Submitted by
Christoph Michel
Miklós Rózsa
From: Double Life: The Autobiography of Miklós Rózsa, Composer
in the Golden Years of Hollywood.
Tunbridge Wells: The Baton Press. 1982. p.77-87.
(Ppbk. 1984, ISBN 0 85936 141 1)
Korda was responsible for the teaming of the English director Michael Powell
with the Hungarian writer-producer Emeric Pressburger, a partnership which
was to bear fruit in some of the finest British films of the forties and
fifties (e.g. The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus). The Spy
in Black was their first collaborative effort, and I did the music for
it. Some years later in Hollywood I got a telegram from Powell asking me
to join him in Canada to research Canadian folkmusic and then to return
to London to do the music for 49th Parallel. I had to refuse since
at that time I was committed to Korda and he wouldn't let me go; in the
event I was glad I did, since that film marked the cinematographic debut
of the composer who at that time was the undisputed leader of music in England,
Ralph Vaughan Williams.
London Films and Denham Studios had been financed by the Prudential Life
Assurance Company, and apparently, though Korda had made a great many films
between 1935 and 1938, the income wasn't quite as much as the Prudential
had hoped. So it was decided that the company should take over the running
of the studios and rent out the space, while Korda formed his own private
company, Alexander Korda Films. All Korda's employees were moved to what
was known as 'the old house', a lovely building at one end of the studios
beside a gently flowing river, and the big studio, the old London Films
Studio, was now no longer under the control of Alexander Korda.
In a way this was all to the good, because Korda always did his best work
when he was concentrating on a single project, and not when ten separate
films were being made at the same time, all demanding his constant attention.
He was a member of the American company, United Artists, which had been
set up to finance and distribute the films of Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks
Senior, Mary Pickford, Samuel Goldwyn, David O. Selznick and Korda. This
meant that his films were assured of immediate release in America and were
shown all over the world.
After the great box-office success of The Four Feathers, Korda's
biggest since Henry VIII and The Ghost Goes West, Alex asked
me to come and see him. He told me how pleased he was with the music and
announced that the next picture I was to work on was very important from
a musical point of view. This was The Thief of Bagdad.
He told me the story, which was an Arabian Nights fantasy, and said that
my contract would run from that day and that he was increasing my salary
by a large amount. I must admit that my salary had been rather low up until
then. The last thing I would have done would have been to ask for a rise,
but now Korda was giving me one without my having to ask.
The film was already in preparation. I read the script and thought it not
very good; and apparently that was the general opinion. Directors came and
went. Korda tried several for a couple of weeks each but couldn't decide
on the right one. Eventually he announced that he had settled for a German
by the name of Dr Ludwig Berger. Berger had recently made Les Trois Valses
in Paris with music by Oscar Straus, the famous Austrian composer of
operettas such as The Chocolate Soldier. Berger arrived at Denham
to start work on The Thief of Bagdad, and shortly afterwards Korda
summoned me to his office for a private meeting. He had a serious problem:
Dr Berger wanted Straus to write the score for The Thief of Bagdad.
Not only had Korda promised the job to me and had me under contract to do
it, but he did actually want me, and not Straus, to compose the score. But
everything was ready for the production to start: sets were constructed,
actors were hired. A number of musical sequences were necessary before shooting
began and Berger was insisting on Straus. Korda had to start production
in order to keep the support of his financial backers, for he needed their
money to pay his employees' wages. He was obliged, for the moment, to go
along with Berger and engage Straus, but he wanted me to trust him to see
me right in the end. Naturally this came as a shock, but I told Korda that
I trusted him completely and would do whatever he wanted. He had already
talked the matter over with Berger and it was understood that while all
the pre-production music would be provided by Straus, all the dramatic and
colouristic music would be written by me. In any event, I was still on the
production team. I agreed - I had no choice.
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Muir Mathieson
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Dr Ludwig Berger
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Slowly the music began to arrive from Vichy, where Straus was taking a cure.
It was impossible - typical turn-of-the-century Viennese candy-floss. I
stuck to my promise to Korda and didn't say a word, but Muir Mathieson was
outspoken in his denunciation and went round telling everyone, including
Vincent Korda, that these songs would ruin not only the picture, but the
company as well.
