Recent discovery: Band of Thieves

This droll 1962 British item is a 69-minute music video disguised as a film.

That’s overstating the case, but not by much. The Lyn Fairhurst/Harold Shampan script is a threadbare excuse for a dozen lengthy “live” (diegetic) performances by clarinetist/vocalist Acker Bilk and his Paramount Jazz Band, as the modest story proceeds.

 

Bernard Stanley “Acker” Bilk and his combos were known for “trad jazz,” a popular 1950s and ’60s British offshoot of American Dixieland. (The major difference between the two is Dixieland’s use of “collective improvisation.” Instead of granting each musician individual solos, Dixieland draws on the specificity of each instrument to create a single unique and harmonious sound.) Bilk’s instrumental hit, “Stranger on the Shore” became the UK’s best-selling single of 1962, spending 55 weeks on the UK charts; it also became the second No. 1 single in the States by a British artist. Given Bilk’s popularity — enhanced by his signature goatee, bowler hat and striped waistcoat — it’s no surprise that a feature film would be crafted around his talents. He certainly couldn’t have dreamed of a better showcase.

 

In terms of cinematic history, this film is noteworthy as the second feature boasting cinematography by Nicolas Roeg, who’d later trade his camera for the director’s chair after helming three consecutive hits in the early 1970s: Performance, Walkabout and Don’t Look Now.

Spotlight on Peter Gunn and Mr. Lucky

Film music journalist/historian Jon Burlingame has been an invaluable resource over the years; he’s also a thoroughly entertaining writer. I’ve long followed his Los Angeles Times and Daily Variety articles, and I often refer to his books: 1996’s TV’s Biggest Hits, updated and expanded last year, as Music for Prime Time; and 2012’s The Music of James Bond.

His just-published newest book is the perfect topic for this post: Dreamsville: Henry Mancini, Peter Gunn and Music for TV Noir. Had it existed while I was working on my crime/spy jazz project, it would’ve been footnoted extensively in the first volume’s Chapter 2. 

 

Jon was gracious enough to spend nearly an hour discussing what led to this book, at this particular point in time. After all, we’re talking about two TV shows — Peter Gunn and Mr. Lucky — that are more than six decades old. Aside from creator/producer/director/writer Blake Edwards, they also share a second, equally important individual: Mancini. The impact his music had on that show — and on TV and film scoring at that time, and later — cannot be overstated.

 

That became the obvious starting point for our chat.

 

“I’ve been a fan of Peter Gunn dating back to my childhood, via early 1960s reruns,” Jon explained. “When I got older, and moved to Los Angeles for work reasons in 1986, I discovered that the show was running five days a week on local television. I was thrilled, and started recording them. (This was long before they were commercially available on DVD.) I’ve also been a Mancini fan, dating back to the 1960s. I later had the opportunity to interview him and Blake Edwards, when I was writing regularly for the Los Angeles Times, in the late 1990s and early 2000s. 

 

“I wanted to contribute something to the Mancini Centennial, which is this year. I knew that two solid books on Mancini’s life and career already existed: his 1989 autobiography, Did They Mention the Music?; and John Caps’ excellent 2012 book, Henry Mancini: Reinventing Film Music. What was missing, though, was an in-depth look at that three-year period from 1958 to 1961, which became the launching pad for Mancini and his entire career. He and Edwards formed such a solid bond that Edwards essentially made Mancini his in-house composer for the rest of his career. 

 

“That period also led to Mancini’s big-screen success with “Moon River,” “Days of Wine and Roses,” “The Pink Panther,” “The Baby Elephant Walk” and all manner of other hits during the 1960s and ’70s. So I thought that a book focused on that three-year period, with Peter Gunn and Mr. Lucky, was worth doing.

 

“Besides,” Jon added, with a chuckle, “at my age, I didn’t want to write a book that I wouldn’t have fun with, and I knew this would be fun to write ... and it was.

“Actually, the research was more fun than the writing!”

 

Jon’s prose is engaging, as always, but I’m also impressed by the wealth of detailed information.

 

“The book is designed to satisfy two different constituencies,” Jon admitted. “First, it’s a ‘TV book’ about two shows, so I felt obliged to write about every episode of both shows, listing director, writer, guest cast and a little bit about the plot. 

 

“The second constituency is music fans, and/or people interested in Mancini, and his career. As a result, it was important — to me — to single out the musicians who played on all those shows. Luckily, it was mostly the same guys who played on every episode of both: Ronnie Lang, Gene Cipriano, Bob Bain, Ted Nash, Pete Candoli, Dick Nash, John(ny) Williams and others ... a real Who’s Who of late 1950s West Coast jazz.”

Recent discovery: Four Boys and a Gun

Despite a varied and extremely busy film scoring career that stretched from 1941’s Under Fiesta Stars to 1972’s The Cremators, Albert Glasser (1916-98) is best known these days for the bombastic scores he delivered for low-rent 1950s “creature features” such as Monster from Green Hell, Beginning of the End, The Amazing Colossal Man and The Spider, among many others. He was remarkably prolific during that period, scoring 15 films (!) in 1957, and 10 in ‘58.

Glasser doesn’t immediately come to mind, when contemplating jazz scores ... and to be candid, he didn’t occur to me at all, during the five years spent producing my two-volume survey of crime and spy jazz. But a friend recently alerted me to Kronos Records’ just-released soundtrack album of Glasser’s score for 1958’s Cop Hater, described as containing “...both big orchestral moments [and] more jazzy and big band swing style tunes.” I deem the latter claim an overstatement; having just watched that film; the non-diegetic score is pure orchestral melodrama. The very few jazz touches are brief source cues in bars and nightclubs. 

