Movie/TV/Game Scores Through The Ages - Alan's Personal Favourites

Thanks for the heads up, Tom. I do have to admit that I'm not familiar with a lot of these scores, but the one that I have chosen for 1939 highlights one of the "problems" of a favourites list: I have a lot of associated childhood memories of this score (as do the majority of people who've seen this over the years!)

1939 - The Wizard of Oz - Herbert Stothart / Harold Arlen / Edgar Y Harburg

There's so much more to the music for this film than just the iconic songs. For example, one of the things that has always stuck in my mind is Miss Gulch's theme. Immediately memorable! Listening to it again now, all the various themes/song melodies are weaved throughout the score to build to almost 2 hours that just flies by. Rhino Movie Music's 2-CD version can be a bit excessive with all the various alternate & partial takes but it's a loving reproduction of the score.

Rhino Movie Music also produced a lavish release of another of this year's monumental scores - Gone With The Wind - but this one is just too full of American Civil War song references to be really enjoyable. A couple of titles that were serious contenders were Korngold's The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (probably my favourite Korngold so far) and Alfred Newman's Wuthering Heights. Both contain great main themes - and I'd love to hear an expanded version of the Korngold title against the 14-minute suite of tracks from the Previn/LSO release (DG).

Great choice, Alan.
It would have been mine as well...for the exact same reason you already predicted:


It's my dad's second favourite film (the first one being The Thief Of Bagdad, which naturally has become a personal favourite of mine as well, having watched it dozens of times). But aside from that, the songs and incidental music really are very good (and some of the lyrics are incredibly clever! You'd bleep over it in all the goings-on, but having examined them in some more detail (while trying to work out a chord arrangement for guitar) I really gained some major appreciation for the lyricist!

A close second would be (perhaps surprisingly) Victor Young's lovely work on Fleischer's animated Gulliver's Travels. But again, this is mainly due to some very good childhood memories. The songs, while lovely, are nowhere near as good as the Wizard's, but the incidental music is top notch.

If the question was which I think was the better score it'd be a toss-up between Steiner's Gone With The Wind and Newman's Hunchback Of The Notre Dame, which are both outstanding.
But neither is a favourite of mine.

Any thoughts on the best score of this very fruitful year, Alan?

My pick for 1939 would definitely be ELIZABETH & ESSEX. It truly shines in the lovely suite format on the Carl Davis rerecording.

I don't know if it's complete or not, but it's rearranged in such a way to provide a nice flow from "segment" to "segment". I have the Bay Cities release, and don't know whether it's any different from the Varese.

Pinocchio (1940) - Leigh Harline; Paul J. Smith (III); Ned Washington

Other Nominees:
Arizona (1940) - Victor Young (I)
Dark Command (1940) - Victor Young (I)
My Favorite Wife (1940) - Roy Webb (I)
North West Mounted Police (1940) - Victor Young (I)
One Million B.C. (1940) - Werner R. Heymann
Our Town (1940) - Aaron Copland
Rebecca (1940) - Franz Waxman
The Fight for Life (1940) - Louis Gruenberg
The Great Dictator (1940) - Meredith Willson
The House of the Seven Gables (1940) - Frank Skinner (I)
The Howards of Virginia (1940) - Richard Hageman
The Letter (1940) - Max Steiner (I)
The Long Voyage Home (1940) - Richard Hageman
The Mark of Zorro (1940) - Alfred Newman
The Thief of Bagdad (1940) - Miklós Rózsa
Waterloo Bridge (1940) - Herbert Stothart

The list for 1940 in the USA releases
Thomas

What?
D., are you ouzo-happy? Or still jetlagged?

Why, I do believe that it might.

Randy dwarves!?

This sort of stuff doesn't belong in THIS thread. Stop hijacking Alan's thread. Please for the love of God be respectful to what Alan is doing here and take the shenanigans (yes, I said shenanigans) elsewhere.



-Erik-

Tom, what's with the (III) and (I)?
Is that an indication for Oscar nomination or something?

I've just picked up a copy of this and I'm looking forward to hearing it in full. It's not going to replace The Wizard of Oz though.

1940 up later...

I've got to make you feel good just in case my 1940 choice doesn't agree!

1940 - The Sea Hawk - Erich Wolfgang Korngold

The breadth of this score was obvious when Naxos/Stromberg/Moscow Symphony Orchestra released this back in 2007. This has to be my favourite swashbuckling theme and kicks off 2+ hours worth of excellent film music. But, it's a title that doesn't seem to feature in Tom's list - though I see it was nominated in 1941 as best score (losing out to, as Tom mentions, Pinocchio).

This score does contain all the typical Korngold excesses seen in his scores to date. But this one seems to get the balance right, mixing in the swashbuckling style with a lot more variety (at least to my ears anyway) - the drama of tracks such as "The Big Drum" and lovely tracks such as "Rose Garden".

This choice replaces Rozsa's The Thief of Bagdad: listening again to the couple of versions I have, it just doesn't grab me in the same way as it did before.

My choice would have been The thief of Bagdad. But The sea hawk is pretty good as well.

Peter