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 COPLAND AS A FILM COMPOSER
By FREDERICK WX.STERNFELD
ARON COPLAND has written profuselyfor the concert hall,
for solo instruments, chamber music ensembles, and orchestra,
for one voice and for chorus. But it has always seemed to me that
his is a singularly dramatic flair. The inner spacing of his music is
theatrical in the word's best sense. The tempo, the distribution of
points of repose, the quiet intensity with which climaxes are reached
and sustained, the uncanny judgment with which repetition and
contrast are employed --all reveal an awareness of the public's
responses to dramatic entertainment without, however, any con-
descension to that public. This recognition of popular and functional
demands, coupled with the integrity of his esthetics and craftsman-
ship, have won for Copland's film scores the rare distinction of ap-
proval both by his fellow composers in the East and his Hollywood
associates. The Academy Award for the score of The Heiress makes it
clear that the acclaim of the world's film center does not depend
on an excess of emotional and instrumental lushness. The Heiress,
moreover, makes no concessions to cheap popularity; it is a direct
descendant of Copland's three earliest cinematic scores, The City
(spring 1939), Of Mice and Men (1939), and Our Town (March
1940). In these works, written within a compass of twelve months,
the composer continued in a tradition that had been auspiciously
initiated in the United States by Virgil Thomson's The Plough that
Broke the Plains (1936) and The River (1937). That modern
American music owes a great debt to the French school is well known,
and much of the dramatic pungency of Thomson and Copland can
be traced to their teachers and models: Satie, Boulanger, and the
machine rhythms of Honegger's Pacific 231. But whatever the French
influences may have been, Copland's early film scores, made in New
York and Hollywood, can take their place beside the best works
of Europe's screen composers. The over-all cast is one of deliberate
control that gives vent to lyrical or traditional expression only at
a few well-considered points of the action. The idiom is essentially
identical with that of his works for the concert hall. Its texture is
161
162 The Musical Quarterly
sparse, and much of the counterpoint is diatonic and favors the
interval of the major second. These are, of course, the well-known
characteristics of Copland's style. But what are the processes by
which he has distilled from this language a vocabulary particularly
fitted for the screen?
A dramatic composer must realize the limits of complexity that
he may reach without losing his listener. The ballets Rodeo and
Appalachian Spring, intended to exercise a wider appeal than the
Violin Sonata and the Third Symphony, are written in a deliberately
simplified style. The demand for plain expression is even more press-
ing in the case of the movies, and the scores for Of Mice and Men
and Our Town meet the need for easy intelligibility without sacri-
ficing the traits peculiar to the composer's art. To the inexperienced
practitioner this would appear a simple trick indeed. What an easy
recipe, to retain the modes of expression but to reduce complexity
in inverse proportion to the size of the audience! Actually, it is a
technical and artistic achievement of the highest caliber, for it
demands quality in spite of reduced means and such precision and
intensity that not even the sophisticated listener might hope for
richer and more varied effects.
Most composers of entertainment music find no difficulty in com-
municating with their mass audience; they either ignore the resources
of modern music or berate them as bizarre and esoteric. But the
resulting language is so trite and hackneyed, so "easy" that it has
hardly any recognizable relationship to concert-hall parlance. The
communication with millions is, indeed, achieved, but in an idiom
as artificial and unattractive as, let us say, Esperanto, whereas the
language of Copland's screen music might be compared to Basic
English. Its means of expression, though legitimately keyed to a
vast audience, never forsakes the tradition or the vocabulary of seri-
ous music. But, in order to be "filmic", music must be reduced to its
