INTRADA Announces:
THESE THOUSAND HILLS
Composed by LEIGH HARLINE
Conducted by LIONEL NEWMAN
THE PROUD ONES
Composed and Conducted by LIONEL NEWMAN
INTRADA Special Collection Volume 134
Intrada's latest Special Collection release features two westerns from the vaults at 20th Century Fox: Leigh Harline's These Thousand Hills (1959) and Lionel Newman's The Proud Ones (1956). Leigh Harline's score offers sweeping grandeur and warm-hearted intimacy in equal measure, setting the stage in “The Big Herd,” tying a snippet of the main title tune (which is skillfully interwoven throughout the score) to an expansive “Western” theme that introduces both the wide-open spaces serving as the film’s backdrop and the innocent yet bold character of protagonist Lat Evans. But it's not all robust, outdoorsy music. For Callie, Harline composed a theme of infinite delicacy and tenderness, its gentle, wandering strings a tribute to the fundamental decency of her nature.
These Thousand Hills focuses on one man’s story: Lat Evans (Don Murray) is a young cowpoke so driven by ambition for money and prestige that, by tale’s end, he will betray both his one-time friend and partner (Stuart Whitman) and the loyal, loving soiled dove (Lee Remick) who stakes him in his first business venture, abandoning her to marry the “respectable” daughter of a local banker.
Whereas These Thousand Hills is a study of one man’s avarice-driven sell-out; The Proud Ones, sketches the compromising of a whole community, so caught up in a railroad-and-cattle boom that they will allow the forces of evil (represented by Robert Middleton’s Barrett, a Mafioso-style saloon owner) to take charge of their town. Standing against the venality of the town fathers are a stalwart sheriff, Cass Silver (Robert Ryan), his down-to-earth sweetheart (Virginia Mayo), and his crusty sidekick (Walter Brennan). Lionel Newman's skills as a composer, on lustrous display in his score for The Proud Ones, were both sympathetic and decidedly un-showy. His major theme for the score, introduced in “The Proud Ones,” is a prime example: it’s a simple, plaintive tune, wistfully whistled over a base of plainly strummed acoustic guitar. As sparse as it is, it somehow manages to suggest the austere integrity embodied by Cass, while also swiftly conveying the way out west setting. This theme will reappear with greater complexity throughout the score, never more effectively than in “The Dizzy Spell,” underlining Cass’s terrifying battle with vertigo and blindness. Beginning with a disorienting swirl of strings, woodwinds, and idiophone percussion, Newman introduces the main title theme in an uncanny, string-led minor variation, transforming it from simple Western tune to something far more frightening.
These two scores are a reminder of the great strength of the studio system: the training ground offered to aspirants in all departments, where they could learn their craft, then sustain and extend their talent, to the point that producing work of the highest caliber seemed like the most natural thing in the world. Leigh Harline and Lionel Newman are just two of the many composers who served their apprenticeships and grew into masters under that system.
This release is limited to 1200 units.
INTRADA Special Collection Vol. 134
Retail Price: $19.99
AVAILABLE 8/3/2010
For track listing and sound samples, please visit
http://store.intrada.com/s.nl/it.A/id.6705/.f
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