 

(Cop Hater was the first of a trio of films based on the first three 87th Precinct novels by Ed McBain, aka Evan Hunter, née Salvatore Albert Lombino. It was followed by The Mugger, that same year, and 1960’s The Pusher. Glasser also scored the second one, which has a touch more jazz, but again solely as brief source cues.)

 

Even so, my curiosity was piqued ... and a bit of research revealed that Glasser delivered terrific big band jazz scores for a couple of atmospheric B-films, the first of which is this 1957 noir drama of young men gone terribly astray. As was typical of publicity art at the time, the posters and lobby cards were hilariously lurid: “These kids are going straight to the electric chair!”

 

Director William Berke and his scripters — Leo Townsend and Philip Yordan — based their moody, 74-minute character study on Willard Wiener’s 1944 novel of the same title. The film opens as four young men — Ollie (Frank Sutton), Eddie (Tarry Green), Johnny (James Franciscus) and Stanley (Bill Hinnant) — rob a boxing arena ticket office: an impulsive crime that goes awry when a policeman is shot and killed. The lads are quickly arrested, and then confronted by a district attorney (Otto Hulett) who gravely insists that the killer will “go to the chair,” while the other three will serve 10 years in prison. The story’s gimmick is that three of the boys — and we viewers — have no idea who pulled the trigger. The bulk of the film subsequently delivers flashbacks that depict what drove each of them to commit the crime, followed by the final “big reveal” and a mildly clever twist conclusion.

 

Despite its humble production values, Berke’s film is laden with stars on the rise. Franciscus debuted here, and went on to an extremely busy film and television career, most notably in TV’s Mr. Novak and Longstreet, and popular features such as Beneath the Planet of the Apes and One of My Wives Is Missing. This also marked Hinnant’s acting debut, and he’s best remembered as the original Snoopy in the 1967 off-Broadway production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown: a role he reprised in 1973’s Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation of that play. Sutton already had a string of credits dating back to 1949, but he remains best remembered for his iconic role as the harried Sgt. Carter in television’s Gomer Pyle: USMC. Bit parts are filled by soon-to-be-familiar faces such as Ned Glass, J. Pat O’Malley, Diana Sands and Joseph Campanella.

Glasser assembled an impressive roster of 20 musicians known to include four trumpets, four trombones, five saxes and a rhythm section of piano, bass and drums. The full personnel list is lost to the mists of time, but Glasser recalled working with Maynard Ferguson, Rafael Méndez and Jerry Rosen (trumpets), Clyde “Stumpy” Brown and Murray McEachern (trombones), and Calvin Jackson (piano). Shorty Rogers handled the jazz arrangements, all of which are solid ... but Glasser’s frequent repetition of the film’s title theme eventually becomes monotonous.

 

That theme is introduced ominously as the film begins, with unison horns delivering a forceful stinger, rising up the scale, as each “boy” is introduced on screen. After holding briefly on the final note, the band slides into the bluesy main theme, with a repeating 1-2-1-1-4-2/1-2-1-1-4-1 motif. The title credits splash onto the screen as, behind them, the boys are seen approaching the boxing arena. Silence descends while the robbery goes down; Johnny and Stanley stand watch, while Ollie and Eddie beat up the ticket office clerk and snatch the cash. Two cops show up on routine patrol; tension builds as the quartet wait for them to move along. Alas, the clerk sounds the alarm, and one of the cops is killed when shots are exchanged. Glasser swings into a double-time echo of the title tune as the boys flee in different directions; Johnny, shot in one leg, collapses in front of a church.

Ollie “casually” enters a bar and picks up a woman as Glasser delivers a slow, sultry cue; they return to her apartment, where a sassy, up-tempo arrangement of the title theme is heard on her radio. But Ollie’s behavior makes the woman suspicious; she sends him to a nearby store for liquor, and calls the police during his absence. An unsettling, melodramatic cue backs Ollie’s return, just in time to be snatched by the cops. The music shifts to mournful blues as each of the other boys is arrested in turn: Eddie; then Johnny, in a hospital bed; and Stanley, at home, to the mortification of his parents.

 

When gathered in an interrogation room, the boys are left alone to “work it out,” after the district attorney’s grim promise. The scene then flashes back a few days, to when Eddie is employed as a driver for a trucking firm; Glasser supplies some lively “traveling jazz” during a typical run, with Johnny along for company. Alas, Eddie is sweet on the firm’s secretary (Diane Herbert), but she has a gold-digger’s preference for the boss. The music turns sultry as Eddie does his best to woo her, only to be rebuffed — twice! — at which point he loses his temper and punches the boss.

 

And is immediately fired. 

 

Shortly thereafter, Eddie laments his fate with Stanley, as the two shoot pool and drink beer in a borrowed auditorium the quartet has dubbed The Dandelion Room. Lively jump jazz — tasty interplay between Jackson’s keyboard and unison horns — is heard from an unseen radio or turntable.

 

The next flashback focuses on Ollie, the most aggressive of the group, who works as a runner for bookie Joe Barton (Robert Dryden). Unfortunately — and stupidly — Ollie has “borrowed” $300, which he has spent on lavish gifts for his girlfriend, Sophie (Nancy Devlin), who happens to be Eddie’s younger sister. A quiet moment between these two lovers is backed by gentle strings and a mournful solo horn.

 

Ollie and the others later convene at The Dandelion, only to discover that their landlord (Ned Glass) has rented it out to another gang, which intends to use it for a fund-raising sock hop. Ollie and his friends aren’t about to tolerate these interlopers, and chase them away after a brawl set against a raucous big band reprise of the title theme. Our quartet realizes that hosting a door-charge dance would be a great way to raise enough money for Ollie to settle his debt with Barton. First, though, Ollie is summoned by the gangster, who knows full well that the young man has been shorting the weekly take. Ollie is “rewarded” for this indiscretion by being pummeled by Barton’s two henchmen, while another up-tempo arrangement of the title theme is heard on a nearby radio. (That’s apparently the only tune being played, at every moment, by every radio station in the city!)

