Penelope/Bachelor In
Paradise (Limited Edition CD Set)
Sound: B Music:
B (both scores)
Silly as they may be, the lite sex comedies of the
early-to-mid 1960s actually had giddy and smart scoring, something the recent Down
With Love remembered. The FSM music
label of Film Score Monthly Magazine has issued a double set of two of the more
obscure, yet interesting. Penelope
is Johnny (John) Williams’ score for the 1966 sex/heist comedy with Natalie
Wood, Ian Bannen, Peter Falk and (very briefly) Jonathan Winters in which Miss
Wood may have looked good, but the film was as thin in story as a dollar
bill. Bachelor In Paradise is
Henry Mancini’s score for the latter-day Bob Hope comedy from 1961 in which he
is the last of the title breed, being between Lana Turner, Janis Paige and
website favorite Paula Prentiss.
Both were big A-film releases with big and upcoming stars,
but outside of now being curios at best, their music and the fact that they
were both shot in scope and color to lure audiences away from TV (Panavision
for Penelope, later CinemaScope for Bachelor In Paradise), they
both also serve as reminders of how much of the studio system was left to even
make this lite fare of a higher quality than we would get today. The purpose of pairing the scores for FSM is
to show how Williams would soon be Mancini’s successor in some way as the
composer people who knew little about film music knew best for general film
scoring. Sure, Bernard Herrmann, Jerry
Goldsmith and John Barry were popular, but these men were known for a certain
sense of Americana. Some would even
stereotype them as such, though both have also done some very smart, complex
scoring for film classics. Williams has
worked with Woody Allen and Brian De Palma, while Mancini’s scores for Charade,
Experiment In Fear and Arabesque are underrated in their quality
and influence.
The Penelope disc offers a whopping 30 tracks
running at about 80 minutes, with two versions of the score of the film, plus
additional material at the end of CD 2 running over 10 more minutes. First is the debut of the music from the
film itself, the soundtrack heard on the film instead of the MGM Records album
rerecording, which is the second half of CD 1.
However, the album version has Wood singing The Sun Is Gray, a really
good song written by singer Gale Garnett, known for her big solo hit We’ll
Sing In The Sunshine. She also did
the female lead voice for Mad Monster Party, also available as a
soundtrack from Film Score Monthly (all of which can be ordered at www.filmscoremonthly.com) and
reviewed elsewhere on this site with the DVD version. Two more versions of the song appear on CD 2.
Bachelor In Paradise also debuts here from
the original film audio release materials and has some of the spirit of his
best work at the time. This is more
typical of the whimsy of such productions and will remind one of the “Screen
Gems” aesthetic of early live-action cartoon (think TV’s Bewitched) as
both films from this CD set have animated credit sequences as well. Maybe this was a device to push the idea of
color, even MetroColor, which could look really good when done right. It also indicates its aim towards a
female/family audience. Both like using
their theme song as a motif to return to, in an almost “Mickey Mousing” way,
but the overall scores offer much more.
Mancini also does some covers of older standards from the MGM catalog,
Musical and otherwise, though this film has no real singing or dancing.
The PCM CD 2.0 16Bit/44.1kHz sound is stereo in almost all
cases, which makes sense for films competing against TV, though a few tracks
are monophonic and the album version of Penelope lacks some of the depth
of the original recording. There is
also some slight distortion in the Bachelor In Paradise tracks here and
there. However, they sound really good
for their age otherwise and playback is overall impressive for the most
part. It is certainly better than the
DVDs are likely to sound if they ever get issued.
For Hollywood music fans, this will be a particular treat,
especially since neither film is out on DVD and so much of this is debut
material outside of the films. There is
also the usual stellar FSM booklet with great stills and archival information
that always makes a great read.
However, this is one of FSM’s rare double sets and is limited to only
3,000 pressings, so you may want to go to the weblink above and inquire about
ordering it and other great soundtracks while supplies last.
- Nicholas Sheffo
