A Note about Korngold's King's Row (Concert Suite)

By Martin MArks

Brendan G. Carroll's titled his excellent 1997 biography of Erich Wolfgang Korngold The Last Prodigy—a phrase that linked the composer both to widely held notions of musical genius and also in a very particular way to Mozart, whom Korngold's father Julius pointedly chose as his son's musical (and Viennese) namesake. When he was still a boy in the early 1910s, EWK's accumulating successes in the interlinked worlds of European concert music and opera made the prodigy allusion seem fully convincing. Immediately after "The Great War" came still greater pan-European success via his darkly symbolist opera Die tote Stadt. But then from the teens into the thirties, new cultural attitudes (and geopolitical upheavals) led increasingly to rejection of "the Great Tradition." Accordingly, Korngold's unflagging attachment to the post Romantic and firmly tonal musical styles at which he ever excelled threatened his prominence. In short, he came to be seen by many, as "alter Hut." And then (he) came (to) Hollywood—which didn't help his reputation in the world of "progressive" concert music one bit.

During the 1930s and 1940s, to settle in Hollywood and compose scores for the film studios was seen by many in the concert music "establishment" as blatant "selling out." Thus, despite his brilliant inventiveness as a film composer, a fuller recognition of Korngold's skill in the cinematic arena had to wait until "rediscovery" of several of his scores in the 1970s—when RCA began to issue a series of nostalgia-laden recordings—and not coincidentally, when the same post-Romantic styles were winkingly being taken up by a new generation of Hollywood composers. Which raises the question: What did Korngold achieve in Hollywood that led to his work being so widely revived (and loved) anew—and so immediately successful in the first place?

EWK's first Hollywood screen credit was for his work in 1934-35 as the adaptor of Mendelssohn's "incidental" music for Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream—a filmed adaptation of Max Reinhardt's famous stage production of the play produced and distributed by Warner Brothers in 1935. (Reinhardt requested Korngold to come from Vienna to Hollywood to work with him on the film.) Intermittently over the next few years Korngold worked on a few more WB films, both while residing in London, and then while back in Los Angeles in 1938—having returned there to compose music for the lavish Technicolor WB production, The Adventures of Robin Hood. While he was in LA, Hitler launched the Anschluss, and Korngold's father telephoned to tell him that he simply could not come home. (As a Jewish composer, for him to do so would have been at least career and perhaps virtual suicide.) The turn of events gave a new meaning to the film itself, and the story was pointedly written as one about a band of democratic and freedom-loving heroes who were fighting valiantly to resist tyranny and quasi-racial oppression! Because the film became very successful (despite its enormous cost), it led to similarly-themed "sequels"—among them The Sea Hawk in 1940, for which Korngold composed an even richer score of very nearly "wall-to-wall" music. Arranged as a concert suite, The Sea Hawk score continues to thrill audiences, in no small part due to the audience's realization that John Williams deliberately chose to echo some of its themes when, in 1977, he composed his score for Star Wars!

For all his skill and success as a composer of music for exuberant adventure films, Korngold thought of himself as being better suited to psychological dramas—and to be sure, the appeal of the latter dovetailed with his interest and skill at manipulating dark psychological and "Expressionistic" elements in his operas and concert music. (He was raised, after all, in the same Vienna as Freud, Kokoschka, Klimt, etc.) After his great success in the adventure-film scoring (Captain Blood, Robin Hood, The Sea Hawk, etc.), he was thus more than pleased to be given the opportunity to write the music for WB's intense 1942 production, King's Row.

Listening to the concert suite's opening, which begins with the heroic music for the film's "Main Title" segment (in other words, music written to accompany the opening credits), as well as to the sparkling transformation of the heroic theme that immediately follows—quick music which accompanies scenes from early in the film focused on two of the main characters as innocent children at play—audiences could easily be excused for thinking that this too will be a joyous and exuberant film about heroic adventures shared by the noblest of characters.

Im Gegenteil, meine Freunde! The story takes place in the eponymously—and very ironically—named, turn-of-the-century, small American town—one in which many terrible things will happen. The plot of King's Row ties it to the tried-and-true novelistic genre, the Bildungsroman, telling the story of a hero's progress from childhood to adulthood. The hero is named Parris Mitchell, and the film begins with a prologue centering upon his happy childhood, while being raised by his loving grandmother. In the suite we hear a delightfully playful variation of the score's main theme which runs through early portions of the film when we see happy children at play. In the film's main portion, however, having returned to the town after studying psychiatry in Vienna, our hero witnesses a series of interrelated tragic events, and the music intensifies accordingly—though a return to the triumphant fanfare music will close out the suite, in keeping with the story.

One plot line concerns a sadistic surgeon—a seemingly "good" doctor, trusted by townsfolk, yet a man who takes pleasure in operating on patients without anesthetic. (There is a rather excruciating segment early in the film, in which we hear the screams of one his patients while undergoing surgery.) Cast brilliantly against type and played by Charles Colburn, an actor known more for comedy than for such roles, the doctor is a snob and appalled that a young man named Drake McHugh (played amiably by Ronald Reagan) loves his daughter and presumes he will be able to marry her. Though of good character, McHugh's main defect in the father's eyes is evidently that he comes from a working-class background (i.e., what used to be called "the wrong side of the tracks"). So when a relatively minor accident befalls McHugh, the doctor gets the opportunity to operate on him—and needlessly removes both of his legs! (When McHugh awakes from surgery and comes to, he cries out Where's the rest of me? — a line frequently quoted much later to show scorn for the actor during his political career!)

No less dark is the film's main plot line, which involves Parris's principal mentor, a very intelligent and initially kindly doctor (played by Claude Rains)—but also a man worried that his mentally troubled wife (who has committed suicide) passed the same illness on to their daughter, Cassie. Having been a childhood friend of Cassie and already witnessed early signs of her mental instability, when Parris returns to King's Row he finds her to be utterly tormented by inner terrors, but is unable to help her. And then comes the film's worst shock—when he learns that the doctor has killed both the daughter and himself. (A small-town exposé indeed!)

But this is a Hollywood film after all, and so we are shown that Parris has the resources to move on from these tragedies. Eventually he uses his newly-acquired psychological skills to help his good pal Drake overcome despair and move forward in life—as does he, having found a new romantic partner late in the story. Thus, for all the turmoil, the film concludes with the formation of two happy romantic couples! And to hear the music's thrilling and harmonically brilliant opening theme, we can only expect that to be the outcome, as is confirmed by the return of the score's triumphant music at the close. Yes, there is some irony that Korngold's score for King's Row was later taken as a template for composers tasked with writing for heroic adventure and/or sci-fi film films. But taken on its own terms, as well as in conjunction with the film for which it was composed, the score offers a compelling tone poem with moments of thrilling triumph, childlike playfulness, nightmarish terrors, and even a bit of romantic passion. There are good reasons why it continues to be upheld as a model for film composers, and to be played in concerts like this one, to be savored all on its own!

— Martin Marks, senior lecturer, MIT