No, But I Heard the Song

The Dreamboat I had dinner with the other night likes movies. I could tell by the ecstatic way she hummed, blowing soft ripples in her daiquiri with the notes of a motion picture title tune.

On this particular night, we had just come from viewing one of Hollywood's latest productions, a Biblical epic, and I was reserving comment until after I had heard her critique:

"Well, it was all right, but it didn't have a title song," she said.

"Yes, but it had lots of music," I said. "All Hollywood films have music. You must have been watching when you should have been listening. Don't you remember the climactic scene when the lions devoured the Christians, and how those swelling ninth and thirteenth chords added just the right touch? I knew trouble was brewing when a flatted fifth preceded the gladiators."

My doll wrinkled her chin petulantly. "But that isn't the same thing, Hon," she began. "There was no title song -- you know, something anyone could sing, like the Crew Cuts or Bill Haley and his Comets. Don't you think the producers could have worked Faith, Hope and Charity into the picture? The Christian girl could sing it to the Roman who falls in love with her. Instead, all they do is talk. A song would give the show impact, even if the girl doesn't sing. They could use Don Cornell in the background. What's a picture without a song?"

"A talkie," I said.

"I mean it!" she persisted. "Lots of pictures would win Academy Awards if they only had a title song. Take that movie, Summertime."

"Doll, there is a song called Summertime," I pointed out.

"So why didn't they use it in the picture?"

"Because somehow Southern cotton doesn't go well with gondolas."

She fretted for a moment, then forgot what I said. "I like a movie you can really take home with you," she insisted. "Like The High and the Mighty. What a heavenly song! -- Dah, dah dah dah dah dahhhh, dah-dah dah dah -- Dmitri outdid himself in that picture."

"Who's Dmitri?" I asked, knowing very well but hating to admit it.

"Who's Dmitri?!" she echoed, incredulous. "You mean you really don't know?"

"The only Dmitris I ever heard of," I said, determined to play hard to get, "are Mitropoulous and Shostakovich. Who's your special Dmitri?"

"Dmitri Tiomkin, the song-writer, silly boy. Anyone knows that. Don't you remember High Noon with Gary Cooper?"

"No, but I heard the song. This tough hombre, Frank Miller, just out of stir, (continued on page. 42)No, But I Heard the Song(continued from page 33) returns to this cowpoke town to plug Gary Cooper, who put him in the clink in the first place. Then..."

"I thought you didn't see the picture," my doll interposed, with a put-upon pout.

"It's this way," I said, framing her oval face with a pair of lecturer's hands. "I had good intentions of seeing the movie one night, but since I was at the bar, the juke box started playing the song, High Noon. Well, after the eighth time, I knew the plot so well, I decided to stay where I was. And a lucky thing, too! Because that's the night I met you, Doll."

She snuggled up to me and rubbed her nose against mine nostalgically. I made ready to pay the check and transport myself from celluloid to reality.

"Hon, don't you really think a title song makes a picture?" she whispered.

"I guess it makes a picture money," I said. "But I recall some pretty good movies that had no guitars or quartets or harps in the skies or poor man's Greek Chorus in them or behind them. Let's see, there was The Grapes of Wrath, The Informer, Mutiny on the Bounty, It Happened One Night..."

She gave me a supercilious stare.

"Where are they today, I ask you? Who remembers them? But will anyone ever forget The Man From Laramie and Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing and Three Coins in the Fountain? Why if it wasn't for the song, who'd have heard of Davy Crockett?"

She had me there, but I made a gallant attempt at riposte.

"Yes, Walt Disney certainly made a good thing of Davy Crockett. But why didn't he do anything with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea? He could have had the octopus sing tenor; then Mario Lanza could have recorded the song and sold ten million records."

"You think you're so smart, so high and mighty smart!" she snapped. "Bet you couldn't even write a title song for a stag movie -- yes, I know about such things!"

I didn't want to get ensnarled in the latter, but the challenge in the first part of her harangue raised my hackles. I've dashed off a few tunes in my day, for office parties and family reunions, and this would be a cinch.