 

The subsequent dance, with couples filling the auditorium, features a series of live Dixieland numbers by Stanley Rubin and his Tigertown Five (sidemen unidentified); Rubin delivers the vocal on a rendition of “I’ll Never Get Mad Again.” During the dance, Sophie tells the forlorn, nerdish Stanley — who desperately wants a girlfriend — that “A guy has to be good-lookin’ ... or have some money.” After a pause, during which she scrutinizes him, she concludes, “You’d better get some money.” (Ouch!)

 

Although the boys bring in a respectable amount of money, the fix is in; two of Barton’s men steal the gate. This setback unfolds against yet another lively rendition of the title theme, boasting sassy trombone and sax solos.

The next flashback shifts first to Stanley’s morose home life, where he cannot live up to his parents’ expectations: a scene backed by mournful strings and a forlorn solo horn. Elsewhere, similarly despondent strings are heard behind an initially happy moment between Johnny and his pregnant wife ... but the mood darkens when she confesses how much she hates his boxing career. Meanwhile, Stanley has caught up with Ollie and Eddie; the three of them behave very badly at a fancy restaurant — which features an improbable bongo band and a barely dressed female dancer — and later beat up a cabby and stiff him on the fare. By this point, it has become clear: Ollie and Eddie are malevolent, opportunistic thugs.

 

Johnny gets the final flashback; he’s definitely the most moral of this quartet. But his better nature goes south when, after winning an important amateur title bout, his manager (O’Malley) lets him go with nothing but a tin trophy and shattered dreams of what he could have earned during a subsequent boxing career. A slow, doleful jazz cue is heard when the four friends gather across the street from the boxing arena, and gradually work up the nerve to steal the night’s take; this takes us back to where the film began.

 

Fast-cut to the interrogation room: After the DA departs, a sad solo horn is heard as the four young men squabble among themselves. The shooter’s identity is revealed, but — in a way — they’re all guilty. They attempt to choose who heads for execution by throwing dice, but that just causes more arguing and anguish. Their ultimate decision — something of a surprise, particularly to the DA — comes against a portentous orchestral cue; it builds to an intense climax as the end credits appear. Fade to black.

No soundtrack album appeared alongside the film’s release, and the score remained unavailable until the arrival of The Albert Glasser Collection: Volume 3, in May 2023; the disc also features the score for 1957’s Street of Sinners. The 15 tracks for Four Boys cover the full score, and several cues run longer than what is heard in the film. (The music by Stanley Rubin and his Tigertown Five is not included.) A 16th track finds an animated Glasser briefly reminiscing about what he can recall of this assignment. 

Soundtrack updates

Thanks to the ongoing efforts of labels that specialize in soundtracks — and the fans who purchase their products, thereby maintaining the pipeline — quite a few scores have received enhanced treatment since my two books came out in April 2020.

Taking them in the order of release...

 

Music Box Records released an expanded version of Philippe Sarde’s score for 1977’s Mort d’un Pourri (Death of a Corrupt Man) in June 2022. The music is noteworthy for the contributions by famed saxman Stan Getz, who was paid a singular honor by director Georges Lautner: The film opens on a silhouette of Getz, while he delivers an elegant solo version of the film’s haunting primary theme.

 

The original soundtrack album had a dozen tracks; this new Music Box release has 19, all fully remastered from hi-res transfers of the original stereo mixes. Another bonus: Gérard Dastugue’s new liner notes include commentary by Sarde. The original album was already excellent; this new disc is sensational.

 

A very unexpected entry was found in the September 2022 release of Goldsmith at 20th, Volume V, which at first blush doesn’t seem to belong here. But a treat is hidden among this fifth anthology of Jerry Goldsmith’s scores for 20th Century Fox: four tasty jazz tracks from Nick Quarry, a proposed private-eye TV series starring Tony Scotti. As Jon Burlingame explains in his detailed essay, the series was to be based loosely on 1967’s big-screen Tony Rome, the first of Frank Sinatra’s two cracks at that character.

But director Walter Grauman — who had helmed pilots for The Fugitive and Honey West, among others — wasn’t allowed to shoot a legitimate test episode. As Burlingame notes, the 15-minute “presentation film” was just a series of action sequences; Goldsmith supplied slightly more than 10 minutes of music as a favor to Fox music director Lionel Newman. The cues are strongly in the vein of Goldsmith’s Our Man Flint/In Like Flint scores, with plenty of jazz/rock swagger.

 

Riz Ortolani’s energetic jazz/pop score was by far the best part of 1967’s Tiffany Memorandum, which often was the case with the countless low-rent Eurospy entries unleashed by Italian filmmakers determined to cash in on the James Bond craze. It’s therefore ironic that Ortolani’s music was treated so shabbily; decades passed before four tracks were included on the 1996 anthology album Beat at Cinecittà. Fans got a bit more the following year, when nine tracks appeared on an Ortolani compilation album.

Beat Records’ November 2022 release finally features Ortolani’s full score: 22 tracks running just over 55 minutes. The earlier titled tracks are blended with studio session takes simply titled “Tiffany Sequence M8,” “Tiffany Sequence M22” and so forth. All I can say is, It’s damn well about time.

 

This next entry isn’t a soundtrack, but nonetheless warrants mention. In July 2023, not quite a decade after a three-day Man from U.N.C.L.E. convention — cheekily dubbed The Golden Anniversary Affair — took place in late September 2014, Arena Records released a recording of the live jazz concert that highlighted the final evening. Burlingame was present, of course — after all, he worked hard on Film Score Monthly’s four original soundtrack sets of U.N.C.L.E.music — and his brief liner notes for The Jazz from U.N.C.L.E. detail how he and convention organizer Robert Short chose the cues that would be performed by (wink-wink, nudge-nudge) The Summit Six Sextet: Steve Rosenblum, sax; David Lamont, flute; Dave Iwataki, keyboards; Yu Ooka, guitar; Nedra Wheeler, bass; and Dean Koba, drums. 

