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I too started collecting in the 60's, so besides the Bernstein's and the Goldsmith's available in those days, there were two guys I really dug, so to speak, and in thinking about this topic for a second, I came up easily with 5 guilty pleasures I'd like to share.
THE BIG KNIFE (1955) Columbia ZTST-23721/4
A grizzly tale of backstage machinations in Hollywood by the ever reliable Clifford Odets, master translator of pain and anguish, directed by Robert Aldrich, in his usual vulgar style, and scored by his favorite composer (and one of mine) Frank Devol, or as I remember from TV, just DeVol.
The main title set against the Saul Bass credits is ballsy and tough and so full of agony that the credits explode at the end, a lot of source music, lounge-style tunes arranged for small combos, and suspense cues very similar to his later work on Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and, of course, Hush, Hush . . ., (Thank you, Doug)
SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL (1964) Warner Bros. W-1572
Totally forgettable 60's sex farce with some old Hollywood vs. New Hollywood performers identifying moral slippage for a laugh, for an audience that was in on the joke, she can't get laid.
Okay, Mancini got there first and there was just no one who could out rank him, except Neal Hefti, who never wrote a bad score in his life. I think this is his finest, and the soundtrack album plays as a great listen, with two fantastic vocals by Fran Jeffries coming in at just the right sequencing. I love it.
LORD LOVE A DUCK (1966) United Artists UAS-5137
Writer/Director George Axelrod tries to make a comedy and pretty much kill's his career with this savage take on America's sacred institutions. No one dared to think so hard at the movies, not back then, still numb from Kennedy's assasination, but even today, the film reeks of overstatement.
Not the music, however, again by Neal Hefti, composing another of his brilliant main titles, this time sung by a real recording group from the Sixties, The Wild Ones, with lyrics by Ernie Sheldon, of Hallejulah Trail fame. The score is mostly mono-thematic, which is fine since the song Hefti came up with is brilliant, right up there with the Batman television theme.
TOPKAPI (1964) United Artists UAS-5118
Exiled director Jules Dassin continued his successful collaboration with wife/actress Melina Mercouri in this internationally cast heist film set in the famed Turkish Museum. The movie is bright and cheery while the actors
seem to be having fun playing noir-ish subject matter for laughs.
Manos Hadjidakis seemed to fall out of the sky when he scored the super-hit Never On Sunday for Dassin, and though they collaborated on other films, Topkapi has a very chunky kind of sound, thick and brassy and very foreign, almost like music from another planet. It's up-tempo throughout, and one album I've had to replace because I just wore it down to licorice.
MURDER, INC. (1960) Canadian-American 1003
Brilliant New York City wide-screen black and white photography off-set the overall 'B' look of the film, but the lurid tale of a snitch who rats out his gangster friends and pays with the life of his show-girl firlfriend under the boardwalk in Coney Island is never to be forgotten.
Frank DeVol returns after winning an Oscar nomination for Pillow Talk, turns 180 degrees and mixes it up with his percussion heavy main title, cabaret-style scoring for showgirl Mai Britt and legendary Sarah Vaughan singing two dreadful songs written for film, but not by DeVol. The album only has flashes of DeVol's work, but what's there is choice.
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