Program Notes

Independent producer David O. Selznick borrowed Franz Waxman from M-G-M to score his warm comedy-drama The Young in Heart (1938) based on I.A.R Wylie’s Saturday Evening Post serial The City Banditti. This was made during the period when Selznick was heavily involved in his production of Gone With the Wind (1939). The fact that Selznick shortly afterward awarded Waxman the scoring job on his forthcoming Rebecca (1940) indicated that he was certainly pleased with the results of the composer’s first film for the producer.

The Young in Heart deals with the Carletons, a family of fascinating con artists, who live by their charm and on anyone’s money, and have been kicked out of the best places from the Riviera to London. They’re out to “take” what they can from whomever, but finally their hearts get in the way.

The Carletons were played by popular players of the time Janet Gaynor, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Roland Young and Billie Burke. Paulette Goddard, Richard Carlson, and Minnie Dupree also had prominent roles. This piece is dedicated to the memory of the noted British musicologist/arranger/orchestrator Christopher Palmer. Patrick Russ, a student of Palmer’s, arranged excerpts from the score in 1996 for piano trio included on the recording Old Acquaintances by the St. Clair Trio of Waxman’s chamber music on Koch International Classics.

He began with the “Main Title” followed by “The Riviera” both of which immediately set the tone of lighthearted sophistication, and then a scene at “The Yacht Basin” which sets up the Carleton ploys, a later sequence where the Fairbanks character is seeking employment at an engineering firm managed by the character portrayed by Paulette Goddard (sparking an immediate romantic interest), and then the concluding sequence.

Franz Waxman received his first and second (score and song) of his twelve Academy Award nominations for his music.

Old Acquaintance is a sophisticated story of the rivalry and on-again, off-again friendship between two writers (Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins), and it is as contemporary today as it was when Vincent Sherman directed the screen version of John van Druten’s play for Warner Brothers in 1943. The music presented here was originally called “Kit & Preston,” and underscored a scene between the two (played by Bette Davis and John Loder). Preston is the husband of Kit’s best friend, Millie (Miriam Hopkins), and has become alienated by his wife’s selfishness and spiteful ways. He declares his love to Kit, who rejects him out of loyalty to her old friend.

Waxman later re titled this music Elegy for Strings and Harp(s) in memory of Leo B. Forbstein, head of the Warner Brothers music department The composer conducted the premiere at the Hollywood Bowl in 1948.

In 1939 when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer needed a showcase vehicle for its young versatile star, Mickey Rooney, what better choice than the Mark Twain classic Huckleberry Finn? Richard Thorpe directed a cast that included Rex Ingram, Walter Connolly and William Frawley.

The Overture was originally arranged by Waxman for a radio broadcast to promote the release of the film, however, the performance never took place. Forty years later, while researching the MGM archives, Christopher Palmer discovered and reconstructed Waxman’s sketches. The opening and closing sections of the work feature a hoe-down type of theme that immediately evokes the American South, while in its jauntiness paints a portrait of Mark Twain’s famous character. The central episode is a bacarolle that musically portrays Huck and Jim’s meanderings on the Mississippi. After a Grande Pause, a Waxman signature, the jaunty theme returns for a final exuberant summation.

The first concert performance of the Overture was by Erich Kunzel With the Detroit Symphony at the Meadowbrook Music Festival. Richard Mills conducted the first recording with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra as part of Franz Waxman: Legends of Hollywood: Volume 2 (Varese Sarabande).

William Inge’s 1950 play Come Back, Little Sheba dealing with the wasted lives, despair, and people for whom the memories of youth are all that is left, was transferred to the screen by producer Hal B. Wallis in 1952. Shirley Booth repeated the role she had successfully created in the Theatre Guild production as a pitiful, slovenly, middle-aged housewife wed to “Doc” an alcoholic (Burt Lancaster) who sacrificed his medical education and took to the bottle because of a forced marriage. Lola, his wife, uses her little lost dog Sheba as a symbol to relive past days.

Waxman’s Reminiscences support Lola’s reveries and Doc’s remembrances of things past. Two of the three themes are drawn from the film’s score and the third, is a piece, not used previously, that Waxman felt worked in a complementary context, There is an underlying sense of sadness in the musical reflections.