Sorry for the delay of this weekly installment.
Time makes fools of us all.
At #42 in our Bob Dylan Top 125 Countdown is a song called Idiot Wind. The original
version of this Blood on the Tracks
(1975) centerpiece was a rueful acoustic ballad, but when Dylan
rerecorded half of the album at the last minute in Minneapolis, the heavily
rewritten Idiot Wind became one of his most scathing, frothing, furious songs –
a rant against the woman he married and idiocy itself. "You're an idiot,
babe/It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe," goes the chorus,
and that's not even as harsh as it gets. Dylan makes sure he's not spared from
blame: "It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves," he sings in the
last line. Dylan said of the song, "I didn't feel that one was too
personal, but I felt it seemed too personal. Which might be the same
thing." This is a great live version from the Rolling Thunder Tour 1976:
... And this is how the New York studio version,
which wasn't eventually included in the album, sounded:
At #41 is a song from the same album, called Simple
Twist of Fate. In this song, Dylan looks at an idyllic relationship that fell
apart for reasons neither party can control. People logically assumed he
was singing about the breakup of his marriage to Sara, but his lyric notebook
for Blood on the Tracks reveals
a different story. Originally, the song had a subtitle, "4th Street
Affair," named for the apartment at 161 W. 4th St., where he lived with
girlfriend Suze Rotolo shortly after arriving in New York. The narrator of the
song has moved on to meaningless one-night stands (as Dylan surely had in early
1975), but his heart was more than 10 years in the past. It's a very poignant
song.
We are now entering the Top 40. At #40 we find Desolation
Row. It is part of Dylan's 2nd best album, Highway 61 Revisited (1965). An epic
song going on for more than 11 minutes, it is often ranked as one of Dylan's
greatest compositions. Its surreal lyrics weave characters from history,
fiction, the Bible and of Dylan's own invention into a series of vignettes that
suggest entropy and urban chaos. Here's what Mick Jagger has to say about it:
"Desolation Row is so simple musically – just
three chords for 11 minutes, with minimal accompaniment – yet it's so
effective. There's Dylan, a bassist and a session guitar player, Charlie
McCoy, from Nashville, who adds a nice little counterpoint to the melody. After
many listenings, his playing still sounds sweet; I like the slight Spanish
tinge of it. But it doesn't get in the way of what is obviously the main thing:
the vocal and the lyrics.
Dylan's delivery is recitative, almost deadpan, but
he engages you. What's wonderful is all these characters he inveighs on our
imagination: Famous people surrealistically appear, some of them mythical and
some of them real. The Phantom of the Opera. Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot.
Cinderella. Bette Davis. Cain and Abel.
I love the bit about "Einstein, disguised as
Robin Hood": "You would not think to look at him, but he was famous
long ago/For playing the electric violin on Desolation Row." It's a great
image of Einstein – all his hair is jutting out, and he's got the violin, which
he used to play. Someone said Desolation Row is Dylan's version of (T.S. Eliot's)
The Waste Land. I'm not sure if that's true, but it's a wonderful collection of
imagery – a fantasy Bowery – that really gets your imagination working."
At #39 we find Chimes of Freedom, a song featured
on his 1964 album Another Side of Bob Dylan. The most ambitious song Dylan had
written to date – a six-verse masterpiece in which a thunderstorm and its
lightning flashes become a beacon that summons outlaws, outcasts, artists and
"every hung-up person in the whole wide universe" – reportedly
evolved out of a brief poem he'd written about John F. Kennedy's assassination
in late 1963. Dylan's gift for internal rhyme and assonance flowered here, as
did his knack for phrasemaking: "starry-eyed an' laughing,"
"midnight's broken toll," "chained an' cheated by pursuit."
He first performed it in mid-February 1964, and recorded it that June for Another Side of Bob Dylan (after
half a dozen false starts – it's tough to keep that many lines straight). By
the end of the year, he'd dropped Chimes of Freedom from his set, but other
artists picked it up and ran: The Byrds recorded it for their first album in
1965, and Bruce Springsteen made it the title track of a 1988 EP. Here he is
live:
At #38 is Masters of War, from Dylan's groundbreaking
and starmaking The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963) album. With many of his early
songs, Dylan adapted or "borrowed" melodies from traditional songs.
