Dimitri TIOMKIN Why is Dimitri Tiomkin so disliked within the community of Golden Age film music composers? Despite writing classic scores for any number of great films, and working successfully with virtually every top director from Capra to Zinnemann, his work is largely ignored while others' are resurrected and/or re-recorded on an almost daily basis. Perhaps part of the problem lies in Tiomkin's early gift for self-promotion - a faux pas of great magnitude among the normally self-effacing Hollywood studio musicians. Worse still, his gift for tune-writing often resulted in hit singles (such as "Friendly Persuasion"; "The High and the Mighty" and High Noon's "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling".) Although this came decades before the now pervasive theme-song tie-ins began imposing commercial considerations on artistic film music decisions, perhaps Tiomkin's contemporaries resented his commercial success. In any event, he was the first and only choice of producer-director-star John Wayne to score The Alamo, a three-hour-plus account of the 1836 Texas siege in which a handful of defenders were eventually massacred by Mexican forces. Tiomkin's score -- earthy, melodious, rhythmic, and ultimately heart-rending -- ranks among the best ever written for any spectacle, Western or otherwise. At the heart of that score are two themes, a ballad-like melody that functions as a recurring motif throughout the score, and the gorgeous "Green Leaves of Summer", which functions both in underscoring and in lyric form for the film's key scene the night before the final, fatal attack. Director Wayne, perhaps reflecting his mentor, John Ford, wanted a song to illustrate the men's awareness of their impending deaths. The result is hauntingly beautiful, and its use in this particular scene is a highlight in this often overblown, plodding film. Indeed, it is one of the best uses of a song as underscoring I've ever heard in a film. After first introducing the "Green Leaves" theme in the overture with high strings, Tiomkin then offers it with accordions -- the effect is both somber and sentimental -- in the main title following a stunning solo trumpet version of 'De Guella,' this latter piece borrowed from Tiomkin's score to Rio Bravo just one year earlier. Also worthy of note is Tiomkin's reel-like music for Crockett and his Tennesseans, which is jaunty as a coonskin cap and has the earthy feel of a buckskin legging. Character and mood are communicated with immediacy as well as economy. This same quality can be found in Tiomkin's simpler songs, 'Tennessee Babe' and 'Here's to the Ladies,' each offering a folk-tune beauty and simplicity such as Stephen Foster might have written. And if the above comprised the whole of the score for The Alamo, it would be a stunning achievement. But there is more. Simply put, nobody ever wrote action cues quite like Dimitri Tiomkin, and The Alamo contains perhaps his best work of this sort. These include 'Raid for Cattle,' 'Santa Anna,' and the combined, 7-minute cue depicting the 'Charge of Santa Anna /Death of David Crockett /The Final Assault.' 'Raid for Cattle' is a virtual tone poem, following the Texans'stealthy movements as they prepare to steal the Mexican troops' cattle, patiently await the dawn's coming, and then spring their attack amid an orchestral frenzy that never loses touch with its several thematic parts. Listen, too, as Tiomkin's woodwinds whirl and his strings snap, whip-like, to herald the approach of Gen. Santa Anna. And finally, marvel at how he captures specific action amid the vast panorama of the film's final assault scenes, ending -- as the score began -- with the trumpeted 'De Guella.' (Max Steiner, among others, could have taken lessons from Tiomkin on how to punctuate action cues with trumpets.) Didier C. Deutsch has done a commendable job producing this 1995 re-issue of the original soundtrack, complete with 11 additional cues. Carryovers from the original LP include several dialogue tracks (including music) featuring speeches by Wayne in the role of David Crockett. Both are corny and could well have been excluded, though his farewell speech to the girl Flaca, in which he explains his reasons for remaining at the Alamo, is not without a certain poetic charm. ("Had me some money, and had me some medals -- but none of it seemed a lifetime worth the pain of the mother that bore me.") It's also rather appalling that anyone would have considered using 'The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You' for the ending, and its inclusion here adds nothing. Nor, for that matter, does the Brothers Four version of 'The Green Leaves of Summer' although I do rather like the pop-single version of the main ballad by country singer Marty Robbins. Deutsch's notes offer insight on the political controversies that helped sink the movie's Academy Award prospects in 1960, as well as the score's murky recording history. But there is no information on specific cues, nor any credit on the excellent choral work which, I presume, was led by Jester Hairston with whom Tiomkin frequently worked. Eyesight problems limited Tiomkin's output in the years after The Alamo, although he would score at least three more masterpieces: The Guns of Navarone, 55 Days at Peking and Fall of the Roman Empire. Although best known for his Western movie scores, Tiomkin soon would be succeeded as the reigning master in that genre by the young Elmer Bernstein, whose Magnificent Seven score, ironically, was nominated for an Academy Award along with The Alamo in 1960. Both lost, as did Alex North's Spartacus, to Ernest Gold's Exodus -- itself the beneficiary of a highly popular song.
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