The Magnificent Elmer (3 page)

“Elmer, I want to talk to you,” he said. “I love my country and I love liberty. I am devoted to guarding our cherished freedom. I despise Communism and everything it stands for with every fiber of my soul and my being. So we must be ever vigilant, Elmer, ever vigilant. Now I ask you—are you a Communist?”

“No, I’m not,” said Elmer.

“That’s good enough for me,” said DeMille.

CHAPTER FOUR
EINE KLEINE MOSES MUSIK

“Trust me, Elmer. It will work.”

—Cecil B. DeMille

“How did it go?” I asked.

Elmer had just spent half a day at the director’s Paramount office.

Elmer shook his head in bewilderment.

“I played some themes for him on the piano. I’m a concert pianist so I played them very elaborately.”

“And?”

“And he said he didn’t want that. He wanted to hear the themes played with one finger. He wanted to hear the
tune
.”

“And did he like the tunes?”

“Most of them.”

“Well, that’s good.”

Elmer shook his head again. “DeMille is a great believer in
leitmotif
. He wants every character in the Bible to have his own motif.”

“Every character?”

“He wants every character to have his own theme. He wants to hear it whenever they’re on the screen.”

“Hmm.”

“And another thing. The best scene in the movie is the big exodus scene. Moses is standing on the bank of the Red Sea, leading his people out of Egypt.”

“I know, I read the book.”

“Then you remember how Moses brings his staff down on the ground, the seas part, and the Hebrews march off.”

“He smote a rock with a rod, as I recall,” I said.

“Yes, but when DeMille shot the movie, he didn’t use Hebrews to play Jews. The Hebrews were played by members of the Egyptian Army. The scene was shot in Egypt. DeMille was on good terms with the Egyptian government, so he was able to get five thousand troops from the Egyptian army to act in his movie.”

Elmer described the scene he had been shown in a Paramount screening room.

“The army moves out slowly and deliberately. Very slowly. So I had written a solemn, ponderous anthem.”

“I’m sure it was splendid.”

Elmer was shaking his head again. “DeMille hated it.”

“What was wrong with it?”

“He said it was too slow.”

“But you said the army was moving slowly and deliberately.”

“Exactly. I told him I was reflecting what was on the screen.”

“Naturally.”

“I said, ‘Mr. DeMille, this is a ponderous movement of thousands of people.’ And he nodded and said, ‘I hate it,’ and I said, ‘Mr. DeMille, won’t it seem strange if I
write something very up-tempo? Very
fast
?’ And he said, ‘Elmer, if the music is fast, the
Hebrews
will be fast.’”

“Sounds like a commandment,” I said.

“He said, ‘Trust me, Elmer. It will work.’”

“What exactly does he want?”

“He wants something like
Onward Christian Soldiers
.”

“He wants Egyptian soldiers playing Jews and marching to the tune of
Onward Christian Soldiers
?”

“You’ve got it,” said Elmer.

Thus wrote Elmer, and thus the great exodus of Jews occurred. And years later Elmer would reflect, “I learned a great lesson from DeMille that day. Music
can
make an army move faster than it’s actually moving. It defies the laws of physics, but there you are.”

And lo, the tablets containing the ten commandments were shattered, the profane punished, and the wicked tribes were made to wander in the wilderness for forty years. But not my Elmer. He had not even finished his work on DeMille’s grandiose epic, when he started work on another film with a somewhat more contemporary setting.

CHAPTER FIVE
THE BIG O

“Now ve begin.”

—Otto Preminger

The soaring strains of
The Ten Commandments
were still echoing across the Sinai Peninsula when Elmer began creating the screaming sounds of jazz for
The Man with the Golden Arm
.

Hollywood was shocked and delighted. The town was not used to such versatility. In the movie business it was tough enough to be typecast. If you were a composer, well, at MGM they had a composer for Sand Epics and another for Ocean Epics. But Elmer was new in town and didn’t realize these generic restrictions. Here he was, successively hitting the two basic poles of American values—the biblical and the narcotic.

Of course, there wasn’t a great deal of call for composers of narcotic films. Drugs and dope were specifically forbidden as subjects for motion pictures. Drug addiction was recognized by the moralists of the time to be one of the subjects whose depiction was dangerous to mental health. Other such taboos were nudity, profanity, prostitution, and costume design.

