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Re: More Musical Sleuthing... :)

Thank you, Leonard!

This is fascinating and something that I never really thought about. It all makes a lot of sense. It is interesting to hear familiar bits of music that are used in multiple Charlie Chan movies during both the Fox/20th Century-Fox run as well as those produced by Monogram Pictures. With the latter, as they were a much lower-budgeted company, would they possibly just pay in-house composers and musicians for a specific piece of music and then use that music as much as they needed without further payment?

Again, thank you! This is an interesting topic and one that most of us are not familiar at all!

Sincerely,
Rush

Re: More Musical Sleuthing... :)

Well, the idea of having musicians re-play older compositions was to make sure the musicians in ASCAP didn't get cheated. As for Monogram, I've heard the same musical themes by their "house composer" Edward Kay show up in a Bela Lugosi horror film and be re-used or re-worked for a mysterious scene in a CHARLIE CHAN film or a suspenseful scene in a BOWERY BOYS comedy. The studio heads wanted music to be churned out as fast as possible for their lower budgeted films so you can't fault the composers too much for re-using their older scores or re-working bits of them into new ones. Even the "big boys' at the big studios - like Max Steiner or Erich Wolfgang Korngold, re-used parts of earlier music scores, because they too were pushed to the limit at times to get the music scoring finished. My favorites at Universal were composers like Franz Waxman, Hans Salter and Frank Skinner. Paramount had great composers like Victor Young, MGM had Herbert Stothart, etc. Fox had great composers like Alfred Newman. I wish I knew more about Samuel Kaylin. It seems like he may have been one of Fox's musical directors who pulled bits and pieces of other composers works and stitched them together to make up new scores for the CHAN films!

Re: More Musical Sleuthing... :)

Why do I have the feeling that I talked about some of this before on a different thread? Are the COVID-19 restrictions finally getting to me? Anyway, it's fun to go through some of Monogram's various productions and hear some of the same music in different kinds of films! I guess I have a "musical ear" or something where I pick this stuff up!

What little I know is that many movie studios - the big guys and the little independents - had musical libraries of actual recorded music tracks or written scores and "musical directors' would sometimes make use of those if budgets or time was tight.

Re: More Musical Sleuthing... :)

Leonard, don't worry if you have mentioned any of this information before! As I have told my students, "Repetition is the mother of learning!"

Take care, and thank you, once again, for your contributions on this topic. FUN, and INTERESTING indeed!

Sincerely,
Rush

Re: More Musical Sleuthing... :)

Leonard,

10,000 thanks for your insights. This is what we've suspected is the case. We both (MnR) would have LOVED to spend a year with one of these music people putting together music for multiple "B" movies.

If anyone knows of a memoir or biography (autobiography?) from these "film music people," please let us know.

For musicians, this is a fascinating topic. Imagine waking up, having your morning coffee and figuring out where you're going to find music to modify into the accompaniment to some random Charlie Chan--or Mr. Moto--or Secret Agent X9 flick...because you have a deadline and rent to pay.

Mike: "What was that spy bit in the last Chan movie? Maybe I can swipe that for my Secret Agent movie gig."

Rachel: "We gotta eat, sweetie...try looking in the Monogram library. You'll find something to use. In the meantime, have another muffin. And we need to mail the rent next week."

:)

Re: More Musical Sleuthing... :)

Some of the information I've gotten comes from this great book:

Musique Fantastique, Second Edition
100 Years of Fantasy, Science Fiction & Horror Film Music
A Historical Appreciation & Overview
By Randall D. Larson

It features miniature biographies of some of the "big guns" of film composers who specialized - or are best known for - horror, mystery, adventure films of "Hollywood's Golden Age": Max Steiner, Frank Skinner, Hans Salter, etc. This is one book you CAN judge by it's cover - the Boris Karloff version of The Frankenstein Monster as an orchestra conductor. Great research and good insights - not enough on the "B-Movie" composers like Edward Kay, etc. - but worth getting for film music scholars and fans!