Kitty Hollywood - Bernard Herrmann - Composer Extraordinaire

I didn't consciously become aware of Bernard Herrmann until my late teens, but he is someone who has been in my life ever since I was a child and first watched The Ghost and Mrs Muir. His ability to delve into the psychological depths of a person and somehow transform their longing, their fears, their psychosis indeed, into musical form has fascinated me ever since, so I thought I would take you on a small trip down Bernard Herrmann lane.

Herrmann studied composition and performance at NYU and the Julliard School. He had formed his own chamber orchestra by the age of 20 (!!) and would soon thereafter be named the chief conductor for the CBS Symphony Orchestra. It was during these years he began the first of two collaborations with film directors that would ultimately define his career.

Orson Welles was writing and starring in a series of radio plays for CBS, and had asked Herrmann to score these for him, including conducting all live performances. Welles was given a motion picture contract with RKO, and thus Herrmann's first soundtrack became Citizen Kane (1941), which earned him an Oscar nomination. He didn't win the Shiny Goldness for Kane, because he was too busy winning an Oscar for his other nominated score that year, The Devil and Daniel Webster ("All That Money Can Buy"). When RKO stepped in and demanded final cut of Welles' second film The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), both the director and composer were profoundly dismayed by the result, and Herrmann insisted his name be removed from the credits, severing all ties with RKO and sadly bringing an end to his cinematic relationship with Welles, though the two remained friends. Herrmann had retained the deleted portions of score, later incorporating them into his operatic stage version of Wuthering Heights. Welles' roughly 40 minutes of removed footage, including an alternative ending, was destroyed by RKO without consultation.

Herrmann's second career collaboration was with Alfred Hitchcock, and is as closely aligned as Spielberg & Williams, or perhaps Burton & Elfman, spanning eight films which would cover Hitchcock's most popular period. Beginning with The Trouble With Harry (1955) and ending controversially with Torn Curtain (1966), Herrmann scored the The Man Who Knew Too Much (James Stewart & Doris Day version), The Wrong Man, Vertigo, North By Northwest, Psycho, Marnie, and was the sound effects consultant on The Birds.

Interestingly, the knuckle-whitening piece of orchestral music which virtually becomes a character in the climax to The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Storm Clouds Cantata, was written by an Australian, Arthur Benjamin, and Herrmann himself is the conductor shown on film.

Herrmann conducting 'Storm Cloud Cantata'

He insisted on conducting all recordings of his works, and due to an artist's strike at the time of recording Vertigo, this remains the only score he did not record with the orchestra. It is also possibly his most enduring, listed at #12 on the AFI's 25 greatest film scores. His shrieking violins in Psycho (1960) are more iconic, definitely, however Hitchcock at the time was insisting that the shower scene have no score. Herrmann scored it anyway, and they fought briefly over what a difference the strings would make. It is hard to now imagine one without the other, and it began a series of ideological clashes the two would encounter. It is rumoured that this is the reason behind his next film The Birds (1963) having no soundtrack at all - to prove that shock could be just as effective when scoreless. 

Herrmann is quoted as saying "I have the final say, or I don’t do the music. The reason for insisting on this is simply, compared to Orson Welles, a man of great musical culture, most other directors are just babes in the woods. If you were to follow their taste, the music would be awful. There are exceptions. I once did a film The Devil and Daniel Webster with a wonderful director William Dieterle. He was also a man of great musical culture. And Hitchcock, you know, is very sensitive; he leaves me alone. It depends on the person. But if I have to take what a director says, I’d rather not do the film. I find it’s impossible to work that way" (1975). It is this control that ultimately brought his relationship with Hitchcock to a bitter end. Their final work together was Torn Curtain, and Hitch was under pressure from new blood at the studio to re-vamp his look and tone for a new audience. He insisted that Herrmann follow suit; he simply refused, scoring the entire film his own way, having it flatly refused by the director, and was promptly dumped by the studio. Rumours abound as to a jealousy that Hitchcock had felt, that Herrmann was receiving more recognition for his work than he felt it was worth, and when they parted ways it's believed he stated that he had a career before Hitchcock, and he'd have one after him also.

His legacy proves he knew his own talent, as his earlier film work includes The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Jane Eyre (1943), my previously reviewed Hangover Square (1945) and, of course, The Ghost and Mrs Muir (1947). He would later score twice for François Truffaut with Fahrenheit 451 (1966) and The Bride Wore Black (1968), and also twice for Brian De Palma with Sisters (1973) and Obsession (1976). Looking up his score for Cape Fear (1962) on youtube, the vast majority of comments are from Simpson's fans who recognise it as Sideshow Bob's theme from the homage episode. His temper was legendary and his control was fierce; he scored 52 films and died just weeks after completing his final work, Taxi Driver (1976) for Scorsese. He wrote countless concert works and radio themes on top of his film scores, and was a Guggenheim Fellow. All of you at some point have heard a Herrmann scored film - the maths itself is unavoidable.