"That piano in my apartment isn't there just to hold up your photograph, Doll," I said. "With it I will compose the best movie title song you have ever heard. I will make you forget this girlish infatuation with the ditties of Dmitri." When I saw she was word-stricken into temporary paralysis, I added: "One week from tonight. In my apartment."

Her eyes spoke a tacit approval.

• • •

As a framework for my movie title song, I selected one of my all-time favorite motion pictures. Esthetically, it may not have been the best film Hollywood ever produced, but it made a lasting impression on me. The story line was simple, and so were the characters.

With the aid of a few stock melodic phrases, which I artfully inverted, I composed a tune and captured the notes on some manuscript paper I had lying around. For practical purposes I keyed the melody in the tonality of C -- a simple key for a simple motion picture.

The lyrics were a bit more difficult, but I completed them in time for our cinematic rendezvous.

Everything was ready for Dreamboat -- the low-key lighting over the piano, the eight-pronged candelabra producing a whole choreography of shadows across her photograph. I even rented a velvetlapeled, opalescent jacket, creating infinite (continued on page 65)No, but I Heard the Song(continued from page 42) enchantment in a small room.

We had one drink together, quietly, silently, reverently. I believe I had her convinced of my musical prowess even before the debut of my melody, so awed was she by the decor.

"Now?" I asked, pianissimo.

"Now," she replied, sotto voce.

During the prefatory hush, I massaged my hands ritually, watching Dreamboat's peripatetic eyes until they lighted on my concert garb. Her fascination with my glittering jacket was equaled by my preoccupation with her knitted suit.

I over-extended the pre-concert silence, keeping my hands suspended above the keyboard. Then I shattered the calm with a sharp attack on the keys in G7, jamming my foot on the pedal to sustain the last ounce of reverberation.

I began talking in counterpoint. "Just imagine all those screen credits passing in parade, Doll. Armies, regiments, battalions of credits." I hammered home the point with a rolling crescendo that yanked a sigh from her lovely lungs.

"Yes, I can see them now," she chanted. "Directors and producers and designers and technical advisers and every thing!"

After a cadenza that covered 88 keys, I slipped into the melody, the farrago I had cooked up during the week. I managed to sandwich in trills, tremolos and Chopinesque rubato, while through slitted eyes I caught the deep emotion on Dreamboat's face as she swayed, first gently, then rapturously.

Nearing the finale of the first chorus, I whispered, "And now the words."

"Yes, the words," she hushed. "The words, sing them to me."

I rocked the room with another thunderous G7 chord. Dreamboat slithered closer, empathically entwined in the music. I began, not without feeling --

In the jungle natives used to sing:

Boom! Bam! Boom! Bam! Boom! Bam! Bing!

They danced and drummed and sang a song

Of a fearsome, awesome king named Kong!

Kong! Kong! King, King, Kong!

Too big to play at ping, ping, pong!

He met his fate

Top the Empire State

Kong! Kong! Ki -- ing Kong!

The bad men put him on a ship

Bound for New York--a one-way trip.

He broke his chains, then scaled a hotel--

And fractured the Third Avenue El!

Kong! Kong! King, King, Kong!

Too big to play at ping, ping, pong!

He met his fate

Top the Empire State

Kong! Kong! Ki -- ing Kong!

At last he saw his love one day

A winsome maid y-clept Fay Wray.

The poor girl did vociferate

So they shot King Kong off the Empire State.

Kong! Kong! King, King, Kong!

Too big to play at ping, ping, pong.

He met his fate

Top the Empire State

Kong! Kong! Ki -- ing Kong!!!

Dreamboat was in a cataleptic trance when I concluded. I patted her cheek gently.

"The movie's over, Doll."

"It's... it's too... too magnificent," she said, the dew collecting in her mascara. "A magnificent song that will make a magnificent movie. Can't you hear it sung by The Four Freshmen? And can't you just see Marlon Brando as the King?"

"But, Doll --" This was a reaction I hadn't counted on. How could I tell her that Kong was an ape and that, furthermore, the movie had already been made? I couldn't. I didn't. I relaxed. I basked in the limelight of her adulation for a few minutes, then closed the piano. "Doll," I whispered, somewhat later, "what's this Dmitri got I haven't got?"

"Not a thing, darling," she said.

"Just imagine all those screen credits," I said.