Dimitri Tiomkin Obscurities

Dimitri Tiomkin at the 1953 I Confess recording session

Dimitri Tiomkin was both a highly decorated film music composer and a powerful hit maker, especially in the 1950s. We are covering the hits and to some degree his film themes in a post on the main blog. This article is about some of the curiosities from his output - early records, little known songs, foreign language productions and just plain odd items.

Our first number takes us back to near the beginning of his career. It is the theme from the 1934 film of Alice in Wonderland. Tiomkin collaborated with Nat Finston and Leo Robin for the number. The eminent Isham Jones was the bandleader. It's a surprisingly perky song, with the uncredited vocal attributed to Eddie Stone, but it's not a match for Sammy Fain and Bob Hilliard's song for the Disney movie.

Another relatively early release was 1949's Champion, with Kirk Douglas as a ruthless boxer. The title music is a march (which can be found on Tiomkin's own LP on the main blog), but there also was a pleasing ballad called "Never Be It Said," sung on the soundtrack by a very young Polly Bergen. Columbia recorded it with the accomplished singer Herb Jeffries, who himself starred in a number of low-budget films. Hugo Winterhalter provided the backing.

The Men, a 1950 Marlon Brando film, gave us another enjoyable ballad, "Love Like Ours," here in a splendid version by a favorite singer, Lisa Kirk. If you like it, there are several Kirk posts on my other blog.

For our next few songs, we have two of Tiomkin's Western tunes transplanted to Europe. The first is "Forlad mig ikke" - literally translated from Danish "Do not leave me," and yes, this is the theme from High Noon. The singer, Gustav Winckler, is no Ted Ritter, but this is OK by me. It even has a harmonica, which often shows up in Western scores. The vibraphone you hear, maybe not so much.

We move on to France for a version of the music from Blowing Wild - or "Le Souffle Sauvage" in translation. Lyricist Max François has turned this into "Comedie," which I don't think has much to do with the film. John William is the emphatic vocalist.

Tiomkin wrote "Love, Look What You've Done to Me" for Hitchcock's I Confess. You can hear the composer's conception via his album Movie Themes from Hollywood in the other post. Victor Silvester turned it into a strange tea-dance number for his release. You can almost hear the waiters clinking the plates and glasses.

The theme from The High and the Mighty is invariably heard with a whistler at the fore (or in the composer's instrumental, a theremin). There also are words to the tune, courtesy of Ned Washington, although they don't have anything to do with the film. Johnny Desmond sang them artfully on a Coral release with George Cates' backing.

The High and Mighty version from Denmark called "Jeg Var Fri Og Frejdig," or "I Was Free and Fair," also apparently has no reference to the airborne emergency. Lise Ringheim sings with Paul Clemensen's orchestra. The words are by Jette Grevil.

The High and the Mighty's theme inspired other versions as well. The eminent Perez Prado (or someone at the record company) decided to turn it into a mambo. I had visions of the passengers on the faltering airliner gyrating across the Pacific.

On to ancient Egypt and The Land of the Pharaohs. RCA Victor decided it might be nice to have harmonica wizard Leo Diamond record the theme music, because no instrument evokes the Great Pyramids more than the mouth harp, I guess.

Lucho Gatica

We end with a really good record - "Las Verdes Hojas De Verano" (The Green Leaves of Summer) from The Alamo as done by the superb vocalist Lucho Gatica. His passionate performance is quite a contrast to the understated folk rendition by The Brothers Four in our other collection.

These recordings were remastered in ambient stereo from Internet Archive originals.

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Alfred Hitchcock Obscurities

Alfred Hitchcock

When it comes to music, the great film director Alfred Hitchcock is known for his collaborations with composer Bernard Herrmann on such productions as Vertigo and North by Northwest, and even his own 1958 LP Music to Be Murdered By. Today, however, we'll examine some of the more obscure records associated with the director's 1954-60 movies - including some discs that featured Hitch himself.

Let's begin with the records that feature the director's own, very recognizable voice - one that the moviegoer of 1960 would have known well from his 1955-62 television show Alfred Hitchcock Presents. To promote his film Psycho, Hitchcock recorded a series of promotional discs not for airplay, but for use in the theaters themselves. These were to be heard in the lobby in the run-up to Psycho's opening, and thereafter while patrons were waiting in line to buy tickets, and then in the lobby.

Much of the content was based on the gimmick that no one would be admitted to the theater after the film had started - "no one, not the manager's brother, the President of the United States, or the Queen of England (God bless her)" as an accompanying poster made clear (below, with the label of one of the lobby spots).

The recorded spots are droll affairs, in keeping with Hitchcock's then well-established persona. In the line-queue recording he tells the listeners, "This queuing up and standing about is good for you. It will make you appreciate the seats inside." He proceeds to explain the no-admittance policy as follows: "Psycho is most enjoyable when viewed beginning at the beginning and proceeding to the end. I realize this is a revolutionary concept, but we have discovered that Psycho is unlike most motion pictures and does not improve when run backwards." All the Hitch spots are similar in tone.

The other recordings covered in this post come from two of the director's films of the 1950s, with three of them from one of his less-successful items, the 1955 comedy The Trouble with Harry. The first of these discs comes from the film itself. It is "Flaggin' the Train to Tuscaloosa," which is heard over the opening credits, supposedly sung by the lead actor, John Forsythe, but actually by bandleader Ray McKinley. The song, written by Raymond Scott and Mack David, was commercially released on Decca.

Ray McKinley and his Decca 45

Harry also spawned an exploitation song of the same name as the film, written by Floyd Huddleston, Herb Wiseman and Mark McIntyre. In that composition, "the trouble with Harry" is that he's a musician who plays the same riff over and over. This inspired two records - one by "Alfi and Harry," with "Alfi" played by the exasperated Ross Bagdasarian, 50s king of the novelty record, who tries to get pianist Harry to vary his tune. 

The other was by Les Baxter, taking a break from his exotica recordings to exhort Harry - who plays the baritone saxophone on this disc - to change his tune. While the two singles are surprisingly different, they are equally annoying. The idea is memorable, however - I can recall hearing the Bagdasarian record back when I was six years old.

Dimitri Tiomkin, Les Baxter, Ross Bagdasarian

Our final Hitchcock item is the theme from his 1954 suspense film Dial "M" for Murder, written by the distinguished film composer Dimitri Tiomkin. The theme veers from a menacing opening to a highly romantic main melody. It's a fine piece of music, although more conventional than Herrmann's scores, and so it has slipped into a perhaps undeserved obscurity.

These records all were cleaned up from Internet Archive posts.

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