Date and announcer for this brief interview are unknown, likely from the BBC. Miklós Rózsa talks about encounters with producers, directors and music directors of films he was scoring.
ANNOUNCER: A Hollywood producer once announced that what his new movie needed was a really colourful score, something like The Firebird. Well, he was told, why not try Stravinsky? His reply? Stravinsky? He couldn't write anything like that.
What extraordinary people Miklós Rózsa has been mixed up with all these years. Later in the programme, he'll be giving us a few clues as to how he survived, and how his music contributed to the survival of more than one film producer. Rózsa's list of compositions goes no further than Opus 38, which doesn't sound much for a composing life of 60 years, until you realize that he doesn't give opus numbers to his film scores, and there are 80 or 90 of them, each running to an hour of music at least. They include The Thief of Bagdad, The Four Feathers, The Naked City, The Asphalt Jungle, Julius Caesar, some of the most memorable films in the history of Hollywood, and he helped make them memorable, no doubt about that. And yet film composing is still thought of by some as not quite the same thing as "real composing." But Miklos Rózsa will have none of that.
MIKLÓS RÓZSA: I once went to a lecture where there was a very famous German philsopher and historian Emil Ludwig, and he said "Film music cannot be good because they say it has to be four minutes and 22 seconds." Now, how can you tell an artist to write for four minutes and 22 seconds? when his inspiration would take him to six minutes? My answer is, when Michelangelo came to do the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he couldn't have said to the Pope, Julius II, that I would like to have two meters more. And what is space for art? It's the equivalent of time for music. When you have to write for four minutes and 22 seconds, you can arrange it. It takes time. You have to learn how to arrange how to compose with a stopwatch in your left hand and a pencil in your right. But it can be done.
ANNOUNCER: But you have had a fair number of difficulties with directors and with studio chiefs, haven't you?
RÓZSA:: Studio chiefs, yes. Directors, not so much. My experience was with a musical director who was a vaudevillean, where most of the people in Hollywood came from vaudeville. The film in question was a Paramount film for Billy Wilder: Double Indemnity, a very strong film, a very good film, still a classic. And he didn't like my music at all. He said, "This is full of dissonances. This is not music for films. This is for "Carnegie Hall." And this is the biggest swear word he could say. And I said, "I take it as a compliment, but I don't mean it." He said, "In one part you had an F natural in the violins, and there was an F sharp in violas, that's a dissonance, we hate dissonances. I said, "I don't. This is a dissonant film about dissonant people and the score will have dissonances." Well, he told me that I'm going to be thrown out of the studio by the head of the studio because he is not going to tolerate this kind of a thing. However, there was Billy Wilder, who was the director, who loved the score, so there's nothing he could do. It was dubbed, we went to a preview. And, well, the film was a big success, and a very strong film. And as we came out, there was the director of the studio, Buddy DeSylva. I saw the musical director. I told him, "Come here." And he came slowly, I would say, as Louis XVI went to the guillotine, he was absolutely sure that's it – because he was the musical director, he allowed such dissonances. And DeSylva said, "I want to thank you for engaging Rózsa for this picture. I think this was the finest score I've heard. These dissonances, I like this film, my one criticism is I want more of it. Would you like more?" He said, "Yes." And he put his arm, the musical director put his arm around Buddy deSylva and said, "Buddy, I always get you the right man, don’t I?"
ANNOUNCER: I think you have a particular reputation for very big, spectacular movies and making them sound as big and spectacular as they are on the screen. And I get the impression that you rather enjoyed going into Ben-Hur and Quo Vadis.
RÓZSA: : The first film was Quo Vadis. It was 1950. And I was already under contract to MGM since 1948, so I had been there two years. The head of the studio, Mr. Sidney, he called me and said, "We are doing Quo Vadis, but I have difficulties because this film will be made in Europe and we have a studio in England and somebody is suggesting English composers." I said, "Show me the list." So he showed me the list. He said, "We have William Walton. I told him, "What do you worry about? You got the best." And he said, "Yes, maybe, but I want you to do it because you are under contract here." Two days later I said, "You're engaged, you're doing Quo Vadis." I'm sorry that Walton didn't do it because he would have done a greater job, probably greater than I did. And it was very exciting because first of all the recreation of the music of the first century. Secondly, the possibilities of tremendous music, not just background, foreground music. The film was not as good as it should have been compared to Ben-Hur. Ben-Hur, I think, was a masterpiece as a film. Quo Vadis wasn't, but it is still good. The director [Mervin LeRoy] himself, he was not very much interested in music. He was an awfully nice man. I was in, I came from Hollywood straight to Rome where the picture was shot. I was told to go because a lot of music has been pre-recorded, like marches, like songs and hymns and so on, and discuss it with the gentleman. And I tried for weeks and weeks, and he was busy, busy, busy. Suddenly a telephone call, come right away to the set, the director wants to talk to you. So I got all of my music, I asked him to bring in a piano, and there I was, he was directing Bob Taylor, And he said, "We are all ready anytime." He said, "Well, I'll finish this scene and I'm with you." Well, it took about half an hour. He said, "You're going to London tomorrow?" I said, "Yes." "Could you do me a favor?" "Yes, of course." "Could you bring me some cigars?" That was our first and last musical conversation.
