Originally, this month’s “9 on the 9th” post was going to be dedicated to romantic film scores as a precursor to that evil holiday–Valentine’s Day. Then I realized most of what I had on the list was film music that made me cry. Since I had already visited that topic recently,...

I’LL CRY TOMORROW contains one of Susan Hayward’s best performances as singer Lillian Roth (1910-1980). Once dubbed “Broadway’s Youngest Star,” Roth suffered through failed marriages, alcoholism, homelessness, and a suicide attempt. With the help of Alcoholics Anonymous,...

Wah-wah… With those two notes, Alex North’s groundbreaking score for A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951) ushered jazz elements into the world of dramatic film music. Jazz was no longer content to serve as mere source cues, and audiences didn’t know what to make of this new sound coming from the...

With its bleak vision of an alcoholic British diplomat in Mexico, Malcolm Lowry’s 1947 semi-autobiographical novel, UNDER THE VOLCANO, was considered unfilmmable for nearly forty years. Director John Huston returned to his beloved Mexico to film the picture in 1982. When the film was released...

The Music of A Streetcar Named Desire Published in Film Score Monthly Online May 2006 To step aboard A Streetcar Named Desire is to take an emotional and musical journey. Tennessee Williams’ poetic dialogue is music to the ears. And he set his Pulitzer Prize-winning drama in the New Orleans French...

Back in his days with Bay Cities and Fynsworth Alley, Bruce Kimmel produced albums that no one else would touch, many of which probably didn’t sell worth a damn. Two of my favorites include the complete spoken word album of Michael Frayn’s superb Tony Award-winning play Copenhagen and the...