The next day Mathieson and I had a cryptic summons from Alexander Korda's
office to report to him at ten the following morning. When we arrived his
secretary looked very cowed and said, 'He's in a vile temper this morning.
I don't envy you having to see him.' Dr Berger arrived and was shown straight
into Korda's office. A few minutes later Korda called us in with an imperious
'Boys!' It was always a bad sign when he addressed you as 'boy', and he
sat there behind his desk glowering ferociously at us like a Thundering
Jove, a Jupiter Tonans. 'Boys', he said again, 'I understand you have been
making disparaging remarks about Mr Straus's songs. Is this true?' Mathieson
immediately lost his temper and let fly at Korda. 'It certainly is,' he
shouted. 'His music stinks to high heaven and it is my duty as your musical
director....' Korda heard him out and then said, 'Right. I want it clearly
understood by the pair of you that in all artistic matters the sole and
final arbiter is Dr Berger. It that quite clear? That's all.' Mathieson
stormed out in a rage and Dr Berger went away grinning like a Cheshire cat.
Just as I was about to leave, Korda called me back, and asked me my opinion
of Straus's music. I told him that frankly the music would be quite charming
for a Viennese revue of 1900, but that it was completely unsuitable for
an oriental fantasy. He then told me to go ahead and write the music as
I thought it should be written, and to report back to him when it was done.
Meanwhile I wasn't to tell a soul what I was up to, not even Mathieson.
A week later I rang him up to tell him I had finished and did he want to
hear what I'd done? 'No,' he said. 'What I'm going to do is give you an
office next to Dr Berger's. Keep playing your music until he comes in and
listens to it. Don't say I told you to do it, just say you wrote it off
your own bat and let him hear it.' So I moved into the office next to Dr
Berger's and from ten in the morning until five every evening I thumped
out my music as loudly as I possibly could. The secretaries in the offices
above and below me complained that it was impossible for them to get any
work done with all the noise, but I just kept on playing. The first day
nothing happened. The second day I could hear Berger's voice through the
wall, so I played more loudly than ever, but still he didn't come in. On
the third day, he stormed into my room and said, 'I've been listening to
this now for two whole days. Do you mind telling me what's going on?' I
was all wide-eyed innocence. 'Well, you see, Dr Berger,' I began, 'I had
a few ideas for the picture and I wrote them down I thought you might be
interested to hear them.' He said, 'We've already got all the music we want
and we won't even know what we need from you until after we've finished
filming. So what are you up to now? Mind you, there was one melody I rather
liked. You can play me that if you want.' So I told him I had written the
music for the 'Silvermaid's Dance'. He advised me that Straus had already
done that. I said I knew he had, but I had one or two ideas of my own, and
I played them to him. He didn't say a word. I played Sabu's song, then another
piece I had written. He paced up and down the room and left the room telling
me not to go and that he would be back shortly.
About ten minutes later he was back. 'I've been to see Mr Korda,' he said.
'I told him that I much prefer what you've done to what Straus has sent
us, but how am I going to tell the old man?' Now Korda had a genius for
this kind of manipulative diplomacy. He was like a brilliant chess player,
moving his pieces round the board, always half-a-dozen moves ahead of his
opponents. It was incredible how he had manoeuvred Berger into this position,
and it made me very pleased that I had put my trust in him.
A telegram was sent to Oscar Straus who alleged that his reputation was
being ruined and threatened to sue, but Korda paid him his full fee and
I was formally reinstated as the sole composer on The Thief of Bagdad
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The day after Berger had changed his mind about Straus, Korda called me
into his office, looked at me, smiled and said, 'It worked.' I thanked him
for the confidence he had shown in me and he said, 'My boy, I know your
music. I had every reason to be confident.' He told me the Iyrics were to
be written by his friend Sir Robert Vansittart, chief diplomatic adviser
to the British Foreign Office. I didn't know that Sir Robert was a Iyricist,
but Korda said, 'He is a fine poet, a good writer, and I think you will
like him.' I did. He was, without doubt, the finest human being I have ever
met in my life.
I knew very little about his role in British politics. First of all, I understood
nothing about politics; secondly, all I did know was what I read in the
newspapers, and Vansittart wasn't somebody who appeared in the limelight
very often. He was the Grey Eminence, the power behind the throne at the
Foreign Office. As far as I was concerned, he was my collaborator and Iyric
writer. He was over six foot, lean, active, with a strong profile, a born
diplomat. He would have been about fifty years old at this time. He never
treated me as a 'bloody foreigner'. We were equal partners: he wrote the
words and I wrote the music.