lowest common denominator, that is, stripped to its barest essentials,
leaving the component parts basically simpler and shorter. This
stylistic adaptation is by no means a mere bow to the box office; it
shows a sensitive response to the structure and tempo of the medium
itself. The brief, yet precise, turns of musical language can be used
with speed and ease to accompany the lightning-fast montage, the
engrossing and direct impact of the over-size close-up and, besides,
they fulfill the need of telling a story at a first and only hearing-
a need that is not so pressing in the field of the opera or symphony.
 Copland as a Film Composer 163
The commercial triumphs of Our Town and Of Mice and Men
prove that movies do profit from suitable musical support. While
the dramas of Thornton Wilder and John Steinbeck elicited that
support, the credit for bringing about a happy union of script and
score lies with the director. To have been sensible of these latent pos-
sibilities testifies to the discrimination of Sam Wood (Our Town)
and Lewis Milestone (Of Mice and Men). On the other hand, it is
the more heartening, in these times of specialization which tend to
widen the gulf between modern art and modern man, when a suc-
cessful modern composer for the concert hall accepts the challenge
to write music for the media of mass-communication. This he does
in the face of certain prejudices against him. Feature films usually
entail considerable financial investment, and directors are loath to
jeopardize box-office rbceipts. They are wary of the composer whose
record stamps him as a rebel, given to violating established, and there-
fore presumably profitable, patterns of movie music. But the choices
of a director like William Wyler have been both unconventional and
successful. For the armed forces of World War II he made Memphis
Belle and Thunderbolt with music by Gail Kubik. Here sharp, clean,
genuinely contemporary scores lent pungency to timely messages
that lifted the final products high above the newsreel reportage of
the average war film. In what appears to me as one of Hollywood's
finest tragi-comedies of the postwar era, The Best Years of Our Lives,
Wyler picked one of Hollywood's most sensitive and forward-looking
composers, Hugo Friedhofer. Friedhofer's music is often frankly
reminiscent of Hindemith and Copland and steers clear of the emo-
tionalism and lushness that fill lesser scores.1 In choosing Copland
to weave the orchestral fabric for The Heiress Wyler continued to
exercise his discretion and acted on the basis of past experience.
The transformation of Henry James's novel Washington Square
into a movie posed a delicate problem. In their adaptation, first for
the stage and later for the screen, Ruth and Augustus Goetz reduced
a story of narrative prose to fit the time dimensions of a dramatic
presentation. Yet, the burden of unravelling an essentially psycho-
logical plot with little external motion, by means of the moving
camera, was a cinematic problem of inherent difficulty. Unlike its
parent, the stage play, the modern motion picture stands or falls not
with its dialogue but with its photography and sound-dialogue-music
track. To depict the fall and rise of the heiress by methods indigenous
1 See The Musical Quarterly, XXXIII (1947), 520 ff.
164 The Musical Quarterly
to the cinema, though alien to fiction or stage, Wyler's camera "pans",
"dollies", and moves to close-ups. Since the plot is predominantly
concerned with the development of character and proceeds in a
leisurely and deliberate manner, the use of rapid, impressionistic
montage was rejected. At the high points of emotion the director
had to rely on the strongest and simplest means at his disposal:
close-up, dissolve, music. Laurence Olivier's success in translating
the monologues in Henry V from stage to screen was largely based
on just these devices.
In one scene that proceeds for over two minutes without any
dialogue, we see the heiress, in close-up, harried and haunted.
Catherine has just realized that her fiance has forsaken her, and the
dialogue stops as she moans to her aunt that someone must love her,
that Morris must love her for all those who did not. As the music
takes over, it is emphatically foreground, not background. A theme
heard during the earlier love scene (Ex. 1) is played in variation
Ex. i.