 The resulting concert clearly delighted the convention attendees, who enjoyed lively covers of iconic cues by Jerry Goldsmith, Lalo Schifrin, Gerald Fried and Robert Drasnin: “Meet Mr. Solo,” “Roulette Rhumba,” “Dog Fight on Wheels,” “There They Go” and many others (including, yes, the memorable title theme). For those of us who couldn’t be there, this album is the next best thing.

 

John Barry’s bluesy, brooding score for 1982’s Hammett perfectly suited the noir conceit of placing a mystery writer — in this case, Samuel Dashiell Hammett — into his own hard-boiled investigation. Barry’s music is very much in the vein of what he did for 1981’s Body Heat, and he was quite fond of what he did on Hammett. “I loved doing [it],” he told Ford Thaxton in 2001. “That was a terrific movie.” (I agree with that appraisal, but the public didn’t; the film withered on the vine.)

The original Prometheus Records release was spare, with 10 score tracks and an eight-track “Suite” of source cues. Silva Screen’s July 2023 update features more of both, for a total of 25 tracks: many of which — such as “Hammett Meets Salt”/“Suicide Is Fascinating”/“I’m Calling It In” — are built from multiple cues. The result is a much richer listening experience.

 

1966’s handsomely mounted Agent 505: Todesfalle Beirut (Agent 505: Death Trap in Beirut, From Beirut with Loveand several other alternate titles) follows the 007 template better than most Italian Eurospy entries, although the plot is ridiculous. Even so, the action is well paced, and Ennio Morricone’s jazz-inflected score — one of his very few spy-fy assignments — gives the film additional bounce. Morricone eliminated strings entirely, relying instead on brass stingers, moody organ touches and a pulsating rhythm section: just right for a story that blends spyjinks with a touch of science-fiction (a means of magically transforming desert sand dunes into arable farmland?).

Despite Morricone’s popularity, a soundtrack album didn’t appear until 2007, with 14 tracks paired with his score for 1963’s Il Successo. Beat Records’ October 2023 update, under yet another title — La Trappola Scatta a Beirut, also combined with Il Successo — doesn’t add any previously unreleased tracks; even so, the audio quality — taken from the mono master tapes of the original sessions — is a notable improvement.

 

Finally, 1992’s Sneakers is a seriously under-appreciated heist thriller with an all-star cast — Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, Dan Aykroyd, David Strathairn and River Phoenix — backed by a whimsical James Horner jazz score that perfectly complements the film’s breezy tone and character banter. The icing on the cake: Branford Marsalis’ effervescent tenor sax. Jazz fans also got to enjoy bits of classic tracks as diegetic cues: Miles Davis’ “Flamenco Sketches” and Charlie Byrd’s covers of “The Girl from Ipanema” and “Corcovado” (none of which landed on the soundtrack album).

The original Columbia album was okay, but its 10 tracks — at 48:27 — didn’t come close to supplying all of Horner’s lovely, wall-to-wall score; a widely circulating 24-track bootleg was far more satisfying. La-La Land’s December 2023 two-disc expansion is better still: 21 tracks totaling 73:24 on the first disc, with three alternate takes accompanying the original album tracks on the second disc.

As the saying goes, Good things come to those who wait (patiently or otherwise...!). 

Recent discovery: Blue Ice

Michael Caine was born to star in spy thrillers, which became obvious during his career-making portrayal of Len Deighton’s Harry Palmer, in The Ipcress File. (Deighton’s protagonist actually remains unnamed in his 1962 novel and its six sequels. But film audiences expect characters to have names, so Caine and producer Harry Saltzman came up with a moniker that they felt was boring and ordinary, like the man himself.)

 

Director Russell Mulcahy’s Blue Ice (1992) doesn’t come close to that 1965 classic, but Michael Caine’s suave presence makes this modest entry reasonably palatable for undiscriminating viewers, who’ll nonetheless raise their eyebrows over the numerous contrivances in Ted Allbeury and Ron Hutchinson’s script. This is must-see viewing for our purposes, however, because the film spends considerable time in the jazz club run by Caine’s character, Harry Anders. Mulcahy devotes generous footage, half a dozen times, to the high-octane swing performed by the club’s resident septet: Gerald Presencer, trumpet; Peter King, alto sax; Steve Williamson, tenor sax; Bobby Short, pianist and vocalist; Anthony Kerr, vibes; Dave Green, bass; and Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts. Short also has a sizeable supporting role as one of Anders’ friends, Buddy.

 

Following a prologue that finds a guy taking photos near London’s Tower Bridge, while being watched by those inside a suspicious-looking red van, the opening credits conclude as Harry drives his posh Jaguar through London’s Piccadilly Circus region. He pops a CD into the car player, which delivers some tasty big band swing when he pauses for a red light. Stacy Mansdorf (Sean Young), driving the car behind him, is distracted by a phone call from the fellow taking pictures — former boyfriend Kyle (Todd Boyce), we later learn — and crashes gently into Harry’s car. 

 

The damage is minimal, but Harry is nonetheless apoplectic — it’s a Jag, for God’s sake! — and he gets even angrier when she blows him off and speeds away. Harry gives chase, against a peppy jazz cue by soundtrack composer Michael Kamen, and pulls alongside when she finally parks. Harry’s fury melts (a bit of a stretch) in the face of Stacy’s coquettish nonchalance; when she suggests continuing their “conversation” over a drink, he naturally takes her to his bar (not yet open for the evening trade). They exchange come-hither glances and flirty banter while Buddy, accompanying himself on solo piano, croons the Ian Grant/Lionel Rand classic “Let There Be Love,” made famous by Nat King Cole.