There were several jobs to be done. Sir Robert was working on the script
with Miles Malleson, who as well as being a fine actor - he was playing
the part of the Sultan—was also a writer. The three of us discussed
the songs which would have to be written. For the opening in Basra harbour
we needed a song about the sea; we also needed one for the Genie, who was
to be played by the popular Negro actor, Rex Ingram, already well-known
in Hollywood and on the New York stage. And, of course, Sabu had to have
his song.
During the whole summer of 1939 I spent every weekend at the beautiful,
sixteenth-century Denham Place, Sir Robert's home. Throughout 1938 there
had been grave fears that war was imminent, and I stood in Piccadilly Circus
with thousands of others watching the illuminated headlines on the night
that Chamberlain came back from Berchtesgaden with the promise of 'peace
in our time'. There was great rejoicing. Few people would have admitted
that it was only a temporary reprieve and that war, sooner or later, was
inevitable. Sir Robert had played a key role throughout this difficult time.
On my last visit to Paris I had completed my Three Hungarian Sketches
and played the work to Charles Münch, who was enchanted with it
and thought it better than my Variations. He was going to conduct it with
the Lamoureux Orchestra. I asked his permission to dedicate the piece to
him and he granted it. On my return to London I wrote and told him of the
problems I was having with The Thief of Bagdad - this was before I had
become the one and only composer working on the film. He sent me a postcard
in reply: 'You have your problems with The Thief of Bagdad. We have ours
with The Thief of Berchtesgaden.'
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Sir Robert (later Lord) Vansittart
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He also told me that he had invited Karl Straube and his Thomanerchor to
Paris to perform Bach's B minor Mass and that Straube had expressed a wish
to see me again. I went over to Paris for the performance and afterwards
at the reception I renewed my friendship with Straube. He had suddenly grown
older and his hair was snow-white. He was sixty-five and he seemed terribly
tired after the performance. He congratulated me on my success; he thought
it a pity that Breitkopf & Härtel hadn't published my Variations
, but he knew why they hadn't. It was typical of his generous nature,
particularly as he had himself been responsible for my early contact with
Breitkopf to say that it didn't matter who published the piece; the important
thing was that it was a huge success.
It was a strange, rather disturbing gathering. Frau Straube expressed strong
Nazi sympathies. She kept referring to 'these little Austrians,' and said,
'They all thought they were going to get the best positions in their country
when we took over. That's ridiculous. We put our own people in the best
positions.' Straube himself said nothing. The boys in the choir were all
new to me, of course. They all looked strikingly blond and Teutonic and
in their stiff behaviour there was something reminiscent of the Hitler Youth.
Münch made a speech in his Alsatian German, saying that music was the
only truly international medium, that it brought people together and created
strong emotional bonds across radical differences of language and culture.
'We are French,' he said, 'and you are German. We are happy to have you
here among us and I hope our friendship, rooted in music, will grow and
flourish for many years to come.' Poor Charles Münch. How could he
know that less than a year later these same boys would be back in Paris
in uniforms with machine guns in their hands?
Eulenburg wrote to tell me that my Three Hungarian Sketches had been
accepted for the International Music Festival in Baden-Baden. This was a
major piece of luck for me, because all the top conductors and critics in
Europe would be attending. A little later the conductor of the Baden-Baden
Festival wrote to say that seven rehearsals were scheduled and he was inviting
me to attend them as well as the festival itself, all my expenses to be
met by the German government. He also sent me the full programme for the
festival, which looked very interesting. Every nation was represented, and
my piece was the official Hungarian entry. The BBC Chorus was giving a complete
evening concert of new English choral music.
The papers were full of the worsening political situation. Austria had already
been annexed; Czechoslovakia was gone, and Poland, with its vulnerable Danzig
Corridor, was under constant threat. The newspapers were beginning to advise
British subjects not to travel in Germany. Although I wasn't a British subject
I felt I owed allegiance to Britain. I rang the BBC and asked if the BBC
Chorus were still intending to go to Baden-Baden and was told that the trip
had definitely been cancelled. I told the gentleman at the BBC what my own
position was, and he advised me not to go. I decided not to. I wrote to
the conductor and told him I was very busy - which was true—and couldn't
afford to take a whole week to come to the festival. After the performance
he sent me a telegram to say that the work was a great success and the reviews
were outstanding.