over a pedal in the basses while the aunt and the girl sit in motion-
less contemplation (first 5 measures of Ex. 2). After a dissolve we
see Catherine's face in close-up for well over twenty seconds, and
during this time a pounding basso ostinato gathers strength until it
reaches a fortissimo climax (mm. 6-12 of Ex. 2), at which point the

Ex. 2
Ob.snlo 3

l ..
"--•

M••'" ' w
ou
. .. . -

x?trr.

w w .f.,

:Li
 :::...... .....j

:M"P,~
Ah? :

Aaron Copland conducting his music for Paramount's TheHeir

William Wyler, producer-director of the film, is at
 Copland as a Film Composer 165

10
? +
Bros 1I/ 1

cexe.---------f ek.
_
......., ... _ -
>~
,,,_..... cr . - etc.
c . > - - •e
,,•,
"'_• '. ".., ON
i"
kg,..>~~w.
..
•s "a
.. . I..
_- •"
..,,"f• ,.,•"

heroine breaks down completely and sobs. Her aunt, unable to help
her, is seen next to her as the scene concludes and the music dies
away. It has been a succession of significant poses. After a fade-out
we see the same front parlor at daybreak and the image of Catherine,
dry-eyed by this time, but hopeless and helpless and in utter deso-
lation after her night's vigil. A variation of the first five measures of
music from the preceding scene is heard (Ex. 3; cf. also Ex. 2, mm.

Ex. 3

1-5 and Ex. i). It is a mere introduction. The main and decisive
portion of the scene, in which the heiress appeals to our pity as she
climbs the stairs to her room, occupies the succeeding thirty seconds.
The manner of her movements and the expressions of her face leave
no doubt that she is steeling herself to life-long spinsterhood; she
moves up the staircase as if she were going to the gallows. The fact
that she actively propels herself from one place to another is impor-
tant, for it stressesthe decisiveness of her action in a context of almost
static scenes. Yet, as she proceeds up the stairs, the camera moves
with her and thereby minimizes her motion, showing, rather, her
harried countenance in close-up. In these two scenes the photographer
gives us two statements of the central theme of misery, the first
immobile, the second starting out in motion but climaxing in a still.
The sameness of the drama first enacted in the parlor and then on the
staircase is driven home by the composer, who interprets the ascent
by repeating, with a few variations, the basso ostinato (mm. 6-12 of
Ex.. 1) from the preceding scene.
This is the denouement which, both in James's novel and in
Wyler's film, occurs about four-fifths of the way through the narra-
166 The Musical Quarterly
tive. In the movie its eloquence relies entirely on visual and musical
expression, dispensing with dialogue altogether. The close-ups and
ground basses alike fulfill the, function of magnifying and intensify-
ing the experiences of the jilted girl, and the strength of the scene
is derived from the parallelism between the procedures of photog-
rapher and composer. This parallelism becomes the more convincing
because it resides in the modes of operation rather than mechanical
synchronization. Finally, both director and composer have used
means of expression peculiar to the cinema. It is illuminating, for
instance, to read in the first draft of the script more than a page of
dialogue that was wisely eliminated in the final version. This plead-
ing between Catherine and her aunt would be eloquent, indeed, in
a stage play that relied on verbal means. The earlier variant con-
cludes the argument when the aunt exclaims indignantly, "You will
not let yourself be consoled", and the girl, rocking with pain, replies,
"Not consoled-loved, Aunt, but not consoled". Instead of this inter-
change Catherine's agony is conveyed to the audience solely by visual
and musical means. It is significant that this section of the score
(Ex. 1) takes its title from the deleted dialogue, "Love Not Consoled".
Some of the intensity of the music can undoubtedly be traced to
its sonorities, which call into play several unique properties of the
microphone. A full orchestra of strings, woodwinds, and brasses is
covered, as it were, with a sheen of string sound. The effect was
achieved by two separate recording sessions, one in which each choir
of the orchestra played its proper part and one in which the strings
were divided into sections to play all the parts, their own as well as
those of the woods and brasses. In the dubbing session this string
sheen was superimposed upon the original body of sound, and the
results are both unusual and compelling. It is a process peculiar to
the cinema and unknown in the concert hall, and one cannot help
sharing the composer's delight in extracting new kinds of sound from
new means.
Immediately preceding this climax are two scenes that illustrate
well the assistance music may offer the director. Both are without
dialogue, depending solely on pantomime, photography, sound, and
music. The first sequence shows the young girl alone in the parlor,
eagerly and impatiently anticipating her elopement. It comes to an
end, as does the music, when her aunt enters and must be told of the
plan. A second musical unit begins when the dialogue between
Catherine:and her aunt concludes. A carriage noise is heard outside;
 Copland as a Film Composer 167
proudly the girl says goodbye to her home and family and adds mag-
nanimously, "I will write you, Aunt". There now ensues a pan-
tomime with sound effects. Catherine hurries out of the house and
into the street where she expects her fianc6 to be waiting with the
carriage. To a crescendo of sound and music the carriage nears the
house-only to pass it by. A defeated Catherine re-enters her home
as the scene and music come to a close.
It is true that movies often proceed without the aid of the spoken
word, but in its stead an external happening usually enlivens the
screen, such as the stereotyped chase, for example. But the sequences
in The Heiress are subtle and psychological, and our mass audiences
are so used to more obvious fare that the director looked to the
composer to hold the audience. The fleeting scene of anticipation
must convey Catherine's feelings by way of her excitement as she
rushes about the room. But beyond this it must presage the sad
fate of her hopes. Copland succeeded in creating an interplay of runs
in flutes, clarinets, and bass clarinet that is as skillful in its scoring
as it is apposite dramatically (Ex. 4).