Stacy hangs around long enough to enjoy a double-time sizzler by the club septet, and over the next few days becomes a frequent presence at Harry’s side. The affair turns serious when he takes her to his apartment, above the bar; he cooks an elaborate dinner while soft quartet jazz emanates from his stereo system. Alas, the meal remains uneaten when they make love for the first time; Kamen backs this with a soft, sexy sax cue. Subsequently learning that Stacy is married to the American ambassador to England raises Harry’s eyebrows, but doesn’t interfere with the affair. (That said, we viewers wonder what else she’s concealing, and why the hell Harry is being so dense.)

 

Turns out Stacy has “a problem” — what a surprise! — and needs a favor. Former boyfriend Kyle has some “indelicate letters” that she’d like retrieved, lest their public exposure embarrass her husband … and she has no idea where Kyle is. Harry, retired from MI6, cheerfully agrees to track him down. He and longtime cop buddy Osgood (Alun Armstrong) confer in the club one evening — against more swinging sounds from the resident septet — and, soon enough, Osgood locates the guy. Alas, Harry shows up and finds Kyle and Osgood dead; worse yet, Kyle is revealed as an undercover cop, and Harry is arrested for both murders. He has unwittingly stepped into a hornet’s nest that involves dire doings by either clandestine American agents or bent MI6 operatives; he can’t tell which. Stacy pulls strings and gets Harry freed from jail; he returns to his club, flummoxed, to find Buddy accompanying himself on a soulful reading of Ted Koehler and Rube Bloom’s “Don’t Worry ’Bout Me” (a 1938 classic covered by everybody from Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, to Frank Sinatra and Joni Mitchell).

 

Feeling the need for higher-level assistance, Harry looks up former MI6 buddy Sam Garcia (Bob Hoskins), now working as a security consultant for upper-echelon aristocrats and government officials. Poor Sam doesn’t last long, and is executed while Harry is drugged and tortured for information by a mid-level MI6 operative — Jack Shepherd, as Stevens — during a weirdly overcooked, laughably disorienting sequence set to discordant free jazz. Trouble is, Harry genuinely doesn’t know anything … at least, not yet. His rage, upon learning of Sam’s murder, goes into hyperdrive when summoned for a dressing-down by condescending former boss Sir Hector (Ian Holm), who orders Harry to “drop it.” (Like hell.)

Revelation comes when Stacy finally shares the information Kyle gave her, during the phone call that prompted her to rear-end Harry’s Jag. (Like, what has she been waiting for???) Another sensual sax cue backs their lusty round of shower sex, after which we race into a truly ridiculous climax amid the hundreds of stacked containers awaiting shipment from the Port of London Authority, along the River Thames. The true villain is revealed, to nobody’s surprise.

 

Final scenes include a visit to the hospital, where Buddy is recuperating from his wounds. (Did I neglect to mention that Harry’s club was bombed?) Harry and Stacy find him serenading fellow patients on the ward piano, while singing another torch standard: Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer’s “This Time the Dream’s On Me.” Alas, Stacy’s husband has been recalled to the States, so they part in the manner Harry promised, back when their affair began: toasting each other with champagne, against a mournful sax cue.

Bobby Short gets one more solo, during the first half of the lengthy end credits: Brooks Bowman’s “East of the Sun (and West of the Moon).” The club septet roars through a final blast of jump jazz during the credits’ concluding half.

 

Mulcahy insisted otherwise, during a 2016 interview, when asked if Caine’s Harry Palmer films had influenced Blue Ice. He was being disingenuous; Allbeury and Hutchinson’s script feels like a Palmer thriller in all but name. Both Palmer and Anders are jazz fans and accomplished cooks, and are insolent in the face of authority. Both ultimately are betrayed by an MI6 superior. Most tellingly, this film’s interrogation sequence strongly evokes a near-identical bit of torture in The Ipcress File. 

No soundtrack album was produced, although a couple of the Peter King originals performed by the club septet — “One for Sir Bernard” and “Blues for S.J.” — can be found on his albums. Charlie Parker’s “Perdido” and the Pete Thomas Quintet’s “Blue Bop” also are covered by the septet.

Recent discovery: Face the Music

I’m willing to bet that no other film has turned a jazz trumpet player into an amateur sleuth.

During the decade before the innovatively gruesome Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958) prompted Britain’s Hammer Films to embrace horror and science fiction more aggressively, the studio was better known for a string of crime, detective and film noir thrillers. Most were modest, bottom-of-the-bill programmers, such as The Rossiter Case (1951), Stolen Face (1952) and The Glass Cage (1955), although the roster also included popular serial character entries such as Dick Barton: Special Agent (1948), Whispering Smith Hits London (1951) and even The Saint’s Return (1953).

 

1954’s Face the Music is an early effort by indefatigable director Terrence Fisher — he helmed 15 movies between 1952 and ’54! — a few years before he became better known for gory revivals of vampires, werewolves, ancient mummies and Frankenstein’s monster. German crime writer Ernest Bornemann adapted this modest thriller from his book of the same title, published the same year. His unusual choice of sleuth is perhaps better understood given Bornemann’s wide-ranging talents; he also was a jazz musician and critic who clearly influenced this film’s wall-to-wall jazz soundtrack. Covers of jazz standards are interlaced with original themes by prolific English composer/conductor Ivor Slaney and celebrated English composer and jazz trumpet, cornet and flugelhorn player Kenny Baker; the latter gets a second screen credit, for “trumpet theme and special arrangements.” Most of the music is diegetic — live performances in concert halls and basement clubs — but jazz cues also creep into the nondiegetic score, most often when our protagonist, in true film noir fashion, supplies background detail and mordant commentary via world-weary voiceovers.