In the case of Masters of War borrowing from Nottamun Town, however, the
arrangement was by veteran folksinger Jean Ritchie. Unknown to Dylan, the song
had been in Ritchie's family for generations, and she wanted a writing credit
for her arrangement. In a legal settlement, Dylan's lawyers paid Ritchie $5,000
against any further claims.
Masters of War is Dylan's angriest protest song.
His starting point seems to be the fears of nuclear holocaust – but characteristically,
Dylan took that common theme and gave it a crucial twist. Where typical
anti-war songs might indict politicians or generals, Dylan's target is the
military-industrial complex itself: Greed drives the masters of war, not
ideology. "Is your money that good?" Dylan spits out as he envisions
a world awash in blood. "Will it buy you forgiveness?" The song ends
with the singer calling out for the deaths of those bomb builders, promising to
stand over their graves "till I'm sure that you're dead." "I
don't sing songs which hope people will die," Dylan observed at the time.
"But I couldn't help it with this one."
Finally for today, at #37 we find Shelter from the
Storm. It's the third song that we hear today from the Blood On The Tracks
album. The twin moods of Shelter From the Storm are best captured in two wildly
different performances. On Blood
on the Tracks, the song is an acoustic reflection on a
relationship mysteriously gone bad, a fond remembrance of a woman who, for all
her faults, provided the singer a respite, however brief, from the world's
trials. On the live album Hard
Rain, meanwhile, the song is a roaring rock & roll juggernaut, a
sneering denunciation of a hypocritical lover whose offer of a warm, safe haven
is dismissed as a cynical joke. Encompassing such emotional extremes within
a single song is one of Dylan's most distinctive gifts – in this case, a song
that took shape as his marriage to Sara was disintegrating. "Beauty walks
a razor's edge," he sings, and as the song makes clear, when you pursue
it, you sometimes bleed.
This is the live version, from the Rolling Thunder
Revue:
Now, to our weekly statistics. The most popular story
of the week was the 1937 Oscars. It's only been up for a little more than a
day! The most popular post of April though, belongs to the post that opened the
month. The one about our friend Martin Del Caprio. It has been steadily growing
since it debuted, in fact it's the third most visited subject of this week.
As far as countries are concerned, France and the United Kingdom are still galloping;
their gains continue to be spectacular. In fact, the United Kingdom has overtaken Germany and is now 4th in the
all-time list, while France could be a threat to Greece in about 6 weeks, if
the trend continues. Cyprus also did very well and is poised to overtake Italy,
while Spain, Belgium and Canada also did OK. Congrats to all! Here are this
week's Top 10 countries:
1.
the United States
2.
France
3.
the United Kingdom
4.
Greece
5.
Cyprus
6.
the United Arab Emirates
7.
Spain
8.
Germany
9.
Italy
10.
Canada
Here
are the other countries that graced us with their presence since our last
statistics (alphabetically): Argentina, Australia, Austria, Barbados, Belgium,
Brazil, Chile, China, Croatia, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, French Polynesia, Georgia,
Ghana, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Jamaica, Japan, Jersey, Kenya, Lithuania,
Luxembourg, Macau, Malta, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria,
Norway, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Singapore,
Sweden, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Vietnam. Happy to
have you all!
Today in our Oscar-winning Songs Countdown, we go further back in time that we've ever
gone so far. A time of favorites that fail to win and a time of important rule
changes, one of which came about because of the choice of the Oscar-winning
song.
The sudden and unexpected death of wunderkind
producer Irving Thalberg in 1936 made his final, yet-to-be-released films more
keenly anticipated than any in his lifetime. One of these movies was Camille
with Greta Garbo. Thalberg had instructed his three screenwriters to update
Dumas' antique plot. "The problem of a girl's past ruining her marriage
doesn't exist anymore," Thalberg told them. "Whores can make good
wives, that has been proven."