Ex. 4 N
rto
-

L-
P.-.

CL

A, 1
410-1

cl
.

The sextolet on which these runs are based is also used in the
168 The Musical Quarterly
succeeding pantomime scene where the carriage is seen and heard,
first approaching, then fading away. The motif continues, as it were,
the air of eager expectancy from the earlier scene. But the antici-
pation is too eager and in its tenseness betrays subconscious doubts.
The chords, played by muted horns, muted trumpets, and trom-
bones, against which the runs are set, convey the tragedy before
Catherine faces it. At a preview showing this scene had no music,
and the audience laughed-as neighborhood theater audiences are
likely to do when they do not understand what is going on. In order
to induce a comprehension of the tragic significance of the carriage
scene, Wyler asked Copland to supply music (Ex. 5) and the com-
posite result speaks for itself. In the final version, the average spec-
tator probably did not notice the music, but neither did he laugh.

Ex. 5 Veryf"tIanddmnmab

3 1 3 Imrded lhis

10

w. 3a w St"?

3 3 3
=Ated TpU~l

>

v 4 v
.... . . . ... etc.

Copland's path as a film composer is marked by an unbroken

continuity. In fact, his critics have accused him of repeating his suc-
cess formula, once he found it. On the surface, such a reproach may
appear justified, since the similarity of expression between Of Mice
and Men (1939) and Our Town (1940) on the one hand and The
Heiress on the other is striking and unusual. One might even go
further and say that the stark and austere language appropriate for
the early films seems a strange musical counterpart for Washington
Square, so far removed in setting and complexity from Wilder's
New Hampshire town or Steinbeck's Western ranch. Yet, even at a
 Copland as a Film Composer 169
first hearing of the score for the Henry James movie one senses a
refinement of the means of musical expression employed in the earlier
cinematic works, and an examination of the scores makes clear that
Copland has not stood still. As an example, I should like to cite two
strikingly similar passages from Of Mice and Men and The Heiress.
In both sequences the music soars high (and loud) and can by no
means be dismissed as "background music", a term that leads me to
a slight digression.
The psychological implications of the phrase "backgroundmusic"
are potent, and it is unfortunate that musical amateurs think of film
scores as background only. Even so intelligent and enlightened a pro-
ducer as Dore Schary will use the terms "music" and "background
music" as synonyms, and the composer is thus confronted with an
attitude that prevents him from making a full-fledged contribution
to the total drama. Film composers are not little boys who like to
play with their own specialty "with the unconscious assumption that
the film exists as a background for the advancement of music".2They
know show business as well as their own medium and are, therefore,
qualified to participate in the councils that decide whether the music
is to be loud, soft, or silent. The judiciousness with which our best
screen composers have abstained from imposing a musical score on
long and important scenes3 shows the good sense of the profession
and demonstrates that an obsolete phrase like "background music"
is not needed to keep those egomaniacs, the composers, in their place.
To return, then, to Copland's two "foreground" passages. The
first occurs in Of Mice and Men and is entitled "Death of Candy's
Dog". It is a strong, taut scene in which Candy, the old cripple, and
his fellow farm-hands wait tensely until they hear the shot that
signifies that old dogs must die when they are past their usefulness.
It is the cruel threat that hangs over all mice and men, and the
unsuccessful effort to avoid this lot is Steinbeck's theme. There has
been a good deal of talk about Candy's dog throughout the film,
about the faithful devotion he induces in his owner on the one hand
and the bad smell that bothers the unemotional and unimaginative
Carlson on the other. Candy has just lost his last argument with
Carlson. The dialogue is concluded, and the lower strings usher in
2 Dore Schary, Case History of a Movie, New York, 1950,
p. 195.
3 See The Musical Quarterly, XXXV (1949), p. 120o.
170 The Musical Quarterly
the motif of the descending second (Ex. 6) that dominates the sound-