So the Hays Office, the censorship arm of the movie business, had decreed that were anyone reckless enough to turn
The Man with the Golden Arm
into a film, it would be denied the Hays Office seal of approval. That should have ended the matter. Usually, filmmakers bowed to the censors’ wishes. (That’s why most of the sex in Hollywood wound up on the cutting room floor. I know it sounds uncomfortable, but that’s Hollywood.)

But Otto Preminger was not bashful about pursuing the most incendiary themes, whether they be justice (
Anatomy of a Murder
), Judaism (
Exodus
), dirty politics (
Advise and Consent
), or sex (
The Moon is Blue
). But you know those autocratic Prussians. Say “no” to a Prussian and they do one of two things: they ignore you, or they invade Poland. So Mr. Preminger purchased the screen rights to Nelson Algren’s novel
The Man with the Golden Arm
in which Frankie Machine is a would-be drummer, an expert card dealer, and a man with an arm aching for a fix.

The day before Elmer was to meet Otto Preminger for the first time, he phoned his friend and fellow composer Ernest Gold. Ernie had worked with Preminger a few years before.

I watched Elmer as he listened to his fellow composer’s assessment of the director. Finally Elmer thanked his friend and returned the receiver to its cradle.

“Well?” I asked.

“Well, Ernie said he didn’t really
like
the man.”

“Why not?”

“He said he found Preminger obsessive, demanding and self-indulgent.”

I processed this.

“Well, so far he’s describing you. What didn’t he
like
about him?”

Elmer grinned. “You’re a pal.”

***

Another warning came from screenwriter friend Irving Ravitch. He and his wife Harriet Frank were two of the most famous names in the Hollywood writers’ colony. They had been commissioned to write a screenplay for Preminger, had handed it in, and been summoned to his office. The director nodded them to seats, moistened a thumb, and turned to the first page of their script.

“Ve begin,” said Preminger, without preamble. “Ve rewrite every page—ve look at every scene—ve study every character—ve examine every line.”

Irving and Harriet rose as one.

“Ve quit,” said Irving.

***

At their first meeting, Elmer was a little more outspoken than is usual for a novice composer speaking to a celebrated director, perhaps out of a desire to seize the initiative from the overbearing filmmaker.

“I have an odd idea about what I want to do with the score,” he said. Preminger lifted a Teutonic eyebrow. “This movie is about a jazz drummer,” said Elmer. “I think the whole score should be driven by jazz.”

“Jazz?” said Otto Preminger, tasting the word and the idea. “Jazz?” The producer made the one short word sound like a query, a challenge, and a paradox.

He was silent as he absorbed this absurd unorthodoxy.

“Jazz?” said Preminger.

“Jazz,” said Elmer.

Preminger sighed ponderously. “That’s your department. If that’s what you want to do—
do it
.”

***

Elmer’s jazz score signaled a new era of film music. He augmented the traditional orchestra with a small jazz group that he assembled. He used to love the jazz music that his father played on their living room phonograph, but never dreamed he would one day be bringing that sound to the movies. The group Elmer put together included legendary trumpet player Shorty Rogers, drummer Shelly Manne, and a dozen other jazz greats. The success of Elmer’s music helped drive the success of the film, along with Sinatra’s performance as the drummer. The LP album of Elmer’s score was an instant bestseller. There were countless other recordings of his main-title theme. The McGuire Sisters even recorded a vocal version of Elmer’s theme, with lyrics by Sylvia Fine, wife of Danny Kaye.

***

If Elmer had assumed after his first meeting with the ostensibly agreeable Preminger that he would be working with a malleable boss, he definitely had the wrong number. The Big O was no pussycat. He was a very hands-on employer who knew what he wanted and wasn’t shy about demanding it. One back-lot wag had said: “Otto is no Nazi like the ones he played in movies. He is a civilized man. His favorite hobbies are Flemish painting, classical music, and torture.” One of the forms that torture assumed was in requiring that
his composers be on the set from the first cast reading to the final day of shooting. Elmer would have infinitely preferred to be at the keyboard, but Otto wanted him close at hand.

