This Day in Film History (Birth of Hitchcock’s Music Master, Bernard Herrmann)

June 29, 1911—The premature birth of Bernard Herrmann to Russian immigrants in New York City’s Lower East Side was not unlike how he conducted his career as Hollywood’s greatest film composer: loud, insistent, immediate—an undeniable event.

In a career stretching from 1941 to his death in 1975, Herrmann composed the music for 48 movies, from Citizen Kane to Taxi Driver.

But of course, Herrmann’s most sustained work was done with Alfred Hitchcock. The association, which lasted a dozen years, coincided with the Master of Suspense’s creative zenith: nine films, including Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho and The Birds. (Hitch-like, Herrmann made his own cameo appearance as what he really longed to be—an orchestra conductor—at the climax of the director’s 1956 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much.)

Of all the people with whom Hitchcock collaborated over five decades behind the camera, Herrmann might have been the most important, because he gave these thrillers a dimension that the image-conscious Briton, according to Psycho screenwriter Joseph Stefano, "didn't have a language for": music and sound.

Herrmann had strong opinions about when music was most appropriate, and didn’t mind arguing with Hitchcock about it. Sometimes he felt a theme was necessary instead of silence, as when he pushed for a leitmotif in Vertigo when James Stewart’s haunted detective Scottie has a shock of recognition over a woman eerily reminiscent of the woman he loved. Other times, however, the composer resisted any attempt to show off his craft if he felt it would have detracted from the action. Thus, in North by Northwest, he allows silence to prevail for much of the early part of the famous cropduster scene, allowing audienceanxiety to build over Cary Grant’s isolation in a seemingly empty field.

Amazingly, though Herrmann was nominated for his film debut as a composer, Citizen Kane (as brooding and brilliant as friend Orson Welles’ direction) and did win for his uncharacteristically sprightly work for The Devil and Daniel Webster in the same year, he did not win—and was not even nominated—for any of his movies with Hitchcock. You have to ask why, especially when those screeching violins in Psycho are as memorable as the rapid-fire shower murder images it accompanies.

The only reasons I can imagine why Herrmann was overlooked were that a) he didn’t need the recognition (he was famous not just for his movies with Hitchcock, but also for his TV work --Alfred Hitchcock Presents, of course, and The Twilight Zone); and b) he was a prickly guy who annoyed enough people that they didn’t want anything to swell his ego any larger than it was already.

Film historians have remarked on Herrmann’s affinity for Hitchcock (the composer was evidently a devout Anglophile), but the person whose temperament was closer to his was Orson Welles. Both were classic enfants terribles who made their marks in their twenties. Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz’ bon mot about his co-screenwriter/director (“There but for the grace of God, goes God”) registered strongly in the studio system.

But Herrmann might have been even worse. While Welles might have simply ignored a boss, Herrmann would tell his off. Jim Fusilli’s excellent appreciation of the composer in today’s Wall Street Journal included this line thrown at CBS’ William S. Paley, a media mogul not easily crossed: "You're assuming the public is as ignorant about music as you."

That volatility also ended his partnership with Hitchcock. The director had put up with Herrmann’s various fits over the years (including, but not limited to, his rage that he did not conduct the orchestra for his own score of Vertigo), but was less inclined toward equitability during the filming of Torn Curtain in 1966.

The subpar performance of Marnie led studio brass to put their foot down concerning use of music in Hitchcock’s films. Executives, like their brethren elsewhere in the industry, badly wanted a hit song or two that could boost profits even more than usual. Even the grim subject matter and milieu of Hitchcock’s new project--Cold War espionage and murder--didn’t put them off: Heck, hadn’t Doctor Zhivago scored with “Lara’s Theme” the year before?

Hitchcock made a point of telling Herrmann beforehand exactly what he wanted. The composer agreed, then turned in the kind of brilliant but traditional work he’d always done before. That led to a blow-up between the two men, who never worked together again--and who never had the sustained, multi-year success with others that they had with each other.

“I believe that only music that springs out of genuine personal emotion and inspiration is alive and important,” Herrmann once said. That uncompromising nature led him into exile from Hollywood for several years after the Hitchcock quarrel, but it also ensured that film fans--even those who might not associate his name with a project--would experience extraordinary sounds that memorably--but appropriately--served the story and the character.