Hawks on Hawks

30. Music

158 30 Music We went through a phase of putting lousy music into pictures where inferior musicians copied great masters. It just became ridiculous, with about twenty violins and fifteen cellos and woodwinds and all of that stuff. I worked with [Dimitri] Tiomkin, whom I thought was a pretty good musician , but when we made Hatari!, I said to Dimi, “Look, I don’t want one violin. I don’t want one cello. I don’t want any woodwind. I want native instruments or something else that you can think of.” He said, “That’s a great idea, boss.” Then he called me the next day and said, “You were fooling, weren’t you?” And I said, “You’re fired, Dimi.” He said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Anybody who doesn’t want to do what I tell them to do, I don’t want.” Henry Mancini was doing some little television show [Peter Gunn], and I thought, “Gee, this guy is good.” I got him in and said, “I’d like to have you do this picture, but no violins, no cellos—” I went through the whole routine with him. He said, “OK.” I said, “You use a violin, and I’ll fire you.” He came to me one day, and he said, “I guess I’m going to get fired.” I said, “Why?” and he said, “Come on down on the set.” He had a violin being played with a calliope. They were doing “Baby Elephant Walk.” I said, “OK, you’re not fired.” The only score up until then that I liked was The Third Man, where they just had a zither. I thought that was just fine, because I got so sick and tired of this music. Tiomkin was pretty good. Tiomkin didn’t steal as much as the others . When he got up to get an Academy Award, he thanked all the famous composers. You like to use song scenes, such as in Rio Bravo, where you took a lot of heat for using Ricky Nelson because he was a pop star of the time. But actually, if you look at the film today, he’s quite charming, and the scene of him singing with Dean Martin and Walter Brennan is one of the highlights of the picture. Can you explain at what point you believe it’s germane to insert a song? Music 159 Well, when Rio Bravo was released in Japan, they had a great big picture of Ricky Nelson and a little picture of John Wayne on the other side. And we got a million dollars more than we usually did without that, so I thought that worked out pretty well. I saw the film when I was twelve years old, and the only reason I went to see it was because Ricky Nelson was in it. At that time I didn’t know who you were. So it helped the box office here, too. I didn’t know you appreciated music so much. You know, when you’ve got some talent, your job is to use it. Because you’re making pictures of the personality. I understand you shot a scene for El Dorado of Robert Mitchum singing . Why didn’t you use it? Mitchum’s a pretty good singer. But my son said, “Dad, a sheriff shouldn’t sing.” So I cut it out. In Ball of Fire, you have Stanwyck singing “Drum Boogie” in the nightclub with Krupa playing the drums, then you do a variant on the song as A song sequence cut from El Dorado after Hawks’s son Gregg saw it and said, “Dad, a sheriff shouldn’t sing.” Charlene Holt is singing with Mitchum (seated right of her) here, with Arthur Hunnicutt playing harmonica (left), Wayne listening (center), and Paul Fix also listening (extreme right), others unidentified. Hawks on Hawks 160 “Match Boogie,” Krupa doing it with a pair of matches on a matchbox. Why did you add that second part to it? That was made up just for fun. I think I saw Krupa doing it with a matchbox, and it looked so good I said, “Hey, we’ll put it in.” So we made up a scene. Took about two hours to do it. There’s one of your rare sentimental moments in that film, when the professors sing “Genevieve.” When you’re doing a story about old people, you...