I was warned by Eulenburg that I would be committing artistic suicide and
ruining him as well if I persisted in dedicating the Sketches to
Charles Münch. In his experience, no conductor would be interested
in a piece dedicated to another, especially an up-and-coming conductor like
Münch. But I had already asked Münch's permission for the dedication
and he had given it, so Eulenburg proposed printing only six copies with
the dedication in place, two for Münch and four for me. I hope dear
Münch never found out.
Shortly afterwards I received another letter from the publishing firm, but
this time it wasn't signed by Eulenburg but by Schulze, his business manager.
He told me that Eulenburg had been sent to a concentration camp and asked
me for help on his behalf. Unfortunately, of course, there was nothing anyone
in London could do. Then, just before war was declared, I received a letter
from Eulenburg himself, from Switzerland, informing me that he and his family
were now safely together in Basle.
So the storm clouds were gathering in 1939, but I was so busy and excited
about The Thief of Bagdad, now with a script that had been improved
beyond all recognition, that I was almost unaware of what was going on in
the world around me. Naturally enough, not everything was plain sailing
- it never is when a film is being made.
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At work on The Thief of Bagdad
(with Toscanini's tacit disapproval)
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Berger wanted me to do the market scene in the manner of a musical; that
is, he wanted the music first, to which he would then shoot the action.
The scene introduced Sabu as a thief in the market place: everybody was
bustling around selling while Sabu was busy stealing. We worked out the
scene in terms of action and choreography and ended with a sequence over
five minutes long. After I had written the music Berger went over it with
me and I made many adjustments, slipping in an extra two bars here, re-introducing
Sabu's theme there. Finally we were all satisfied and we recorded it. Then
came the playbacks, and Berger wanted the actors to move in strict synchronisation
with the music. Naturally enough the result was chaos. Little Sabu was expected
to move like a puppet in a puppet theatre, the actors like dancers in a
pantomime, but to appear at the same time to be acting quite spontaneously
and naturally. They just couldn't get it right, and after a week's work
we had practically nothing to show. When Korda saw the result he all but
burst into tears, it was so awful. He called me in and asked me if I could
adjust the same music to the scene after the sequence had been shot;
I told him of course that was perfectly possible, whereupon he put a stop
to any further antics of this kind.
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On the set of The Thief of Bagdad
with June Duprez
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In the end the only sequences shot to pre-composed music were those involving
special effects - the gallop of the Flying Horse and the Silvermaid's Dance.
The scene with the Flying Horse, in which the Sultan is so enchanted by
the magic toys and the ride across the sky above Bagdad that he gives his
beloved daughter's hand to Jafar the Magician, was a collaboration between
Vansittart, Miles Malleson and myself. The script and the music were conceived
as a single entity; the three of us spent all day at the piano at Denham
Place working out the details.
Vansittart and I never established a fixed pattern of working together.
Sometimes the music came first, sometimes the Iyric. In the case of the
'Lullaby of the Princess' he wrote the poem first, which I then set to music
and which in fact became the main love theme of the picture. With 'Sabu's
Song', again an important song because it had to reappear throughout the
film, the tune came first and the words followed later.
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Letter from Vansittart
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I soon became almost a permanent fixture in Vansittart's home. He spent
the week at his flat in London, but every weekend we were together at Denham
Place, and I soon got to know his enchanting wife. We never discussed politics,
but these were critical days for Britain. Stafford Cripps was in Moscow
trying to forge an alliance with the Russians, but was pipped at the post
by Ribbentrop. The Russian-German agreement came as a great shock to England,
but whether Vansittart was expecting it or not I am unable to say. Sometimes
we would be working at the piano and the butler would come in to call him
to the telephone. When he came back he never revealed whether it had been
good or bad news (though sometimes he looked ashen-faced) and I never asked
him. We would simply carry on from where we had left off.
