Even if somehow you've never heard of him, you've heard him—he wrote classic scores for such films as Citizen Kane, Vertigo, North By Northwest, Psycho and Taxi Driver, among many others.Somehow the only one he won an Oscar for was The Devil and Daniel Webster in 1942. Go figure.
Did you know he had to talk Alfred Hitchcock into using the famous strings score during the shower scene in Psycho? Hitch thought silence would play better. Which only goes to show that Hitchcock didn't know everything.
Trying to pick my favorite Bernard Herrmann score is futile, so instead, here's one you don't hear as much about, but which is every bit as important to the product on the screen as anything else he ever wrote, The Day The Earth Stood Still.
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Having his 91st birthday today is Ray Harryhausen, for whom Herrman scored The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, The Three Worlds of Gulliver, Mysterious Island, and Jason and the Argonauts.
My DVD viewing this evening just got easier, I think.
I love Ray Harryhausen. Those skeleton soldiers rising out of the ground in Jason and the Argonauts might be my favorite special effects sequence of all time -- I'm willing to bet it was the most complicated, that's for sure.
Scared the pants off me when I was a kid.
Fully in tune with you re that skeleton battle. It's an iconic piece of my childhood and still a thrill today. More Harryhausen+Herrmann excellence.
But back to Mr. Hermann - you knew he wrote the theme to Have Gun - Will Travel, didn't you? Not the corny Johnny Western song, but the Dum-Dum, dum-dum, dee-di-dee-DEE one.
I didn't know that, Bev, but it makes sense, now that you mention it. Herrmann could bring it.
I've far too many Herrmann favorites to list here, but I'm partial to the 7th Voyage of Sinbad/Jason/Mysterious Island/Journey to the Center of the Earth era, his Twilight Zone stuff and of course his collaborations with Hitchcock (too bad about Torn Curtain, though - both it as well as Frenzy would have benefited from his music).
From his later work, both Obsession and Sisters are brilliant, brilliant scores. Sisters scared the hell out of me (and it's still one of DaPalma's best films, warts and all) and Obsession is depressingly great thanks to the soundtrack spiraling downward like Cliff Robertson's character in the film.
Then there's the Truffaut films... also amazing and in a way, you could hear Bernie almost thumbing his nose at Hitchcock in those scores for Fahrenheit 451 and The Bride Wore Black...
On a goofy side note, I once heard the Ramones described as "The Bernard Herrmanns of Punk" because they did so much with so few chords (which made me laugh because it's sort of true)...
"The Bernard Herrmanns of Punk" -- wonderful!
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