MovieChat Forums > Torn Curtain (1966) Discussion > Lyrics are sung to the End Title music o...

Lyrics are sung to the End Title music on the soundtrack album.

posted 12 years ago by Stuart Gardner
2 replies | jump to latest

And they are truly awful.

"Lean years, laughter and tears
Pleasures and fears, and hopes and dreams
Green years, fetters unfurled
We own the world, or so it seems
Oh what a time to be young
So many stars to be strung..."

And so on. They have nothing whatever to do with anything in the film.
We all know the story of Universal wanting a "pop" theme for Marnie and a "pop" score for Torn Curtain, and of how this lead to the Herrmann / Hitchcock split.
Lesser known is the fact that Nat King Cole recorded a song for Marnie ("Marnie") which was quite mediocre, scarcely used, went nowhere and is barely remembered. But that these lyrics by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans were recorded for Torn Curtain is even more obscure.
For Herrmann's sake I hope he never heard these.
Grab a free copy of the album here at the terrific Cheerful Earful blog and judge for yourself. It's a great place full of all sorts of ear candy!
http://thecheerfulearfull.blogspot.com/2011/06/exclusive-lainie-loads- of-lena-plus.html

[–] flipshoes 12 years ago

...of course these lyrics are awful! ;-)

But, mind you, nonetheless I consider Addison's score for "Torn Curtain" one of the best assets of this movie. I know it has become common knowledge how Hitchcock dismissed Bernard Herrmann upon hearing his proposed score for that movie, but the deductions arising from this story (i.e., Addison's score being a second-rate substitute) are nothing less than an urban legend and extremely unfair to the composer, to put it mildly.

In fact Addison came up with an exciting, multi-faceted score that matched the tone of TC perfectly, far better than Herrmann's much too serious approach (that has been available for many years now on LP/CD). Herrmann was a genius, no doubt about that, but Hitch's last four movies were "different" (call them bad if you feel like it; still, they are way better than most other movies made in 1966, 1969, 1972, or 1976, respectively!), and Herrmann's scoring would not have been appropriate any more. That's the way it is. Could you really imagine Herrmann scoring "Frenzy", for instance?

I am plain annoyed when people just repeat all that "learned" b***s*** (mostly copy-and-pasted from one author by the next) written in dozens of textbooks on Hitchcock and his last movies. The fact is: Addison came up with a refreshing soundtrack perfectly capturing the (dramaturgically) black-and-white modern cloak-and-dagger essence of "Torn Curtain", Maurice Jarre provided a nice and colorful approach to "Topaz", Ron Goodwin's score for "Frenzy" is just magnificent (!), and John Williams's soundtrack for "Family Plot" is as good as John Williams always was and is!

[–] 12 years ago

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