ANNOUNCER: Have there ever been films in which, in effect, the film has followed the music, that you have written music and the director has more or less directed the scene to fit?
RÓZSA: : Yes, there was for instance one in Madame Bovary. This was with Vincente Minelli. We have discussed the waltz, the big waltz, which is dramatically very important in the film. And I wrote the waltz according to what he had in mind. And we discussed it and we recorded it with two pianos. And I am not giving away a secret because this has been written up and I told it many times, in his own presence, one of the pianists was André Previn. And he was brilliant. And Judy Garland, who was the wife of Minelli, listened to it, and she had goose pimples. But there was a sudden modulation, which was apparently unknown at the M-G-M quarters. Then he had to follow the music. For instance, there is a scene where they smash the windows and open the doors. It was all in the music, which Minelli had to follow like in a musical.
ANNOUNCER: In fact, in a good many cases, you and other film composers are responsible for creating the atmosphere and the tension and the drama that the director himself hasn't quite managed.
RÓZSA: Well, that is the main function of music in films.
ANNOUNCER: Do directors ever acknowledge that fact?
RÓZSA: : No. For instance, Spellbound, which is, with due modesty I can say, my most durable score. And there is a scene in it, it's a very beautiful scene, a really Hitchcockian scene: The seven doors of conscience The doors open in a long corridor and seven doors are opening. So I got a message &ncash; one of the famous memos from Mr. Selznick – which said be sure to play the love theme as lusciously as you can. Well, of course, that was the idea because Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck fell in love. Now Hitchcock said that it took away from his direction. The music became so important that nobody looked at his direction. I think it's childish, because the music helped the scene, and the music made the scene emotionally what couldn't be seen. Just opening seven doors means nothing. But with that love theme, which became rather well-known, as they say in America, it became an important scene emotionally. But he was an odd man. In fact, the music can almost, in some cases, tell you what sort of film this is. While you're just at the stage of watching the first few minutes and are trying to work out. But that is the idea of the overture. I call it prelude. In Hollywood, it's called main titles. This is the most important. There used to be about a minute and a half. Now it's more. It's about two, three minutes. And in these two, three minutes, you have to capture the audience and tell them exactly what they are going to have. I have an example for that. I wrote the music for another Billy Wilder film, The Lost Weekend. And Billy was in the army. He was gone to Germany. And the picture was dubbed with a temporary score. Again, the same musical director at Paramount. The picture opens (I don't know whether you have seen it) with a long shot of the New York skyline. And it goes close to a window, and a bottle hangs outside. And Ray Milland, who was the protagonist of the film, fishes his bottle in. Now, New York means Gershwin in America, in Hollywood, rather. And they put in Gershwinesque music, you know, with the xylophones and so on. And The Lost Weekend, it sounds like a comedy, you know. And Milland fishes in the bottle, there was a big laugh at the preview. And it went on. And suddenly the whole thing became a drama. People were leaving. And it was a complete failure. And the next day I went into the studio, I talked to the producer, and I told him the music was completely wrong. You prepared the audience for a comedy. They got a drama. Of course they were disappointed. I said, "You do what you can do." Of course I had to go over the head of the musical director, and I wrote a very strong title music so to speak and we went to a new preview with the proper music. There was no more laughing because they knew that this is drama – the alcohol is here – not the story of a funny man who is drinking. So I think this answers your question.
ANNOUNCER: Miklos Rózsa's music for the film The Lost Weekend has famous use of that electronic instrument the theremin to suggest the hateful allure of alcohol. Miklos Rózsa's concert works are being surveyed here in two upcoming programs here on Radio 3.