Alfred Hitchcock Collectors Guide: Spellbound (1945), Part 4

by Brent Reid

Re-recordings

  • There are two full length re-recordings of Rózsa’s Oscar-winning score
  • First one was a guilty favour for missing out on a lucrative opportunity
  • Second most complete to date, even including music omitted from film
  • Two of the most recognisable cues are also popular live and on record

Note: this is part of an ongoing series of 150-odd Hitchcock articles; any dead links are to those not yet published. Subscribe to the email list to be notified when new ones appear.

Spellbound: Writing on a Classic; Making of a Masterpiece; Collectors Guide, Pt 2: Home video, 3: Soundtrack, 4: Re-recordings, 5: Concerto

Spellbound (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1945) US insert poster

US insert poster


Contents


1958 recording

Spellbound (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1945) US 1958 Warner Bros. LP of Miklós Rózsa score

US 1958 Warner Bros. LP; digital cover

Spellbound was not only the name of a great motion picture, it was a description of the audience reaction. And dominant among the spellbinding elements was the musical score of Miklós Rózsa. So-called background music had generally remained in the background prior to Spellbound, but with Rózsa’s arresting score, background music moved a bit forward, became something to not only hear but listen to. When suspense-master Alfred Hitchcock was telling Rózsa what he wanted in the way of a score, he is reputed to have said-“Write a score that will make people aware of its absence when it suddenly stops?’ Rózsa did even more. He made people aware of its presence.

Spellbound was a psychological thriller, with Gregory Peck an amnesia victim and Ingrid Bergman a psychoanalyst. Hitchock directed with his usual flair, even employing the well-known surrealist painter, Salvador Dalí, to design the dream sequences. It was the music of Miklós Rózsa, however, that contributed most to the picture’s eeriness, attracting more than its share of critical acclaim. And when the picture was through playing, there remained with the audiences a desire to hear more of the music.

The rare combination of Heindorf interpreting his colleague’s finest work holds infinitely still more fascination. For one artist to perform another’s work, a certain amount of sympatico is needed. The recognition that Rózsa had created a masterpiece in his Spellbound score was a foregone conclusion; yet without that certain sympathetic feel for the music, much of the drama, pathos and intensity of the work might be lost. This unique and intriguing score, recorded with full orchestra by Heindorf and using Warner Bros. Vitaphonic High Fidelity recording techniques, brilliantly captures all the vivacity of Rózsa’s music.

Rhonda Fleming lying down, Alfred Hitchcock and crew in Spellbound (1945)

Music hath charms… Rhonda Fleming lies down while Hitch and crew admire the view (alt)

Interestingly enough, Heindorf also employs the services of Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman, whose talents with the theremin (an electronic musical instrument) were used by Rózsa in the original scoring. Heindorf is no newcomer to Hollywood film scores, having spent some thirty years composing, arranging and conducting for motion pictures, during which time he has received Academy Awards for his scoring of Yankee Doodle Dandy and This is the Army, as well as eight other nominations. For the past ten years he has served as Musical Director of the Warner Bros. Studios.

Hungarian-born Miklós Rózsa was discovered in Europe by the late Alexander Korda and brought to England to score such film classics as The Four Feathers and The Thief of Bagdad. Several years later he came to the United States, and here he stayed, becoming one of Hollywood’s most distinguished composers. The Lost Weekend, Quo Vadis and Julius Caesar are among the famous films he has scored. Last year Rózsa was honored by having Jascha Heifetz introduce and record his Violin Concerto, and he is currently under commission to write a Concerto for Violin and Cello for Heifetz and Gregor Piatagorsky.

Combining an extensive classical background with a sure talent for dramatic writing, Rózsa stands in the top rank of film composers. And although he has written over fifty scores during his twenty years in pictures, perhaps none shines so brightly and lastingly as does this music for Spellbound. Its singular strangeness, its rich beauty, its deft and delighting style, all combine to make it a musical experience that will be long remembered, often played… as performed by Heindorf. – US Warner LP (1958)

Spellbound (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1945) US Stanyan LP of Miklós Rózsa score

Stanyan Records 1982 reissue

In 1958, incoming Warner Bros. Records president Jim Conkling made it his first priority to order a complete re-recording of Rózsa’s score and though a sound financial investment, it was also something of an apology. As head of Capitol Records, he’d earlier turned down Ted Wick’s request to release the hit 1945 score recordings, in what Conkling acknowledged as one of the biggest mistakes of his career.

