Johnny Mandel on the West Coast: Part 2 - The Smithsonian Interview

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“Andre Previn recognized Mandel's talent and mentioned him to Robert Wise, who was set to direct the story of Barbara Graham, a notorious convicted murderess executed in the San Quentin gas chamber in 1955. United Artists Records executive Jack Lewis approached Mandel. From the outset the music was envisioned as two LPs issued simultaneously, one featuring original jazz numbers and the other the underscore.

Mandel, only 32, had qualms about composing for the screen. "I was really very nervous," the composer explained in an interview, "until I realized, after I learned the language and how to sync everything, that essentially that is what I'd been doing for a long time and I just didn't know it. It married all the things I'd been doing previously."

Mandel was answerable primarily to Wise, a passionate music lover — named, in 1997, the first recipient of ASCAP's Opus Award, recognizing film directors who made music an integral part of their films.”

- Patrick McGilligan, insert notes to Rykodisc CD of the soundtrack to

 I WANT TO LIVE

The following is excerpted from the JOHNNY MANDEL [1925-2020] NEA Jazz Master (2011) interview that was conducted by Bill Kirchner on April 20-21, 1995 in New York City. The 179 page transcript is in the Archives Center, National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian which can be reached at www.archivescenter@si.edu.

This portion of the interview deals with a period in Johnny’s life when he had recently moved to California from New York in 1953, his early years in scoring for films from the late 1950s and early 1960s and his development as a composer-arranger in a variety of musical contexts.

Interestingly, in 1959, Johnny Mandel was bringing Jazz underscores to the movies while Hank Mancini was writing the first television Jazz soundtrack.

"Kirchner: [laughs] Now you did part of the score for a Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis movie called, "You're Never Too Young."

Mandel: Oh, I'd just do production numbers, those kinds of things, the big dance numbers, 'cause I’d learned how to do that stuff when I was doing “The Show of Shows.”

Kirchner: Now, apparently just to interject here...

Mandel: With that particular movie I'm just beginning to realize I did some Basic-like stuff, some you know, plus choreography and all but with a big marching band, a huge one that I’d beefed up to make sound, to swing better, with a rhythm section.

Kirchner: How did you get the call for that, for that movie?

Mandel: Well, through his piano player, Lou Brown, who also got me the 

WMGM job, Lou has always been a wonderful friend that way...

Kirchner: Was that your...

Mandel: And he still is.

Kirchner: Was that your first film?

Mandel:  It wasn't really my film.

Kirchner: But a film that you had any association with?

Mandel: Yeah, you might say so. I never thought of it as my first film, 'cause you know they had a regular film composer on that, 1 was just brought in for the production numbers, for the swing stuff.

Kirchner: I'm told by the way, I guess [saxophonist] Frank Socolow met Jerry and became close friends with him when Jerry was playing up in the Catskills.

Mandel: Jerry Lewis? 

Kirchner: Yeah, early in his career. 

Mandel: Yeah Jerry's a good guy actually. 

Kirchner: That's what I’ve heard.

Mandel: Loved music, still does I guess.

Kirchner: Apparently when Frank and Joanne's son had a serious auto accident and was badly burned...

Mandel: Oh, he came through.

Kirchner: He picked up all the hospital bills.

Mandel: That's right, Jerry could be very kind when he wanted to.

Kirchner: So...

Mandel: Yeah, he really came through for Frank.

Kirchner: Yeah, absolutely.

[2nd Day, April 21. Begin CD 5]

Kirchner: Johnny we started talking about, “I Want to Live!,” but I was looking over my notes and it occurred to me before we got into that in depth, we neglected, or I neglected to bring up the subject of Stefan Wolpe.

Mandel: Oh yeah, yeah.

Kirchner: And since you studied with him I thought that might have a bearing on your film writing that we'll be discussing.

Mandel: Well, it didn't actually, it really didn't not because - Stefan Wolpe was wonderful but I wasn't with him long enough to have him make a large -I moved from New York very quickly after I started studying with him. So, it wasn't really, you know, a pivotal thing, like I was with him a year or two years or something like that.

Kirchner: When was this?

Mandel: That would've been 1950, '51, '52, maybe. I'm not sure of the exact time now, I'd say '51 would be closer.

Kirchner: It's interesting that you were one of several prominent jazz writers who studied with him, you...

Mandel: [John] Carisi.

