The Magnificent Elmer (8 page)

I was overcome by puzzlement at this long inventory of rejection. So I consulted a composer friend with long experience in these sanguinary affairs.

“How could they do that?” I asked. “I mean, he was Elmer Bernstein, for God’s sake.”

“Well, yes, there’s that.”

“All this music was written and recorded?”

“Every bar,” said my friend.

“Then why?”

“What is the one thing that all these films had in common?”

“What did they have in common?” I asked.

“They were a mess.”

“Ah-hah!” I said.

“They were desperate to try to fix things. What could they do? Re-imagine the concept? Rewrite the script? Hire new stars?”

“They threw out the music,” I said.

“Ah-hah!”

***

As hurt as Elmer was when his music was jettisoned in its entirety, he was almost more aggrieved when a producer, with little judgment about such matters, would order him to alter it, to mangle it. He would have liked to say: Keep your hands off my music. Don’t change it. Don’t improve it. It
works
.

It was something that one could not really say to a movie producer. As Budd Schulberg remarked: “Movie producers have to ask for changes, it is how they justify their existence.”

Elmer’s favorite composer anecdote was about Billy Rose, the bantam theatrical producer and impresario. He was assembling a Broadway musical called
Seven Lively Arts
. It would contain samples of all the lively arts, comedy, drama, music, ballet, everything. The music would be supplied by Igor Stravinsky, Benny Goodman, and Cole Porter. Rose thought that everything was improvable under his golden touch. He thus cabled Stravinsky: YOUR MUSIC GREAT SUCCESS STOP COULD BE SENSATIONAL SUCCESS IF YOU WOULD AUTHORIZE ME TO HAVE ROBERT RUSSELL BENNETT IMPROVE YOUR ORCHESTRATIONS.

Stravinsky cabled back:

SATISFIED WITH GREAT SUCCESS.

***

In Hollywood, even when you win you lose. For in each category of the Oscars, among the five nominees are four who will lose and one who will win. I haven’t tabulated the numbers, but after years of such rejection, Elmer seemed like the most nominated and least awarded composer in film history. Here is the box score.

In 1955 Elmer was nominated for Best Musical Score for
The Man with the Golden Arm
. And the Oscar went to Alfred Newman for
Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing
.

In 1960 Elmer was nominated for his score to
The Magnificent Seven
, and he lost to Ernest Gold for his score to
Exodus
.

In 1962 Elmer was nominated for
To Kill a Mockingbird
and lost to Maurice Jarre for
Laurence of Arabia
.

In 1966 Elmer was nominated for
Hawaii
, and lost to John Barry for
Born Free
.

In 1983 Elmer was nominated for
Trading Places
, and lost to Bill Conti for
The Right Stuff
.

In 1993 Elmer was nominated for
Age of Innocence
and lost to John Williams for
Schindler’s List
.

In 2002 Elmer was nominated for
Far from Heaven
and lost to Elliot Gondeldthal for
Frida
.

***

Why all the fuss about the Academy Awards? Well, the Oscars is a very American institution. There is something special about all that wealth and monomania packed into one theater. Indeed, whenever you put a thousand celebrities into one place—all those self-absorbed stars, directors, agents, and producers—you get a really pleasant combination of gossip, panic, spite, and sham.

There is something special about the first anything. If you are a writer, it is the first time you see your words in print; if you are a teenager, it is your first kiss; if you are
a baseball player, it is your first home run. And if you are a moviemaker, it is your first Oscar ceremony. I remember our first one very well. Elmer had been nominated for the musical score for
The Man with the Golden Arm
.

One of the first things I noticed was the way they put all the nominees for the same award together. A convenience to the TV cameramen? A nod to envy and pathology? A threat to mental health? Whatever the reason, there seated cheek and jowl were the five nominated composers and their wives, all grinning in terror. There, in a tight group, were Max Steiner, Alfred Newman, Alex North, George Duning, and my darling Elmer.