For this rendition, songwriter-composer-conductor Ray Heindorf led the Warner Bros. Studio Orchestra alongside returnee Samuel Hoffman. Although ostensibly a ‘full length’ re-recording, Heindorf made substantial alterations, deletions and even some slight additions to create a more easily digestible listening experience. The resulting 40-minute recording, released in America on both mono and stereo LPs only discernible by the labels, comprises just under half of Rózsa’s entire score and is something of a satisfyingly well-rounded highlights album. One of the earliest releases on then new US Warner Bros. Records label, founded by Jack Warner as a stereo soundtrack factory for the studio, it’s among the best sounding film scores of the era and very highly recommended.

Much later, LA-based Stanyan Records’ remixed Heindorf’s album for a stereo Quadrophonic LP, also reissued as a 2.0 stereo mixdown LP and CD, the latter of which has an additional 15 minutes of cues from unrelated films. But Stanyan’s remix introduced revisionist reverb and a muddier sound; stick to Warner’s superb original if possible. Excerpts of the album appear on various bootlegs but most recently it’s been pirated in its entirety on “Copyright Group” and “TP4 Music” MP3s, and by Euro thieves Vinyl Passion/Sound Factory B.V. on a red vinyl LP (rear) in 2019, with nary a mention of the copyright holders.


2007 recording

However, the most important showcase for Rózsa’s inspired work is a superb digital recording of his actual entire score featuring every cue written for the film, including some that never made it into the finished article. While the previous recordings are historically irreplaceable, there’s no question the audio quality here soars above its antecedents.

Worthy of special mention is the now rare CD’s superlative 24-page booklet, which is absolutely packed with information on both the film and its score; everything you could possibly want to know and more. Note that this doesn’t include the transcription disc music as, according to the booklet:

“Since virtually everything in this piece was edited from individual cues contained within the score, we have elected not to recreate it. All of the individual pieces do appear here, however, contained within those actual cues for which they were designed.”


Cue recordings

Spellbound (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1945) The Classic Film Scores of Miklós Rózsa (1975) UK Vocalion SACD

Simply the best: This SACD contains the complete original stereo and quadraphonic mixes, and a bonus track.

One day in 1945 writer-director Billy Wilder, for whom Rózsa had scored Five Graves to Cairo and Double Indemnity, called the composer and told him that he was doing what was, to a large degree, a silent picture and that he would need strong musical support. The film was called The Lost Weekend, a study of an alcoholic. Rózsa immediately read the novel by Charles Jackson and saw a parallel with his recently completed score for David O. Selznick’s Spellbound. For that picture he had used the theremin (for the first time throughout a score in a feature film produced in America) to express the hero’s paranoia and amnesia. The composer has always strongly believed that music should complete the psychological effect. In The Lost Weekend the alcohol problem of unsuccessful writer Don Birnam seemed also to suggest the use of the theremin to underline the craving, despair and agony of the character.

Although filmed and scored after Spellbound, The Lost Weekend was released a few months earlier. Following a preview, David O. Selznick’s secretary called Rózsa to relay that Selznick had heard from Alfred Hitchcock that the composer had used the theremin for The Lost Weekend. Selznick, she said, was upset by this and wanted to know if it was true. Rózsa very calmly instructed the secretary to tell Mr Selznick that he did indeed use the theremin. “And I used the violin, the oboe and the clarinet as well. Good-bye!”

