# Elmer Bernstein in Jazz mode



## Guest

Here's Bernstein's excellent jazzy score for "*Sweet Smell of Success*" (1957). The ironic title of the film represents the seedy world of hustlers and thugs in the noir streets of New York. Poorly received upon its release, the film's critical approval has grown in more recent years.

"Sweet Smell of Success" is also about incest, though the censors saw to it that only oblique references could be made, robbing it of some of its meaning and power and rendering the plot and characters at times incoherent.

The film's pedigree - apart from Elmer Bernstein - includes Alexander Mackendrick (Direction), Clifford Odets/Ernst Lehmann (Screenplay), James Wong Howe (Cinematography), with outstanding performances from Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis.


----------



## Prodromides

Christabel said:


> Clifford Odets/Ernst Lehmann (Screenplay),


A couple of years after *Sweet Smell of Success*, Odets not only wrote but also directed *The Story on Page One* (whose Elmer B. score I like even better than SSoS). Some of Elmer's jazzier modes do make it onto my favorites list, but I consider EB's best to be his dramatic underscoring. SSoS resides on my Top 15 but not my Top 10 (listed below):

1. *Summer & Smoke*
2. *Desire Under the Elms*
3. *Drango*
4. *Men in War* (Elmer at his most Stravinskyan; this would be good for a TWILIGHT ZONE episode)
5. *Birdman of Alcatraz*
6. *The Field*
7. *The Amazing Mr. Blunden*
8. *The Story on Page One*
9. *Fear Strikes Out*
10. *Kings Go Forth*
11. *The Scarlet Letter* (rejected/unused score)
12. *Cast a Giant Shadow*
13. *Twilight* (1998)
14. *Report to the Commissioner*
15. *Sweet Smell of Success*


----------



## Prodromides

The Elmer Bernstein centenary is upon us:

https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/proginfo/2022/14/composer-of-the-week-elmer-bernstein


----------



## 89Koechel

Prodromides - ("centenary is upon us") - Well, thank GOD for that. It's sure that most listeners would remember, mainly, the score for "The Magnificent Seven", and that's OK! Thanks for that very-long list of Elmer B and his other contributions (your post of Dec., 2021). Elmer, of course, could be "jazzy", as could another Bernstein - Mr. Leonard Bernstein - in West Side Story.


----------



## Heck148

Elmer Bernstein also did the music for "Man with the golden Arm [F. Sinatra,K. Novak, 1955] - big-band jazz style all the way...


----------



## geralmar

When I was a kid I was entranced by Bernstein's soundtrack score to The Magnificent 7 and asked my father for my birthday to buy me something else by Elmer Bernstein. My gift was the Capitol L.P., "Paris Swings" (1960), absolutely not cowboy music. I always suspected my father secretly hated me.


----------