So the writers and director George Cukor made it
all about Armand's (Robert Taylor) jealousy and concentrated on Garbo's
performance instead. And what a performance it was! The New York Times raved,
"She's as incomparable in the role as legend tells us that Bernhardt
was." Camille made more money than any Garbo film. She followed it up with
Conquest, which didn't make much money in the US, but made enough in Europe to
turn a profit. The New Yorker observed that, with Charles Boyer playing
Napoleon, for the first time "Garbo has a leading man who contributes more
to the interest and vitality of the film than she does."
The other posthumous Thalberg film exceeded the
cost of (the silent) Ben-Hur: It was the film adaptation of Pearl Buck's The
Good Earth with Paul Muni and Luise Rainer, both of whom had won the acting
awards during the previous year. MGM head Louis B. Mayer was worried:
"Irving, the public won't buy pictures about American farmers and you want
to give them Chinese farmers?" he said.
He needn't have worried. "The greatest
photographic miracles in the history of motion pictures," extolled the Los
Angeles Evening Herald. The movie turned out to be a box-office winner, and a
lot of the credit went to Luise Rainer for her tour de force performance.
Paul Muni's talents were better showcased
elsewhere: Jack Warner was used to give his prestige actor and recent Oscar
winner what he wanted, so when Muni said that after Louis Pasteur he wanted to
impersonate Emile Zola, Warner immediately set the wheels in motion: William
Dieterle, the director of Louis Pasteur, was set to direct, while last year's
Supporting Actress winner, Gale Sondergaard, was given the role of Mrs.
Dreyfuss. For the pivotal part of Alfred Dreyfuss, Broadway actor Joseph
Schildkraut was hired. Time magazine declared it "the outstanding prestige
picture of the season," and The New York Film Critics bestowed their Best
Picture and Best Actor awards on the movie and its star. The Life Of Emile Zola
was also Warner's top moneymaker of 1937. The soundtrack was by the great Max
Steiner:
Greta Garbo won her second New York Film Critics
for Camille and the Best Director was Gregory La Cava for the immensly popular
Stage Door, RKO's adaptation of the Ferber-Kaufman play about struggling
actresses, starring every female name at the studio: Katharine Hepburn, Ginger
Rogers, Lucille Ball, Eve Arden, Andrea Leeds and Ann Miller.
Meanwhile back at MGM, a million dollar vehicle for
child star Freddie Bartholomew was launced, an adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's
Captains Courageous. MGM assigned Spencer Tracy to play a Portuguese fisherman,
but he was uncomfortable with the accent. He didn't like his curled hairdo
either, especially after Joan Crawford ran into him on the Metro lot and
roared, "Oh my God, it's Harpo Marx!"
Tracy felt better when Captains Courageous went on
to become the studio's top moneymaker of the year and the winner of Photoplay's
readers' poll for the year's most popular film. Photoplay said of Tracy,
"In this difficult role, Tracy does masterful work."
Samuel Goldwyn, who had produced a silent version
of the tearjerker Stella Dallas in 1925, dusted off the property for Barbara
Stanwyck in 1937. Director King Vidor pulled out all the melodramatic stops and
Stanwyck threw herself into the role of the working-class mother who sacrifices
her child to high society. "Miss Stanwyck's portrayal is as courageous as
it is fine," opined the New York Times.
Janet Gaynor, the first actress to ever win the
Oscar, 9 years earlier, had her share of suffering too in A Star Is Born.
Producer David O. Selznick and director William Wellman came up with the story
about a fading Hollywood matinee idol, played by Fredric March, who marries
rising star Gaynor. Dorothy Parker and her husband Alan Campbell were called in
to add polish to the script. The film, as well as the lead actors, received
great reviews, and later became a vehicle of such superstars as Judy Garland,
Barbra Steisand, and recently Lady Gaga.
Leo McCarey worked for less than his usual salary
to direct Make Way For Tomorrow, a drama about an elderly couple and their
uncaring children. The movie, despite great reviews, bombed at the box-office -
so badly that Paramount bought out the rest of McCarey's contract. The
unemployed director had to think of something to sell, so he went to Harry Cohn
at Columbia with the idea of a comedy about divorce.
