Program Notes

In 1945 Franz Waxman composed the scores for five films set during World War II – Confidential Agent, God is My Co-Pilot, Hotel Berlin, Pride of the Marines, and Raoul Walsh’s Objective, Burma!., produced by Jerry Wald, which starred Errol Flynn and earned Waxman a fourth Academy Award nomination for Best Dramatic Score of the Year.

The plot involves Errol Flynn and three-dozen paratroopers being dropped into a Burmese jungle to find and destroy a Japanese radar station. Flynn believed in this film and gave one of his best performances.

Waxman described his approach to scoring Objective, Burma! In a brief note:

“In Objective, Burma! You can tell immediately that the music will have to be military and epic, and that some orientation will be required for the Burmese locale. But it is only when you see that the actual film that you realize the possibilities. Such an opportunity was the sequence where the paratroopers jump from the plane to pursue their mission in Burma. The zig-zag Figuration in the violins characterize the jerky, abrupt movements of a man who is jumping from a plane. The hundreds of bodies floating in the air, descending in different directions, gave the impression for the violin figuration. Later the main theme joins in unison, and after everybody is safely on the ground, the same thematic material is developed in a fugato played pianissimo by the strings until the end of the sequence.”

Twenty one years later for the Main Title sequence for his last film The Lost Command (1966) Waxman expanded his orchestration. The Objective, Burma! score was re-used, in part, by Warner Brothers in their films Up Periscope and P.T. 109.