I remember one spring morning Elmer was sitting on a sound stage at the Goldwyn Studios watching a lighting man set up for a shot. Kim Novak and Eleanor Parker were in their trailers. Sinatra was doubtless somewhere studying a Nelson Riddle arrangement. And I was in our kitchen mixing some brown salad. The phone rang.

“Hello?” I said brightly.

I heard the sound of Elmer growling.

“What am I doing here?” he demanded.

“Keeping the wolf from the door,” I suggested.

“What on earth am I doing here!” he repeated. “I am watching actors read the
Hollywood Reporter
. I’m drinking cold coffee from a cardboard cup.”

“No Danish?”

“Did you know that this director is
michuganah
?”

“I suspected it but I didn’t know the precise medical term.”

“This man is obsessed. Ernie is right. He mistakes himself for God. I keep wanting to ask him ‘How are the apostles?’” Elmer sighed. “I’m coming home. We’ll take in a ballgame.”

“Elmer, if you leave now, doesn’t that create a problem for Otto?”

“Otto’s problem began when he was born. He was strapped to this table, and then the scientist yelled, ‘It’s alive!’”

“The Dodgers are playing the Cubs. Koufax is pitching.”

“That settles it. I’ll pick you up in thirty minutes.”

So you see, composers can be every bit as peremptory as Viennese directors.

A bit of baseball context. The year before our beloved Brooklyn Dodgers had moved to Los Angeles. Dodger’s owner Walter O’Malley had persuaded the L.A. city fathers that they could perform no greater civic duty than to evict several hundred Latino families from their homes at Chavez Ravine. The previous summer, like many other refugee New Yorkers, Elmer and I had marched through the loose soil that was to become an infield, he had pointed to a patch of sand (a gesture not unlike his signaling for more woodwinds) and said, “We want our seats there.” Now, as the Dodgers and the Bernsteins waited for their new stadium to be built, as the venerable Ebbetts Field felt the wrecking ball of Brooklyn, the boys of summer—Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, et al.—were playing their games in the Los Angeles Coliseum on the USC campus.

In our transition seats at the Coliseum, Elmer and I watched Sandy Koufax set down the Cubs one after another. For once the easily bored L.A. fans were not trying to beat the traffic. Ears pressed to transistor radios, thirty thousand souls, included the composer and his wife, listened to Vin Scully render the events unfolding before them. Koufax walked to the mound to pitch the eighth inning. He had struck out eleven.

“We got something going here,” said Elmer. “It could be that extraordinary thing in baseball—a perfect game. No runs, no hits, no one reaching base!”

Koufax conferred with his second baseman on the infield grass. And having seen the stress of these past few days on Elmer, I watched with satisfaction as his face settled into placid lines, far from the demands of megalomania. There was nothing that could assault Elmer in this magical retreat.

“Batting for the Chicago Cubs, Number 14, Ernie Banks…” said the public address announcer.

Then a pause. Then the voice resumed.

“Elmer Bernstein—please phone Otto Preminger!”

CHAPTER SIX
ATTICUS

“Like Ss-ss-spellbound and Duel in the S-sss-sun.”

—Gregory Peck

A good friend of mine, an actress who shall remain nameless, fell in love with every leading man she ever appeared with on the stage. I would not want you to think I fell in love with every leading man Elmer ever composed a movie around. And he had some humdingers. But I was always able to hold my feelings in check.

Take Charlton Heston of
The Ten Commandments
. I could never get my mind around his politics. And his acting was not exactly riveting. At the Academy dinner the year they released the DeMille epic, Bob Hope said, “Is Charlton Heston here tonight?” and when someone shouted, “Yes,” Hope said, “Why?”

Frank Sinatra was the leading man in
The Man with the Golden Arm
, but I had always been able to resist the charms of Ole Blue Eyes, at least since I’d outgrown bobby socks. Call me aloof, call me irresponsible, but Frank’s reputation as swinger, drinker, fighter, lover, always left me cold, as did his pals in the Rat Pack.

Burt Lancaster, who played the loathsome Winchellesque columnist in
Sweet Smell of Success
, always turned me off. Though his politics were flawlessly progressive, my negative impression of Burt was borne out by the story of how Burt had punched out his leading lady on a movie set in Ottawa.