Kirchner: Carisi, Eddie Sauter, Bill Finegan.

Mandel: Oh they did, both?

Kirchner: Yes.

Mandel: Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, I went -Irwin Kostal was studying with him and I was doing the Show of Shows, with Irv, so I went down there too and he was wonderful.

Kirchner: What did you learn?

Mandel: I can't think of, you know, it's what'd I learn... I learned about how to write atonally quite a bit, but I learned a lot more later on from George Tremblay. But, I've done a minimum of formal study really, considering how many years I've been at it. I don't really digest information very well in a formal schooling setting, type of academic setting. I mean, I digest it alright but it's much better if it can be experiential in some way. I think that's, for me, that's really the way I've assimilated any knowledge I might have.

Kirchner: So...

Mandel: The rest sort of goes right through from one ear to the other.

Kirchner: You mentioned with George Tremblay, we might as well talk about that now it might be getting a little ahead of ourselves but not really. As I recall a number of prominent film writers have studied with him, is that...

Mandel: Oh yes, um-hm.

Kirchner: What's the attraction there?

Mandel: David Raksin did. Oh, he's wonderful, he was wonderful and he understood a lot, he understood about jazz, he understood about all types of music, even though he was strictly a classicist himself he was not all in the tradition. And he wrote gorgeous music that was atonal but tonal, you know it was sort of an Alban Berg type of approach to atonality, using rows, but it was very sensual music like Berg's was, or is.

Kirchner: So you basically delved into atonal writing with him as well then?

Mandel: Um-hm, yes, I did.

Kirchner: How much has come out in your own writing of that do you think?

Mandel: It's hard for me to be objective about that, I don't know, you never know what comes out from what you may have rubbed off in different places. I really can't say, I don't know.

Kirchner: Now we started to talk about “I Want to Live!,” yesterday and it occurred to me overnight that one thing I guess we should explain for the benefit of anyone who hears this is that because the film was what it was in terms of plot and background there was a specific reason for having two separate scores and there was a reason for having Mulligan in the source music.

Mandel: Well it wasn't really, yeah there was -I must clarify that though there were not two separate scores. One album was composed of source music which is music you know that's not part of background music, it was actually used coming out of records or radios or whatever it might have been, like the way they use source music the way it - you know, now they stick songs in no matter what but back then you usually had to qualify why the song was there. And the score which was background music. As far as this picture having jazz, Barbara Graham who was a real life woman, who was the first woman to die in the gas chamber ever in the state of California, was played by Susan Hayward and in real life she was a big jazz fan and Gerry Mulligan was one of her favorite people, so that's how we ended up getting Gerry for the film. Of course it's nice to have Gerry on anything and it was certainly a pleasure having him on this.

Kirchner: And he also appeared with that seven piece band on camera as I recall at a party.

Mandel: That's right, absolutely, also yeah, at the very opening in a club too, the very opening of the film.

Kirchner: So as far as the orchestral score that you did, my description of it would be a jazz orchestra augmented by certain orchestral instruments like-E-flat clarinet, contrabassoon, contrabass clarinet that were pretty unorthodox and still are.

Mandel: Four French horns.

Kirchner: Yeah.

Mandel: Yeah it was a very large-sized jazz orchestra.

Kirchner: You had total freedom as far as picking instrumentation?

Mandel: I sure did.

Kirchner: Why did you decide on that particular combination of instruments, what was the attraction for you there?

Mandel: They made the sounds that I heard in my head in conjunction with this picture. So, I never ever decide on a bunch of instruments ahead of time and then try to write music to fit it, instead I try to make the noises I hear in my head. When I say noises you know, music and...

Kirchner: Sure.

Mandel: I think in terms of sound and whatever instruments that happens to be, that's what I end up getting.

Kirchner: There was one...

Mandel: I didn't want to use strings in this, so the closest thing I could get would've been a combination between a jazz orchestra and a wind band, so that's what I ended up using. But it was a jazz driven score, in fact it really was the first all jazz score that ever was for movies. You know different people used jazz in patches in movies up till then but when they got into real heavy emotional scenes they'd almost always revert to traditional underscore.

Kirchner: Like the...

Mandel: With the symphonic type, regular symphonic type orchestra set up.

Kirchner: Yeah, I can think of two instances of what you describe like that Alex North score for “Streetcar Named Desire.”

Mandel: Right.

Kirchner:  And Elmer Bernstein's “Man with the Golden Arm.”