Alfred Hitchcock had recently seen Double Indemnity when he recommended to David O. Selznick that Rózsa score their new psychological-romantic melodrama, Spellbound (1945). Hitchcock and Selznick wanted “a new sound” to accompany the paranoia element in the film. Rózsa immediately suggested the theremin. Earlier he had wanted to introduce the instrument to American movie audiences for a particular sequence in Sundown (1941), but the producer and director vetoed the idea. And in England two years before that, Rózsa thought of using the theremin’s sister instrument, the ondes martenot—which sounds exactly like the theremin—for the genie’s flying sequences in The Thief of Bagdad (1940), but the plan was abandoned when Maurice Martenot, the inventor and virtually the only player of the instrument, was discovered to be defending France at the Maginot Line.

Spellbound (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1945): The Classic Film Scores of Miklós Rózsa (1975) RCA LP booklet

RCA LP booklet

Rózsa was asked by Selznick to compose the music for one test sequence using the theremin. This was the famous scene in which Gregory Peck, as an amnesiac with a guilt complex, takes a straight razor to the room where Ingrid Bergman, his psychiatrist, is sleeping. He may or may not kill her. The music was enthusiastically received, and Rózsa was told to include the theremin throughout the score. Following Spellbound, for which Rózsa received his first Academy Award, the theremin was established as the official instrument of psychosis.

Jerome Kern, who was a part owner of Chappell, the music publishing company, told Rózsa they would publish his music from Spellbound. At that time Chappell had Richard Addinsell’s Warsaw Concerto, composed for a 1941 British film, Dangerous Moonlight, and it was exceptionally popular. Kern said they wanted to title his work the Spellbound Concerto. “But it’s not a concerto,” protested Rózsa. Kern waved aside the objection. “Oh, never mind that.” Later, Rózsa modified his work to justify its “concerto” label.

For this recording Charles Gerhardt wanted to go back to the way the music was originally used in the film rather than using the later “concerto” form. Two important scenes were chosen: The Dream Sequence underscores the scene at the home of Bergman’s former professor (Michael Chekhov) at the time he analyzes the tormented amnesiac’s dream and probes the reasons for his strange behavior. The professor discovers a guilt complex that goes back to the man’s childhood. He is also suffering from the shock of having witnessed the death on a ski run of the person whose identity he has assumed. The “paranoia” theme—with the eerie and haunting theremin effect as used in the film—dominates this segment. Actually, the “paranoia” theme is an artful modification and development of the film’s primary love theme.

The Mountain Lodge cue is for a later scene, which follows the climatic ski-run episode. The mental salvation for a disordered mind. has been accomplished, and the riddle is solved. While Peck and Bergman sit by the fireplace in the ski lodge unraveling the mystery, we hear the secondary love theme—more reflective and tender than the strong, stirring primary theme that appears at the end of the segment. – Rudy Behlmer, RCA album

Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman in Spellbound (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1945) US lobby card

US lobby card (alt, set; re-release: 1956, Spain 1982)

There are two combined recordings of “The Dream Sequence”/”The Mountain Lodge” cues, with Rózsa himself being present for the first, described above, and even his old friend Bernard Herrmann paid a visit during the sessions. Recorded on 16-17 October 1974 at Kingsway Hall, London, the theremin is unusually but effectively replaced with a synth and female wordless choir, and some formats even reproduce the audio in a 1974 Quadrophonic mix and 1987-remixed 2.0 stereo Dolby Surround. As the remixes are based on original stereo masters, the results are much more agreeable than for the mono-derived revisions mentioned above.

Incidentally, Gerhardt had earlier conducted the London Cinema Symphony Orchestra in an abbreviated version of the Spellbound Concerto for Reader’s Digest. It first appeared on 1971 European and American compilations before its eventual inclusion in the 3-CD Romantic Piano Moods and Memories (1995).

The second dual-cues recording was conducted 1-2 July, 1996 by one of the all-time composing greats with a special guest, jazz saxophonist Grover Washington Jr.

Lastly – for now – the most recent recording is a specially adapted suite from 2008:

Spellbound (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1945) US magazine advert

US magazine advert (alt)

Spellbound: Writing on a Classic; Making of a Masterpiece; Collectors Guide, Pt 2: Home video, 3: Soundtrack, 4: Re-recordings, 5: Concerto


This is part of a unique, in-depth series of 150-odd Hitchcock articles.

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