It's good on the CD but it's GREAT in the film! I'm just speculating, you tell me, but does anyone get the feeling that the album was trying to recapture more of a MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM swagger than what was heard in the actual film? And what about the nods to Alex North in the sultry piano work? Is that sound unavoidable when scoring for nymphomaniacs? Leonard Rosenman always seemed so assured with his "own" voice but nobody exists in a vacuum. And now that I've mentioned both Leonard Rosenman and Elmer Bernstein let's mix the names up. We get Leonard Bernstein. How much do you think he (inadvertantly?) contributed to the use of jazz, and particularly symphonic jazz in films?

Interested to know the background to the two easy listening tracks that end the CD (and the original LP) - EAST OF EDEN and REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE. LK mentions that REBEL seems to try to capture the then-popular Percy Faith version of A SUMMER PLACE. Yes, sounds that way. Were these intended to be released as a single? Were they actually released? Did Rosenman conduct? Was he happy doing so? I think they're bloody awful.

Good release on the whole though.

Kindly keep this conversation going while I assemble some thoughts on the next release which fell out of the butcher's panties - Miklós Rózsa's JULIUS CAESAR.

I'd now like to see The Chapman Report after getting a butchers of that main title. That's the sexiest demo of an air-bridge 'mating' with the side of a DC-8 I've ever seen/heard. Ah, the glamor of air travel . . .

"If it weren't for Neal Hefti, the Basie band wouldn't sound as good as it does." Miles Davis

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