 

A shrill solo trumpet highlights the swinging main theme, heard over the title credits cards; the music continues, uninterrupted, as the final credit (for Fisher) segues to a sold-out Palladium performance by a 15-piece big band and its featured guest star: renowned American trumpeter James “Brad” Bradley (Alec Nicol). Baker “ghosts” all of Brad’s performances throughout the film, and this Palladium band is dominated by members of Kenny Baker’s Dozen, including Harry Klein, baritone sax; Stan Tracey, piano; Joe Mudell, acoustic double bass; and Don Lawson, drums.

 

Brad’s schedule apparently has been punishing. After the performance concludes to thunderous applause, he skips a party organized by his long-suffering manager, Max “Maxie” Margulies (John Salew, overdoing flustered exasperation), intending instead to get a good night’s sleep in his hotel room. But when his cab pauses at an intersection, Brad is distracted by a lovely jazz vocal emanating from a nearby cellar club. Unable to help himself, he dismisses the cab and enters the club, where he finds chanteuse Maxine Halbard (Ann Hanslip) crooning Howard Biggs and Joe Thomas’ “Got You On My Mind,” backed by a sextet that includes Klein and Michael Carreras, trumpet. Brad is so enchanted that he whips out his own trumpet, and begins counterpoint comping behind Maxine’s vocal. She smiles in approval.

 

Once Maxine’s set concludes, they return to her flat. She putters in the kitchen while Brad finds a big band tune on her radio; they then indulge in some flirty word play (definitely the script’s finest moment). Alas, the banter is wasted; Maxine confesses that she has a Canadian boyfriend, at which point Brad honorably departs … while forgetting his trumpet, left behind on the floor, in its case. (Like that would ever happen in real life? No musician would be that sloppy with his prized instrument!)

Finally back in his hotel room, Brad wakes the following morning under the disapproving gaze of Detective Inspector MacKenzie (Fred Johnson) and Detective Sergeant Mulrooney (Martin Boddey). Maxine has been murdered by an unknown party, and Brad’s overlooked trumpet case makes him Suspect No. 1. Following a mild interrogation, MacKenzie nonetheless allows Brad to roam at will, much to Mulrooney’s obvious displeasure. A chance clue leads Brad to a rough Soho cellar club dubbed Underground — “The sort of place you leave horizontally, or not at all,” he muses, in voiceover — where he finds Barbara Quigley (Eleanor Summerfield) crooning “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” backed by solo pianist Johnny Sutherland (Paul Carpenter). Brad foolishly provokes a fist fight; Barbara saves him from even worse treatment by the club’s numerous seedy customers. He then learns that she’s actually Maxine’s sister.

 

Maxine’s murder isn’t the only mystery. Brad soon realizes that the case somehow revolves around a vinyl Gramo Disc single on which she sings Josephine Parker’s “I Got a Man in New Orleans,” backed by — according to the label — pianist Jeff Colt (Arthur Lane). Rather oddly, only two copies were pressed; even stranger, everybody — Sutherland, Colt, and Gramo owner Maurie Green (Geoffrey Keen) — insists that Maxine and Colt never worked together.

 

Brad’s subsequent sleuthing involves a clandestine search of Sutherland’s flat, backed by a mournful trumpet cue; a later after-hours club scene finds Sutherland jamming as part of a sax and drum trio. In between other activities, alone in his hotel room or Palladium dressing room, Brad puzzles out details while pensively playing his trumpet. The eventual breakthrough relies on his sharp-eared ability to recognize a jazz pianist who plays cross-handed (certainly the only time that has been a key clue in a murder mystery!). 

Brad ultimately drags the two detectives and all the suspects into his dressing room, for an Agatha Christie-style, point-by-point recitation that ultimately reveals the killer … just in time for him to join the band on the Palladium stage for that evening’s performance, much to the delight of another packed house that has been chafing over his delayed arrival. Fade to black.

In another example of Hollywood’s then-insufferable — and often bewildering — habit of re-titling British films for American release, Face the Music hit U.S. theaters as The Black Glove … despite the fact that no black glove ever appears in the story.

No soundtrack album was produced, then or now, although two tunes featured in the film — “Melancholy Baby” and “Trumpet Fantasy” — were released by the British Parlophone label as a 1954 10-inch 78RPM single. 

Recent discovery: West 11

Director Michael Winner’s melancholy noir entry quietly smolders amid an atmosphere of casual debauchery enhanced by Otto Heller’s gorgeous monochromatic cinematography. The early 1960s Ladbroke Grove setting is laden with sleazy diners, street food and junk stalls, and post-war Victorian walk-ups transformed into boarding houses occupied by wayward young men and women who casually hop into bed with each other, seeking an illusory something that might give their life meaning. Basement apartments have been transformed — with no improvements — into crowded, raucous jazz clubs, where patrons drink, dance and pair off for another night of meaningless sex. These folks don’t know it yet, but they’ll be right at home when London’s swinging ’60s erupt in the next few years. (The film’s title refers to the postal code district that includes Notting Hill and Kensington.)

Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall’s screenplay — adapted faithfully from Laura Del-Rivo’s 1961 debut novel, The Furnished Room — focuses on Joe Beckett (Alfred Lynch). He’s a gloomy young man — he refers to himself as an “emotional leper” — who has lost his Catholic faith and works soulless jobs just long enough to cover expenses for the next couple of weeks. He invariably quits in a dissatisfied huff, remains unemployed until his meager funds run out, and then finds another unhappy position. His strongest attachment is to Ilsa (Kathleen Breck), a self-centered free spirit incapable of remaining faithful; this heightens Joe’s misery.

 

He comes to the attention of the older Richard Dyce (Eric Portman), an ex-military man turned con artist, who’s itching to get his hands on the wealthy inheritance promised by his elderly aunt. Not willing to wait for her to die of natural causes, Dyce concocts the “perfect” murder scheme, choosing Joe because he’s somebody with absolutely no connection to the old woman. (One wonders if Del-Rivo borrowed this idea from Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train.) Joe, desperately seeking a way to re-ignite his long-dormant emotions, recklessly accepts the assignment.