Cohn gave McCarey a chance, and almost anything he
wanted: Irene Dunne, the star of Cimarron, Cary Grant, the former Mae West
co-star who was on his way of becoming a star of his own, and Ralph Bellamy as
Dunne's would-be second husband.
"A rollicking comedy that should delight
anyone," was the verdict of the New York Sun. "Mr. McCarey's
direction has skillfully eluded all problems of cencorship, concocting a comedy
that is sometimes naughty but always nice." The box-office returns made
Cohn very happy.
Robert Montgomery rebelled and asked to be assigned
to Night Must Fall, based on the hit Broadway thriller. Mayer thought Montgomery
was crazy for wanting to play a psychopathic murderer roaming the English
countryside, but the actor was the president of the Screen Actors Guild, so the
mogul let him have his way. The critics reacted the way Montgomery had hoped
they would; the New York Daily News said the film "lifts the actor out of
the lower brackets, into an eminent position among the top-notchers of
Hollywood players." The bad news: the movie flopped.
Frank Capra, last year's winning director, became president
of the Academy and brought about a lot of changes. The Academy would no longer
be the studios' strong arm to settle labor disputes, that were tarnishing its
prestige; it would now be solely a means to celebrate the best in Hollywood.
Also, in a final effort to win over members of the directors', actors', and
writers' organizations, Capra got rid of the fifty-man nominating committee and
invited all guild members to vote, whether they were members of the Academy or
not. Even the extras got to vote on the final ballot for Best Picture, Best
Acting, and Best Song awards. This meant a jump from last year's 800-odd voters
to 15 000, with the extras representing 12 000 of these votes. He even had time
to make a movie, an adaptation of the James Hilton best-seller Lost Horizon.
The film, starring Ronald Colman, ended up costing twice it's already big budget,
so it didn't make a profit. It was, however, writer J.D. Salinger's favorite
film. The score was by the great Dimitri Tiomkin:
William Wyler, who had received his first Best
Director nomination the year before, on his way to twelve, had a new film out. Dead
End was a gangster film, it starred Sylvia Sidney, Joel McCrea and a bunch of
kids who would become widely popular: As the "Dead End Kids" they
would appear in 7 movies in the next 2 years. But it was the supporting actors
that caught the critics' attention; a young Claire Trevor, and a rising star
who played the bad guy - Humphrey Bogart.
Another director who was in the process of building
his reputation, and already an Oscar winner for The Informer, was John Ford.
This year's offering was lighter fare, what would be termed today as a
blockbuster. The Hurricane had half-naked flesh, both from Jon Hall and Dorothy
Lamour, exotic locales, the necessary romance, and an impressive - for then -
hurricane. It made a lot of money at the box-office.
The score was by Alfred Newman. Here's Dorothy
Lamour with Moon of Manakoora (lyrics by Frank Loesser):
Over at Fox, Darryl F. Zanuck was envious of the
success that MGM had with their San Francisco earthquake movie, which cleaned
up at the box-office and had its fair share of Oscar nominations. Therefore, he
decided to do the story of the Great Fire of Chicago. In Old Chicago had
experienced director Henry King at the helm and starred a trio of Fox stars:
Tyrone Power, Alice Faye, and Don Ameche. It was character actress Alice Brady,
however, who stole the show as Molly O'Leary. The success of the film would
prompt Zanuck to use the same combination in the following year (King as
director - Power, Faye and Ameche as leads) in Alexander's Ragtime Band. The
film's score was quite pleasant:
Universal, on the other hand, had discovered a
box-office treasure in Deanna Durbin. The singing teenager had made 1936's
Three Smart Girls a box-office smash and a Best Picture nominee. This time it
was One Hundred Men And A Girl, once again directed by Henry Koster, and once again
Durbin was surrounded by great character actors. The film grossed three times
its budget. The film's score, mainly classical music conducted by Hollywood's
favorite conductor, Leopold Stokowski, impressed:
The Nominations
The Life Of Emile Zola led the pack with 10 nominations
(Best Picture, Director, Actor (Muni), Supporting Actor (Schildkraut),
Assistant Director, Screenplay, Story, Art Direction, Sound and Score for Max
Steiner).