Ex. 6 Very anddowiy

'pressmiey 44 S-

11 I 14v
>~ 1 i i~p
f ??2" #
1I:-1 - -" . .

amr
r.j..r r I f e
22 3 2 - 2s h
(•$ •-
V p m m "

v - ll . ,- '~ [-
z~m?

track for the next three minutes until the shot is heard off-stage.
During this time the cripple mourns in anguish at the defeat of his
love and hope; and the tense efforts of the others to play cards as if
nothing were amiss betray their thought that the old man is but a
symbol of their own lives, is Everyman. The descending interval
in its characteristic inverted dotted rhythm governs the scene,
and the intensity with which both the melodic and the rhythmic
formulas are repeated is hardly interfered with. It is punctuated
only three times, when the dotted rhythm is made even for one
measure (first time at m. 24 of Ex. 6).
To my mind the rhythm itself is reminiscent of the Scotch snap
in Baroque opera (still alive in Gluck's Orfeo) rather than of modern
jazz. Whatever its derivation, its slow build-up, within the framework
of a sparse texture, is highly expressive. The pathos of the diatonic
treble, proceeding gradually and in skips, is set off against a bass that
alternates between diatonic and chromatic passages.
In Henry James's plot another old man suffers a crucial defeat:
a father realizes that his daughter hates him. In the novel this antago-
nism is but lightly sketched. The father has told Catherine, the
heiress, that he is pondering his impending death and the altering
 Copland as a Film Composer 171
of his will. She must promise not to marry the unfaithful lover after
her father's death.
. . there was something in this request . . .that seemed an injury to her
dignity. Poor Catherine'sdignity was not aggressive. .. but if you pushed far
enough you could find it. Her father had pushed very far. "I can't promise,"
she simply repeated. "You are very obstinate," said the Doctor . . . She knew
herself that she was obstinate, and it gave her a certain joy ...

The movie script spells out the understatement of "a certain joy",
and the close-ups mirror the doctor's torment with ruthless clarity.
It is difficult to say whether this is the brashness of our times, as
opposed to the niceties of James's style of the 188os, or whether the
amplification of James's refined phrase is a legitimate adaptation to
the medium of the screen. I venture to say it is both; yet, I suspect
that James himself would exhibit less abhorrence of the devices of
modern mass communication than his more fastidious admirers.
Even before Catherine tortures her father by her cruel and bitter
words both the photography and music establish that he is sick and
suffering (Ex. 7). The instrumentation of the motif D-flat-A-flat

Ex.7 vv A
.
,Ap,
3 Alt~k.

