Presents
NIAGARA
Composed by SOL KAPLAN
RIVER OF NO RETURN
Composed by LIONEL NEWMAN, LEIGH HARLINE, and CYRIL MOCKRIDGE
INTRADA Special Collection Volume 157
Intrada's latest double-header from the 20th Century Fox catalog features two films starring Marilyn Monroe. The first, Niagra (1953), is a tight, nasty film noir, crisply directed by veteran Henry Hathaway and starring Monroe, Joseph Cotten as her tortured husband, and Jean Peters as an innocent young woman whose kindness entangles her with Monroe’s nefarious plans to get rid of her spouse. Composing duties fell to composer Sol Kaplan, whose music for Niagara features an aural landscape of fretfully circling strings, blaring brass, and rumbling percussion. There is unsettling thriller music aplenty here and even the occasional moment of overheated humor.
The second score featured is to the 1954 film River of No Return, telling the tale of a rancher with a past (Robert Mitchum), his young son, and a dance hall girl (Monroe) who yearns for a better life -- all thrown together by chance and forced to brave Indians, mountain lions, a host of scurvy Western no-accounts, and the vagaries of a wild and woolly river. Their efforts are supported by a delightfully varied and colorful score, delivered by no less than four composers. Lionel Newman wrote the main title song, “River Of No Return,” with lyrics by Fox mainstay Ken Darby, here sung by Tennessee Ernie Ford . This tune—along with another Newman/ Darby composition, “Down in the Meadow”—gets considerable instrumental play in the score; both featuring charming pieces of gentle Americana. The rest of the scoring duties were divided between two other superb Fox staff composers, Leigh Harline and Cyril J. Mockridge. Roughly speaking,
Harline was responsible for most of the action cues while Mockridge took on the more “pastoral” music. Further to that, the luxuriant, expansive first 40 seconds of “Matt And Mark” are credited to none other than boss of all bosses, Alfred Newman. The miracle is that this hodge-podge of composers gelled as well as it did; considerable credit is due to the supreme talents of orchestrator Edward B. Powell, resulting in the perfect tribute to an entire music department.
This release is limited to 1000 units.
INTRADA Special Collection Vol. 157
Retail Price: $19.99
AVAILABLE NOW
For track listing and sound samples, please visit
http://store.intrada.com/s.nl/it.A/id.6924/.f
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