A Star Is Born had 7 (Best Picture, Director, Actor
(March), Actress (Gaynor), Assistant Director, Screenplay, Story).
Lost Horizon also had 7 (Best Picture, Supporting
Actor (H.B. Warner), Assistant Director, Art Direction, Editing, Sound and
Score).
The Awful Truth followed with 6 (Best Picture,
Director, Actress (Dunne), Supporting Actor (Bellamy), Screenplay, Editing).
In Old Chicago also had 6 (Best Picture, Supporting
Actress (Brady), Assistant Director, Story, Sound and Score).
The Good Earth received 5 nominations (Best
Picture, Director, Actress (Rainer), Cinematography, Editing).
One Hundred Men And A Girl also had 5 (Best
Picture, Story, Editing, Sound and Score).
Stage Door had 4 (Best Picture, Director, Supporting
Actress (Leeds), Screenplay).
Captains Courageous entered the race also with 4
(Best Picture, Actor (Tracy), Screenplay, Editing).
Also with 4 was Dead End (Best Picture, Supporting
Actress (Trevor), Art Direction, and Cinematography).
The Hurricane only managed 3 (Supporting Actor
(Thomas Mitchell), Sound and Score).
In the Best Actor category, Muni, March, and Tracy
were joined by Montgomery for Night Must Fall and Boyer for Conquest. In the
Best Actress category, Rainer, Dunne, and Gaynor were joined by Stanwyck for
Stella Dallas and the favorite, Garbo, for Camille.
In the Best Supporting Actor category, Schildkraut,
Bellamy, Warner, and Mitchell were joined by Roland Young in Topper, as the
conservative banker who has to deal with a couple of mischievous ghosts (Cary
Grant and Constance Bennett).
In the Best Supporting Actress category, Brady, Trevor
and Leeds were joined by Anne Shirley as Stanwyck's daughter in Stella Dallas, and
Dame May Whitty for Night Must Fall.
In the Best Music, Score category there were 14(!)
nominees. We've already heard music from nominees The Life Of Emile Zola, Lost
Horizon, In Old Chicago, One Hundred Men And A Girl, and The Hurricane. We can't
play all the rest, so here's some of them:
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs:
The Prisoner of Zenda (Alfred Newman):
Quality Street (Roy Webb):
Something to Sing About:
The
rest are Make A Wish, Maytime, Portia On Trial, Souls At Sea, and Way Out West.
What
about the Best Song nominees? These were indeed five. They were:
Sweet Leilani from Waikiki Wedding • Music
and lyrics: Harry Owens. A huge hit for Bing Crosby.
Remember Me from Mr. Dodd Takes the Air •
Music: Harry Warren • Lyrics: Al Dubin. Sung by Kenny Baker:
That Old Feeling from Vogues of 1938 •
Music: Sammy Fain • Lyrics: Lew Brown. Sung in the film by Virginia
Verrill. This version, by Shep Fields and his Rippling Rhythm Orchestra, vocal
by Bob Goday, went all the way to #1:
They Can't Take That Away from Me from
Shall We Dance • Music: George Gershwin • Lyrics: Ira Gershwin. Sung by the
star of the film, Fred Astaire, who took the song all the way to #1:
Whispers in the Dark from Artists and
Models • Music: Friedrich Hollaender • Lyrics: Leo Robin. Sung by Connee
Boswell:
Remember three weeks ago when all the nominated
songs were also US #1s? Well, guess what, so are this week's. The difference
is, with the exception of Sweet Leilani (which was also the biggest of them all
- 10 weeks at #1), and They Can't Take That Away from Me, the rest went to #1
in cover versions, not the original film versions. Other songs that could've
been nominated where:
Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off from Shall
We Dance • Music: George Gershwin • Lyrics: Ira Gershwin. Sung by Fred Astaire:
From the same film, They All Laughed:
A Foggy Day from A Damsel in Distress
• Music: George Gershwin • Lyrics: Ira Gershwin. Sung by Fred Astaire:
From the same film, Nice Work If You Can
Get It:
In The Still Of The Night from
Rosalie • Music and lyrics: Cole Porter. Sung by Joan Whitney:
The Folks Who Live On The Hill from High,
Wide, and Handsome • Music: Jerome Kern • Lyrics: Oscar Hammerstein II. Sung by
Irene Dunne:
Hooray for Holllywood from Hollywood Hotel
• Music: Richard A. Whiting • Lyrics: Johnny Mercer. Sung by Johnnie Davis and
Frances Langford, accompanied by Benny Goodman and his orchestra:
I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm from On The
Avenue • Music and lyrics: Irving Berlin. Sung by Dick Powell:
From the same film, This Year's Kisses,
sung by Alice Faye:
September in the Rain from Melody for Two
• Music: Harry Warren • Lyrics: Al Dubin. Sung by James Melton:
Too Marvelous For Words from Ready,
Willing and Able • Music: Richard A. Whiting • Lyrics: Johnny Mercer.