 

Winner’s 1963 film is laden with jazz, both diegetic and non-diegetic. Heller’s sweeping overhead pan of Ladbroke Grove opens the film; the camera then slides into one upstairs window, where Joe and Isla have sunk into a post-coital squabble. Melancholy sax introduces composer Stanley Black’s title theme, which erupts with a big band splash as the credits are superimposed over Joe’s angry stroll through the neighborhood. Clarinetist Acker Bilk introduces the theme’s core 4-3 motif: a lament repeated each time Joe reaches low ebb, as the story proceeds. (In an unusual touch, Bilk gets his own credit, for the title theme “Played by Mr. Acker Bilk.”)

The scene soon shifts to a crowded bottle party, where Joe flirts with the somewhat older Georgia (popular sex goddess Diana Dors) and then sorta-kinda makes up with Isla. People dance to phonograph records that play, among other early rock ’n’ roll hits, The Country Gentlemen’s “Baby Jean.” Dyce begins to “groom” Joe for what is to come, while also smoothly arranging to live with Georgia for awhile.

 

Subsequent scenes take place in Studio 51, a basement club that features trumpeter/cornetist Ken Colyer’s Band, famed at the time for its New Orleans Dixieland sound. The combo likely includes Mac Duncan (trombone), Ian Wheeler (clarinet), Johnny Bastable (banjo), Ray Foxley (piano), Ron Ward (bass) and Colin Bowden (drums). During several visits as the story proceeds, the band delivers lively readings of “Virginia Strut,” “I’m Travelling,” “La Harp Street Blues,” “Creole” and “Gettysburg March.” Drummer Tony Kinsey’s Quintet is featured at another club: Peter King (sax), Les Condon (trumpet), Gordon Beck (piano) and Kenny Napper (drums). They rattle off a ferocious handling of “What a Gas!”

 

Black’s score delivers a burst of cacophonous jazz when Joe, finally genuinely angry with Isla, ejects her from his apartment (not the last time this will happen). Later, at one of Joe’s many low ebbs; he watches a wrecking ball demolish a sagging structure; explosive jazz pops are heard each time the ball smashes into a wall.

 

An attempt to find solace with the eccentric Mr. Gash (Finlay Currie), who lives in the book-laden flat downstairs, concludes abruptly when a horrified Joe realizes that this unhappy and isolated elderly gentleman might represent his own future. He flees as Acker’s clarinet delivers a forlorn arrangement of the title theme, yielding to an equally mournful trumpet when Joe — now homeless, and with no other options — succumbs to Dyce’s proposal. In a rare moment of jubilation, Black supplies some swinging “traveling jazz” as Joe and Dyce roar off in the latter’s sports car.

An ominous cue tracks Joe when he later approaches Dyce’s aunt’s mansion via the nearby fields; the title theme’s 4-3 motif kicks in, the orchestra developing intensity and concluding with a pensive stinger when he enters her home.

 

Following an irony-laden climax, Bilk’s clarinet repeats the doleful title theme a final time; the music swells when Heller’s camera plans to a close-up of the vacancy sign at Joe’s former lodgings: Kildare House, 26. Cue the end credits, fade to black.

No soundtrack album was produced, although the five Colyer Band tracks have been gathered on the 1993 digital version of the 1963 LP Colyer’s Pleasure; and the Kinsey Quintet’s “What a Gas!” is included on the group’s 1961 album, An Evening with Tony Kinsey. 

Recent discovery: Sapphire

The British were decades ahead of us, with films that thoughtfully explored race relations; 1959’s Sapphire is an excellent example. Director Basil Dearden’s tidy drama initially unfolds like a standard police procedural, but Janet Green and Lukas Heller’s intriguing script soon moves in directions twisty enough to earn that year’s Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Foreign Film. Sapphire also was nominated for four BAFTAs, and won in the top category of Best British Film, beating Look Back in Anger, Tiger Bay, Yesterday’s Enemy and North West Frontier.

The icing on the cake: Philip Green’s terrific jazz score, performed by saxman John Dankworth and his orchestra (anticipating the latter’s own slide into a successful scoring career, which took off with the following year’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning).

The story begins with the discovery of a young woman’s body in a London park: stabbed to death, and soon identified as Sapphire Robbins, a Royal Academy of Music student. The case falls to the meticulous Superintendent Robert Hazard (Nigel Patrick), who with Inspector Phil Learoyd (Michael Craig) quickly hones in on the victim’s fiancé: architectural student David Harris (Paul Massie), about to surmount his humble working-class origins to become an architect, thanks to a recently awarded scholarship. David’s behavior is odd, to say the least; when an autopsy reveals that Sapphire was pregnant, Hazard becomes even more suspicious, because the scholarship would not have covered a wife and family. Matters aren’t helped by the obvious antipathy David’s parents (Bernard Miles and Olga Lindo) had to the impending marriage.

 

Ah, but then things get complicated.

 

While following leads that suggest Sapphire once was something of a wild child, Hazard and Learoyd are surprised to discover that she was a “lily white”: the daughter of mixed-race parents. Previous boyfriends Paul Slade (Gordon Heath) and Johnnie Fiddle (Harry Baird), both Black, clearly were unhappy when Sapphire abruptly turned her back on that part of her heritage, and “went white.” She essentially “traded up” by marrying into a white family. Suddenly faced with too many suspects, Hazard must rely on dogged police work, and the implications of a clue left behind when Sapphire’s body was dumped in the park. (Green and Heller play fair: Sharp-eared listeners have an opportunity to anticipate that clue, thanks to a casual remark made early on, by one of David’s young twin nieces.)