Mandel: Exactly, um-hm.

Kirchner: Yeah, but you definitely, you took it beyond that...

Mandel: Even Leith Stevens in, “The Wild One.”

Kirchner: That Shorty Rogers worked on.

Mandel: Yeah but Leith wrote the music.

Kirchner: So what was the reaction that that score got?

Mandel: Oh, it was universally acclaimed?

Kirchner: And you got an Academy Award nomination or didn't?

Mandel: Sure didn't, got frozen right out, Hollywood did not take very kindly to jazz in those days. The old guard, especially Dmitri Tiomkin and those people did not like something like this to come along.

Kirchner: Wow.

Mandel: Did not. The guys like Alex North, David Raksin, Hugo Friedhofer, they were very enthusiastic, but the real old bunch - you know I was one of the interlopers, they didn't care to know about people like Hank Mancini and me in the late 50s, -not yet.

Kirchner: The irony was that that same year was the year that Mancini started doing the “Peter Gunn” scores for television.

Mandel: He was doing Peter Gunn the same time I did, “I Want to Live!” 

Kirchner: And how much did that really crack the ice as far as jazz oriented writing? 

Mandel: Helped a whole lot, it really did. Hank was very good with it too. 

Kirchner: Yeah, your writing especially for, “I Want to Live!” was a lot darker in tone. 

Mandel: Well the movie was a lot darker. 

Kirchner: Yeah. 

Mandel: That's why. 

Kirchner: I remember the...

Mandel: I don't by nature write dark music, I tend to like happy music and/or soulful music, but I don't really like - that's another reason I don't particularly like movies and doing movies and I won't do background anymore cause I don't want to write — I don't like violence, I'm very, very opposed to it and I had just written too much music for violent scenes and I didn't want to be part of it, I don't want to be part of it anymore. So, I don't tend to write dark music just when I'm writing music at all, I don't dwell on that, it's probably one reason I never liked minor music in the beginning. I'm much more neutral about it now, I figured whatever it is that you need and you use and whatever it takes — you know tonalities and modes are really nothing more than another set of tools like whatever instruments you use or something like that and however you can best express the emotion you are trying to express that's what you use. But when I was a kid, for some reason I just didn't like the darkness of minor, I never liked it. But now I don't feel that way, after all a lot of my songs are in minor, "Close Enough for Love," songs like that but I -you know, "The Shadow [of Your Smile]," even starts off like that, you know what I always get into major on them, 'cause I find I like major music much better just naturally.

Kirchner: There's some very interesting colors I just wanted to talk about in passing and for certain segments of the score for, “I Want to Live!” like there's one segment where it's an all percussion thing.

Mandel: Oh yeah, that was a chase, that was when they were arresting her... when they finally caught up with her. I thought it was about a seven minute cue and I thought it worked very nicely because it provided the momentum that we needed for that whole thing, to get you through that chase. You know the whole idea with the chase is to move a scene along and to gear you emotionally for whatever has to happen. I don't mean telegraphing though, I think that's one of the things in scoring I hate the most is telegraphing scenes, showing what's going to happen like they used to do in the old days. You knew who the villain was before he ever walked on the screen because of the music.

Kirchner: Diminished chord.

Mandel: Yeah, I don't, I never liked doing that. I'd much rather shock if necessary than try and telegraph something, but a lot of producers, particularly some of the very young ones and some of the old-fashioned ones insist that you do that. They want to make sure the people get it, believe me the people get it, people are pretty good about getting it, they are a lot more intelligent than some-of-the-people who make movies think they are.

Kirchner: Yeah, we'll have to talk more about that later on.

Mandel: Okay.

Kirchner: We can talk about Hummers and things like that.

Mandel: Oh, all that stuff, yeah.

Kirchner: So you said you were hired to do the score because of Jack Lewis.

Mandel: Um-hm, yeah.

Kirchner: So at that time I gather that you weren't really consciously pushing for a film writing career.

Mandel: I wasn't, I wasn't, I did everything else in this business first, before I did movies and I just kind of backed into them rather than was out there rushing for them and I was, you know, I was happy doing what I was doing.

Kirchner: So how much did this advance your career as a film writer or your desire to do it or the doors opening for you to do more of it?