Whistle While You Work from Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs • Music: Frank Churchill • Lyrics: Larry
Morey.
From the same film, Heigh Ho:
From the same film, Someday My Prince Will
Come:
So many good songs!
The Winners
The
Life Of Emile Zola received 3 Oscars, including Best Picture. The other two
were for the Screenplay and to Joseph Schildkraut for Supporting Actor. Schildkraut
was at home and asleep, because his agent had told him that he had no chance of
winning. It's a good thing he didn't live far, because when the Academy called
him to announce his win, he got dressed and hurried to the theater to accept
his award. Also absent - in the hospital with a broken ankle - was Supporting
Actess winner Alice Brady for In Old Chicago. Alice Brady's trophy was swiped
by an impostor who came onstage to accept the award on the absent actress'
behalf. It has never been recovered and the imposter could never be tracked
down. Before the Academy could do justice and issue a copy of the award, Alice
Brady passed away. In Old Chicago also won for Best Assistant Director.
Spencer
Tracy was also in the hospital with appendicitis, and his Oscar for Captains
Courageous was picked up by his wife and Louis Mayer, who said "Tracy is a
fine actor, but he is most important because he understands why it is necessary
to take orders from the front office." "Was that a compliment or a
threat?" Tracy later wondered.
There
was an upset in the Best Actess category. The favorite Greta Garbo lost to
Luise Rainer for The Good Earth. It was the first time that an actor won the
Oscar two years in a row. Academy officials had called the actress at home and
she rushed to the ceremony with husband Clifford Odets (the playwright). Within
a year, her marriage was ruined and she was fed up with her career, because all
the parts she was offered after the Oscars were insignificant. She fled to
England and later married a publisher in London.
The
bad turn of Rainer's career after her two Oscars gave rise to the Oscar jinx
myth, even though Rainer herself later dismissed the Oscar jinx as
"nonsense".
The
Best Director award went to Leo McCarey for The Awful Truth. "Thanks, but
you gave it to me for the wrong picture," said McCarey, who hadn't
forgotten his passion project, Make Way For Tomorrow. The Best Cinematography
award went to The Good Earth, Best Sound went to The Hurricane, Best Story went
to A Star Is Born, while Best Art Direction and Best Editing went to Lost
Horizon.
Best
Music, Score, went to One Hundred Men And A Girl, which caused a few disturbed
conversations, because a score which was basically adapted classical music
shouldn't have to compete with original scores. The Academy took notice, and
starting from next year we had two score categories, one original and one not.
What
about the Best Song? Everyone expected that the Gershwin song would win. It is
my favorite too. The winner, however, was Sweet Leilani. It is a sweet enough
song, Crosby croons just right, and I love the Hawaii vibe. (We've discussed
this, haven't we, Record Man?) But this was the Oscars' chance to honour one of
20th century's greatest composers - and they missed it. The Academy governors
were annoyed; they believed that it was the extras' low brow taste in music
that propelled the more obvious pop hit to the winner's dais. From the
following year onwards, the extras were not allowed to vote for the Best Song
anymore.