 

Green’s score opens with a screaming, three-note unison horn fanfare against the initial title credits; this is followed by a threatening drum roll, as Sapphire’s lifeless body is tossed into the park shrubs late one night. (This is the last we’ll see of her.) The credits resume as the cue charges into pulsating jazz riffs, highlighted by frantic horns; the orchestra briefly settles into an disquieting vamp that ultimately introduces — as the credits conclude — the main theme’s primary 6-5 unison horn motif, heard against a throbbing, march-like base line.

Dankworth supplies a sultry sax cue when Hazard and Learoyd, while searching the dead girl’s flat, discover salaciously sexy clothes within a locked dresser drawer. Subsequent efforts to learn more about her background bear fruit when the two policemen meet her brother, a Black Birmingham doctor (Earl Cameron) whose racial “reveal” is punctuated by an unnecessarily dramatic unison horn stinger (a bit of musical overkill likely to prompt a wince these days).

 

Meanwhile, David’s behavior has become decidedly strange. Surveillance cops watch him walk back and forth along a park pathway, near where Sapphire’s body was found: clearly looking for something. A doleful sax cue tracks this search, along with David’s subsequent discovery of something that he attempts to discard, not realizing that he’s being watched. (The attentive copper quickly retrieves the item.) The sax cue turns melancholy — even distraught — when David subsequently goes home and is confronted by his mother, who knows something isn’t right. He dismisses her; a somber echo of the title theme is heard when he evades further conversation by taking a late-night stroll.

 

Elsewhere, Hazard and Learoyd follow up on Sapphire’s “previous life” by visiting the hot spots where she formerly loved to cut a rug. An energetic piano/sax duo supply lively source music during a visit to the International Club. The subsequent stop at Tulips’ Club is even more raucous, with the resident combo delivering an electrifying blast of jump jazz. Deardon holds on this sequence, allowing the music to run long, while Hazard and Learoyd watch dancers and hangers-on lose themselves “once they hear the beat of the bongos.” The detectives are seeking Johnnie Fiddle, who leads them on a frantic foot chase through late-night streets and alleyways; a ferociously swinging action jazz cue tracks this lengthy sequence, when the desperate young man runs afoul of racist barflies and vicious Teddy Boys. Finally getting caught by the police comes as a relief, although the subsequent interrogation is rather brutal. Although Johnnie’s behavior is dodgy, Hazard ultimately decides he had nothing to do with Sapphire’s murder. The answer lies elsewhere.

 

Indeed. A pensive woodwind cue tracks David, when he returns home the next day and examines one of his niece’s handmade dolls. The mood shifts abruptly — the music becomes loud and angry, reflecting young man’s dismay — when Hazard and his entire force, armed with a warrant, search the garage/workshop where David’s father stores his supplies. In the aftermath — the killer now revealed — Dankworth’s melancholy sax delivers a forlorn arrangement of the title theme, when Hazard and Learoyd bid a final farewell to Sapphire’s brother. The theme continues as the camera lifts to a blue sky, and fades as the end credits conclude.

No soundtrack album was produced, although Green’s title theme was released as the A-side of a British Top Rank 45 single, paired with Laurie Johnson’s title theme for Tiger Bay. 

Blast from the Past: Las Vegas Beat

Plenty of television pilots failed to attract network interest, over the years — for which we can be grateful, in many cases — but this probably is the only one that was bumped off. 

With prejudice.

 

(About which, more in a bit.)

 

Based on its quite watchable 1961 debut episode, Las Vegas Beat could have become a decent series. Creator Andrew J. Fenady’s script is solid; Bernard L. Kowalski’s directing is crisp and occasionally shows imagination; and the characters are well drawn and competently played by an engaging cast (allowing for the era’s sexism). Kowalski and editor Otho Lovering favor dynamic smash cuts from one scene to the next; the action is violent for its time, although very much in line with the gun-toting thugs then running amok on TV’s M Squadand The Untouchables. This show could have allowed star Peter Graves to put sci-fi stinkers such as Killers from Space, It Conquered the World and Beginning of the End in his rear-view mirror; alas, steady TV employment had to wait until his co-starring role in Court Martial, which ran a single 1965-66 season, and — of course — Mission: Impossible, which followed a year later.

 

He stars here as Bill Ballin, a former police investigator-turned-private casino troubleshooter (a “sometime employee,” in his words). His “Scooby gang” includes veteran journalist R.G. “Joe” Joseph (Bill Bryant), given to quoting poets and waxing eloquent; Gopher (Jamie Farr, a decade away from achieving fame as Cpl. Maxwell Q. Klinger, on TV’s M*A*S*H), who, as his nickname implies, runs errands; and perky, would-be writer Cynthia Raine (Diana Millay). Ballin is on good terms with Lt. McFeety (Richard Bakalyan), which gives him cred with the Las Vegas cops.

 

The story begins as Ballin is hired by Helen Leopold (Margaret Field) to find her missing husband (Tom Drake, known here solely as “Leopold”). Helen is unaware that her judgment-challenged hubbie has fallen in with bad companions who intend to heist an armored car: Fredericks (Lawrence Dobkin), the planner; Duke (Jay Adler), the menacing muscle; and Linneman (uncredited), whose limited usefulness prompts his, ah, “removal” prior to the second act.

 

The scoring assignment went to Richard Markowitz, fresh off his work on the single 1959-60 season of the similarly themed Philip Marlowe; he also had worked with Fenady on 1958’s lurid big-screen thriller, Stakeout on Dope Street (both discussed in my first volume). Markowitz’s title theme for Las Vegas Beat is a sassy big-band swinger with a strong 1-3-4 unison brass motif. (Those eight notes are repeated as a fanfare each time the show breaks for a commercial.) It’s also a hoot to see how small Vegas was in 1961, during an aerial pull-away as the title credits conclude.