Mandel: The doors didn't open again until the early 60s, you know 1963, '64, '65, then they opened wide but I had to wait five years. Then after that I did a couple of B pictures like, “The 3rd Voice,” I didn't enjoy them, I didn't realize I'd started off with a great picture, great cast, great crew, wonderful producer who was Walter Wanger, and a marvelous director who was very kind, who was Robert Wise. And they encouraged me and I thought, wow, I like this, this is great and then I discovered it wasn't like that out there, at all like that out there.

Kirchner: You might want, just for the benefit of people listening to it, would you mind just talking about the actual process of once you are hired to do a score, what goes down between you and the producer and director.

Mandel: Well generally speaking, let's say that there is no pre recording, you don't have to record any music say before the picture is shot, and you only have to do that in case something is visually sung or danced, or played on the screen, you have to record the music first before it's shot. Let's assume that isn't the case, generally I like being brought in as early as I can be brought in but very often they don't bring you in until the picture is finished, or they're into what they call a rough cut, you know, an assemblage of all the footage. It may be over length and it might be a very rough assemblage but it's an assemblage - so you can get some idea of what the story's about and the whole thing. And, I like to quite honestly, you know I'll talk to the producer and talk to the director but before I make any musical opinions I like to watch the film by myself, not with anyone. And I like to run the film once or twice in the projection room and maybe make some notes. Maybe not just go for an overall feeling and then I'll make notes and then I'll go to the director and tell him what I think and how I feel about what I've seen. Because, I believe that the first impression is terribly important, that's actually the impression any audience is gonna get and if they don't like the film they may not see it more than once so rather than talk about the film and get my head filled with a lot of stuff by the producer and director which may or may not be important 'cause you gotta realize they've been probably living with the film for over a year and the most valuable thing I can give them is a fresh look by just coming in new and watching it at the stage they're at. 

So what I like to do is form ideas pretty much before, then I have something to talk to the director about. So, that's how I like to proceed, then when we start talking the general procedure is we decide where music should begin, where it should end, which is a process called spotting, we spot where music will be in the film. 

Then the kind of music it should call for, what we're playing that scene for, why is there even music in that scene and that's when it's sometimes you have to be a little diplomatic because the scene might quite honestly not work and so they want music in there to prop it up, sort of like a splint or a suture or something but the game of course is that you don't really tell them that because there's no point in it. 

They'll either want you off the film or it's gonna mess up your relationship for working on the film for the rest of the time. You know, you try to be diplomatic and say, "well it could use a little help here," and that sort of thing but generally speaking if you're not into that kind of B.S., it's what you do is decide constructively where music should be and once you've decided all that sort of thing and the kind of music you want to use, maybe even talk about instruments or something if there's a particular type of character you want to use, like if there's any kind of a Mediterranean influence of Greek or something like that you might want to use native instruments like a bouzouki or something like that. 

But whatever it is, once you've got that information you sit with the music editor and what a music editor is, he doesn't edit music per se, he's your liaison between the composer and the editor of the movie and the director. And he takes the information as to when it starts, when it stops and gives you a written breakdown of everything that's going on in the screen, timed to the thirtieth of a second and that's what I write from. 

I mean you see it broken down in seconds... actually the tenth of a second not a thirtieth of a second, some guys like to do thirds of seconds rather, I like to do tenths it's a little bit more precise. And the whole thing with - there's a lot of math involved in movie music but the trick is to make nobody aware of the fact of what you're doing you know, that you're computing the music. You don't write the music mathematically at least I don't, but you compute as to where you want to go and how fast you want to get there and where you want to be when you get there. 

Like say there's an important part in the music, let's say it's a three and a half minute piece and somewhere, two minutes and ten seconds, there's some kind of a place where you need a climax in that section of music, so you plot your way to the two minutes and ten seconds and you work your way backwards. You figure out where you want to be and work your way backwards to the beginning and that's the way you sort of lay it out. And I'll write the music and orchestrate the music and will go in and conduct the music to the screen with various visual guides. We're watching the picture while we're recording the music with the orchestra. And if things work out nicely, one of the most pleasant experiences for everyone concerned during the making of the movie is when you marry everything; the music, sound effects and the dialogue. But putting the music in is one of the things normally that a director can often get the greatest pleasure out of. So, that's sort of the working procedure.

Kirchner: Let's talk a little about orchestrating because it's common knowledge that even the most skillfully skillful orchestrators often have to bring in help for orchestrating just because of the time constraints.”

To be continued in Part 3