..•,f.•"--"I- LJ - 9 d.LA J •J
i •-
_ . 9ii. ... .9i .7 ....."7 7:_ . 7 19
lin--d t,-
w-.,_./ -, u.,

J
- JI. LJ -
:LJ ,"
vli,• . ..lw, Et- ]• LJ"ai#

WWI i9 -!q V
-- - - - -
n-. .

illustrates the wealth of resources Hollywood may offer the musician.

What composer for the concert hall would dare to score for three
172 The Musical Quarterly
bass clarinets? But in The Heiress, as in The Red Pony (1947), Cop-
land was able to obtain the instrumentalhues he felt were suited to
the situation. Parenthetically,the Steinbeckscene scored for three
bassclarinetsalso dealswith the clinicalaspectsof sickness:the pony
is being operatedupon, and the little boy winces painfully (Ex. 8).

B.C•It•, .
._.

J~l,
1!, wil,,,,,_ ExVc. ,, !l~wlI
Ba.

In The Heiress, then, the doctor calls both his daughter and the
house-maid to announce that he is ill. There is hardly any dialogue
while the violins descend over the ostinato of bass clarinets and other
low-pitched instruments, and the camera features an old man who
has made his own diagnosis and declared himself critically ill. But
as soon as the two women lend their attention the music stops and
verbal interchanges take precedence: first the sick-room instructions
to the maid and, upon her dismissal, the doctor's argument with his
daughter. This argument comes to a climax when the father assures
Catherine that he has done her a service by breaking up her engage-
ment to a worthless trifler. Angrily she disagrees:
Catherine: You have cheated me. You thought any handsome, clever man
would be as bored with me as you were ...
Doctor: Morris did not love you ...
Catherine: I know that now, thanks to you.
Doctor: Better to know it now than twenty years hence.
Catherine: Why? I lived with you for twenty years before I found out that
you did not love me. I don't know that Morris would have hurt me or starved
me for affection more than you did. Since you couldn't love me, you should have
let someone else try.
The entrance of the music here must express the doctor's fear, not
of death, but of the anguish imposed upon him by his daughter's
 Copland as a Film Composer 173
hatred (Ex. 9). The descending motif in its inverted dotted rhythm

Ex. 9 4
2

rd.
Yl.,Vla., 3 Vb..2Ens..
con•
IILL
, II I--I

V~. C3 sVr Trbs. can

s 6 7 S 9
3C1.,2H].•

Ad.
, I
I ?L I
i
.... -•
6,-
bsn
>.W
kmIFE ,:: •
f i,-
2__
• :, _
.

