Posted 6:12 PM by Gene

I am waiting for the neat little music seller Collectables Records -- or is that Marie's CDs? -- to have another one of its 3-for-2 sales so I can buy the soundtrack to Billy Rose's Jumbo. This was MGM's swan song in musicals (discounting The Unsinkable Molly Brown and those ghastly Elvis and Connie Francis programmers) and the last film for one of the most brilliant musicians who ever worked in Hollywood: Conrad Salinger, the dean of orchestrators. In this PC age we honor him not for his brilliance but because he was GAY, flamingly GAY, foppishly GAY, which does an enormous insult to his memory. I remember when I was very young being struck by his theme to the old bad John Forsythe sitcom Bachelor Father, and while it's not much of a melody he wrung every last drop out of it with his talent. This thirty-second sample of "This Can't Be Love" (he did even better) has a snippet of what made him great -- the piquant twists in harmony, the "denseness" of his scoring, that genius for making even the most inconsequential song eloquent -- and Rodgers and Hart were far from inconsequential. (He helped orchestrate the Broadway production in '35.) Listening closely to his arrangements can teach anyone in any art form how to add that little fillip that adds zest and life. More than anyone else save Judy Garland Salinger made the Freed Unit and its twenty-year string of triumphs, and he as much as anyone else underlines why good movies need good music. He died after the Jumbo assignment, apparently by his own hand: he foresaw the snake in the MGM grass, and the end of the musical he helped to prosper. Fortunately, since DR. EVIL took over the trade we've had nothing but CINEMATIC BRILLIANCE, so Salinger isn't missed -- except by those who love music.