George Duning, who had said yes to Harry Cohn at Columbia, became a staff composer, and wrote the nominated
Picnic
, as well as the unrecognized
Three Stooges in Space
; Alfred Newman had written the score for
Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing
, a piece of featureless mush from Fox; Alex North had been nominated for the music to Tennessee Williams’
The Rose Tattoo
; Max Steiner had written the score for MGM’s
Battle Cry
, which was based on the first novel of my old high school beaux Leon Uris; and Elmer had written the driving jazz score to
Golden Arm
.

I remember our preparations for the Oscar that year.

“I could buy a dress for the Oscars for two hundred dollars, or buy the fabric and a pattern and make it for one hundred.” I unpacked the portable sewing machine I had brought West for just this kind of situation.

If you will cast your mind back to 1955, you know that
Marty
swept the Oscars, winning best actor, best director, best picture, best nearly everything. Elmer lost to Alfred Newman for
Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing
. I lost the best gown award to an extra from Republic Pictures. And that was the ’55 Oscars in a nutshell, a fitting receptacle.

The most exciting moment for me? It was when the ceremony ended and the horde of famous folks strode up the red carpet, in triumph or humility, and boarded their stretch limos. It was then that the platoon of valets in serried ranks assembled, hustled off to bring the cars. It was then that Little Pearly stood unabashedly by the valet’s podium.

“Mr. Peck’s car,” said the chief usher.

And I watched breathlessly as Mr. Peck slid into the back seat.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THOROUGHLY MODERN ELMER

“Thousands of voices saying silently:

‘Let it be me… but if not me, not him.’”

—Bob Hope at the Oscars

Stop the presses! Alert the media! Elmer was finally nominated for an Oscar and won. Was it a tale of searing injustice? A challenge to the human spirit? A story of high adventure? Not exactly. It was a movie about a flapper with bobbed hair in twenties America.

Thoroughly Modern Millie
was the only score Elmer ever wrote that won the Academy Award. “To think,” he mused, “I lost with
To Kill a Mockingbird
. I lost with
The Magnificent Seven
. I lost with
The Man with the Golden Arm
. Then when I finally won it was with, of all things,
Thoroughly Modern Millie
.”

Millie
was the only major score Elmer ever wrote that has never been recorded in its entirety. Coincidental? I don’t think so.

Elmer loved the music of the twenties, and in scoring the Ross Hunter spoof, he put a lot of love and nostalgia into his work. “I had a wonderful kind of Paul Whiteman sound in that score,” he recalled. “There were no highs and no lows, it was like the old radio sound. It was a very tinny sound of the period and I worked hard to get it. And then Ross Hunter recorded it with Andre Previn and a thousand strings.”

Mind you, I love Elmer’s delightful theme, which thankfully was included in a collection of his work released by Film Music Masterworks three years after his death. This compilation was the only collection in which any of his
Millie
music ever appeared, with its wonderful gaiety and spirit.

***

The music of the twenties had always held a special appeal for Elmer. When we first returned to New York from our new home in Hollywood, it was to catch up on the shows on Broadway. We saw Herman Wouk’s
Caine Mutiny Court Martial
, Maxwell Anderson’s
Bad Seed
, and Clifford Odets’
The Flowering Peach
. And of course there were the musicals. By this time we were able to afford tickets to see complete shows, unlike during our impecunious days in a walkup. We saw all of
The Pajama Game
,
Fanny
, and
Threepenny Opera
. But the show we enjoyed the most was
The Boy Friend
, the buoyant British musical for which Sandy Wilson wrote the songs. Feuer & Martin, who were like a brand name for hit musicals in those days, brought
The Boy Friend
to America as one of their extraordinary string of smashes, most of them by Frank Loesser and Cole Porter.

Elmer was delighted by the sound of the show, the twenties-era moaning saxophones that got standing ovations for the overture. Elmer loved the music and the beat, the banjos and the wood blocks. Cy Feuer had found a young music-hall performer named Julie Andrews to star in
The Boy Friend
, and a few years later, film producer Ross Hunter was determined to make his own takeoff of the twenties. He signed Julie Andrews
to star, and when he was unable to secure the screen rights to
The Boy Friend
, he concocted his own send-up of the jazz age. He called it
Thoroughly Modern Millie
.