' fP _ _
____

-L
Di i" p-

is here again, following the pattern in Of Mice and Men, and is

repeated until the music fades out at the point where Catherine
urges her father to alter his will. The same musical means seems to
serve its purpose now with even greater precision and impact. The
rhythm has been sharpened by substituting a double dot for the
single dot, and the melodic pungency has been increased by trans-
ferring the chromatic progressions from the bass to the treble of this
pathetic Scotch snap. But beyond this sharpening of the tools in the
composer's workshop there is also a more vivid realization of the tech-
nique of film-making. In scoring Of Mice and Men, Copland worked
as a concert-hall musician, making a guess as to how it would all come
out on the final celluloid print. Often the music would contain
sufficient pauses and fermatas, enough "give", to permit the spoken
lines to sound without obscuring the melodic profile. At other times
the musical climaxes would be carefully timed so as not to interfere
(and not be interfered with). But in the final dubbing session the
composer's excellent though naive intentions would come a cropper.
There is, for instance, the fighting scene between Lennie and Curly
where the accents of the music are supposed to precede and succeed
the punches of Curly so as to give the fight a blurred depth. How-
ever, the time allowed between the sforzati of the orchestra is much
174 The Musical Quarterly
too short (a dotted quarter-note or less at a metronome speed of 16o
for the quarter); consequently by the time music and sound tracks
are combined we have something so closely akin to the mechanical
synchronization of a Western that the scene loses much of the force
the composer intended it to have. Of course, no director would
permit the orchestra to obscure the dialogue, and he would rightly
insist that in the dubbing session the volume of the music be reduced
if it showed any tendency to cover the drama. In The Heiress this
painful reduction to an almost inaudible softness never has to take
place, because with the deftness of a veteran screen composer, Cop-
land allowed an ample margin for sound and dialogue tracks to make
their point. The result is a seemingly effortless combination in which
neither the orchestral nor the verbal fabric loses its continuity. Since
Catherine is the obstinate aggressor in the foregoing scene, her angry
retorts are so timed that they occur after the completion of a musical
phrase, and thus receive particular emphasis. Her father pleads:
"You will meet some honest, decent man some day. You have many
fine qualities... " "And thirty thousand a year!" the daughter inter-
rupts after the G-sharp in m. 5 of Ex. 9. The doctor argues, "You
know him to be a scoundrel", and Catherine snaps back, "I love him,
does that humiliate you?" after the G-sharp in m. 9 of Ex. 9. That is,
again after the completion of the main motif. There are too many
finely worked details to be included here, but an alert observer will
be aware of the team-work that is practiced between the men respon-
sible for the various factors that combine to make the film.
Altogether, the lesson of Copland's success as a film composer may
be summed up in these terms: flexibility and team-work. Studios,
producers, and directors are not persuaded by prima donnas but by
craftsmen who have proved themselves quick, efficient, and elastic.
Is the game worth the candle? In financial as well as in social terms,
it obviously is. The industry is capable of making available funds
that exceed all the usual music awards and fellowships, but quite
apart from pecuniary considerations, to write good music for the mil-
lions who see and hear the movies means doing something about
musical taste instead of preaching about it. Yet, in the last analysis the
strength of the cinema lies in the fact that its novel and plentiful
resources challenge the artist as artist. Monteverdi responded to the
challenge of opera as did Stravinsky to Diaghilev's ballets, for it is
not possible mechanically to transplant existing art forms to a new
medium. The difficulties of adjusting to new types of dramatic enter-
 Copland as a Film Composer 175
tainment have been defied and surmounted in the past. The stature
and example of Copland augur well for the future.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND CREDITS

(All quotations from scores and scripts are printed here by permission of the
composer and producer.)
1939 The City. Producer: American Documentary Films. Directors: Ralph
Steiner and Willard van Dyke. Commentary: Lewis Mumford.
1939 Of Mice and Men. Producer: Hal Roach Studios. Distributor: United
Artists. Director: Lewis Milestone. Based on the novel by John Steinbeck.
1940 Our Town. Producer: Sol Lesser. Distributor: United Artists. Director:
Sam Wood. Based on the play by Thornton Wilder. (Also Orchestral suite and
Piano suite. Publisher: Boosey 8c Hawkes.)
1942 Music for Movies. An orchestral suite. Publisher: Boosey 8&Hawkes.
Contains: (1) New England Countryside from The City; (2) Barley Wagons
from Of Mice and Men; (3) Sunday Traffic from The City; (4) Story of Grovers
Corners from Our Town; (5) Threshing Machines from Of Mice and Men.
1942 North Star. Producer: Samuel Goldwyn. Distributor: R.K.O.
Radio Pictures. Director: Lewis Milestone. Based on the story by Lillian Hell-
man.
1945 The Cummington Story. Producer: U. S. Office of War Information.
1947 The Red Pony. Producer-Director: Lewis Milestone (Republic Pro-
ductions). Based on the story by John Steinbeck.
1948 Children's Suite from The Red Pony (for orchestra). Publisher:
Boosey &cHawkes. Contains: (1) Morning on the Ranch; (2) The Gift; (3)
Dream March and Circus Music; (4) Walk to the Bunkhouse; (5) Grandfather's
Story; (6) Happy Ending.
1948-49 The Heiress. Academy Award. Producer-Director: William Wyler
(Paramount Pictures). Based on the novel, Washington Square, by Henry James,
and on the play by Ruth and Augustus Goetz.