The movie soundtrack album, if you listen to it today, includes the title tune, by Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn, a few authentic songs of the twenties such as “Baby Face” and “Poor Butterfly.” And if you listen very carefully, you can even hear bits of Elmer’s score, struggling to be heard.

“And the Oscar goes to Elmer Bernstein for the score to
Thoroughly Modern Millie
—”

Almost worth waiting for.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
FINE AND DANNY

“The pellet with the poison’s in the vessel with the pestle.”

—Danny Kaye

The phone call from Danny Kaye had come when Elmer was suffering from the depredations of the blacklist—what Elmer chose in later years to dismiss as the grey list. The call from Danny Kaye was a definite Eureka moment.

Elmer pointed to the phone receiver, I picked up the extension and listened to the actual voice of Danny Kaye. Danny was to star in
The Court Jester
for Sam Goldwyn. “The pellet with the poison’s in the vessel with the pestle,” Danny would famously say. He needed Elmer as a rehearsal pianist to work with him on the movie. His wife Sylvia Fine, was the brilliant, protean woman who many said had created Danny, writing the dazzling comedy and music that had fueled his career. Sylvia needed someone to translate her tunes in the movie into genuine songs. Danny’s bravura performances of Sylvia Fine’s witty patter songs brought out all that was best in Danny. His career would last fifty years and embrace seventeen films, most notably
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
,
The Inspector General
,
Hans Christian Anderson
and
The Court Jester
. He also received the French Legion of Honor. “They’re giving that to everybody,” Danny laughed.

Danny and Sylvia looked on Elmer and me as the new kids on the block. We were at every party the Kayes threw. Those parties were where the movers and shakers in town flowed in and out. Glenn Ford, Jack and Mary Benny, Truman Capote, Lauren Bacall, Laurence Olivier, Clifford Odets. The cast of characters was constantly changing and always stimulating.

Danny got some tips from Elmer on the physicality of conducting a symphony orchestra. These enabled Danny to be authentic as well as hilarious when he appeared as a guest conductor with virtually every major symphony orchestra in America in behalf of their musicians’ pension funds, raising over ten million dollars. Watching Danny from backstage at the Los Angeles Philharmonic was a delight. He would appear in glistening tails, gripping a quiver of batons. He would judiciously select one, lose it in his first gesture, take another and conduct the orchestra. He mimed an argument with the first violinist, conducted the audience in a greeting, then flawlessly lead the orchestra in a medley of Ravel, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, Beethoven, and John Philip Sousa.

***

Danny had a passion for the things that interested him. He was fascinated by medicine, Chinese food, piloting his own plane, and the Los Angeles Dodgers. I loved the moments when Danny, Elmer and I would arrive at Dodgers Stadium. As we walked down the long corridor to our seats, the crowd would part like the waters of the red sea in the DeMille epic, and then close as inexorably after us.

As we watched batting practice, Danny once recounted to us how Sam Goldwyn presented him with the script for one of his favorite films,
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
. “Mr. Goldwyn sits there with his right forefinger pressed firmly against his nose,
he hands me this red binder and he says, ‘It’s a good role for you, Danny.’ And I say I’m looking forward to reading it. And Mr. Goldwyn says, ‘The only trouble is, it’s a little blood and thirsty.’ And I say, ‘I am flabber and gasted.’”

Elmer asked Danny if the story he had heard from Garson Kanin was true. When the famous playwright had first been interviewed by Goldwyn for a junior writer’s job, an impassioned Goldwyn had explained why he loved making movies. “It’s not the money or the power,” said Goldwyn. “It’s an
education
! Right now I’m making a movie about a man you’ve never even heard of—Alexander Hamilton.”

Elmer and Danny couldn’t keep from talking shop. One evening they were grousing about the vacillation and indecision of Hollywood producers.

“D’ya know the man who’s made the greatest impact on the movie business during last thirty years?” said Danny.

Elmer weighed the question. “Mayer? Zanuck? Goldwyn?”

Danny shook his head. “He wasn’t a movie mogul. He was a man named Zeke Bonura and he played first base for the Old Washington Senators.”