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The Figaro article
about Vansittart
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Somehow the foreign press got wind of the fact that he was writing the lyrics
for The Thief of Bagdad. It was at about this time that Figaro
in Paris printed an article to the effect that if the chief diplomatic
adviser to the British Foreign Office had time to write Iyrics for a motion
picture with me, there could be no immediate danger of war. A fortnight
later, on 3rd September 1939, war was declared. Thereafter my relationship
with Vansittart changed. He opened up and talked about subjects I wouldn't
have dared mention to him. He told me fascinating things about the people
he met in diplomatic circles, and about the past few years when he had constantly
and unavailingly been trying to warn the British government of what was
happening on the continent. He talked about the 1936 Olympics at which he
and his wife had met Hitler. He spoke fluent, idiomatic French, and also
German and Arabic, just as a senior British diplomat should. Even in 1936
he had been thought of as a Germanophobe and a warmonger. Hitler had been
told that he was a swarthy little Jew and was shocked to be introduced to
the tall, imposing British gentleman who spoke perfect German.
Vansittart presented me with two volumes of his poetry, suggesting I might
find something in them to set to music. One collection, The Singing Caravan
, he had written at the time he was British Ambassador in Teheran. I
set two of them for contralto and piano, 'Beasts of Burden' and 'Un Jardin
dans la Nuit'. I found the latter title too close to Debussy's 'Jardins
sous la Pluie', and asked him if I could change it. It became 'Invocation',
published later in America and re-published now in England.
There was panic in London at the outbreak of war because people were caught
unprepared. On that Sunday, soon after Chamberlain had come on the radio
to announce that 'a state of war exists between Germany and England', I
was driving towards London when there was an air raid warning. It was a
false alarm, but of course all the traffic was stopped and we had to get
out and lie down in a ditch. Petrol rationing was introduced and I moved
to a little cottage in Chalfont St. Peter only ten minutes away from the
studios to make things easier. The Korda brothers set up home together in
Denham village.
Slowly The Thief of Bagdad progressed towards completion. Two additional
directors, Michael Powell and Tim Whelan, were put to work on it, but still
sequences were missing and the picture took shape in a very haphazard manner,
not as originally envisaged. Not until February 1940 did we get to the final
recording sessions.
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Sabu menaced by the Djinn (Rex Ingram)
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I had met Maurice Martenot in Paris and I had once written a Berceuse
for the electronic instrument he had invented, the Ondes Martenot.
I decided it would be the right instrument to use for the Djinn. It would
be an unworldly tone-colour for an unworldly happening, the Djinn escaping
from his bottle and later flying through the Grand Canyon with Sabu on his
shoulders. We wrote to Maurice Martenot asking him to bring his instrument
to England and he agreed, but by the time of the recording he had been
called up and was somewhere defending his country. So I had to forget about
the Ondes Martenot for the next five years.
Eventually Berger returned to Holland leaving Bill Hornbeck to cut the picture
together as best he could. Alexander Korda left for the States. My work
on the film seemed to be complete, but one day I heard from David Cunnyngham
that arrangements were being made to shoot the missing scenes in America
and that United Artists were putting up the money. Everyone who was directly
involved in the production would be needed in Hollywood to finish the film.
I had never even dreamed of going to America. My Variations had been
well received when performed in Chicago, but America was a long way off
and it took five or six days to get there, so you had to have a good reason
for going. Well, I had to go now. I had fought so hard to write the music
for The Thief of Bagdad, and if I didn't go to America now it would
be finished by someone else, which was the last thing I wanted. David Cunnyngham
explained the various ways I could make the journey. American and English
passenger ships were no longer crossing the Atlantic directly, but I could
get an American ship from Genoa, though that route too was likely to be
closed shortly. I could take the train from Paris to Genoa, but getting
from London to Paris was going to be the difficult part. There were two
possibilities. I could either make the dangerous sea crossing, or I could
fly. I had never been up in a plane, and I was a poor sailor. Cunnyngham
said drily, 'You stand a good chance of being shot down over the Channel,
which at least has the virtue of being a quick death. Or you could be sunk,
which would be considerably less pleasant. It's up to you.' Sometimes I
find the British sense of humour a little hard to take. I told Cunnyngham
I had never flown in my life before and asked if he had. He looked at me
from behind his glasses and said casually, 'Oh yes'. When I told this story
to a friend later he burst out laughing. It turned out that Cunnyngham had
been an ace RAF pilot in the First World War and that his answer to me had
been a typical piece of British understatement.
I was sad to be leaving London. I had been happy there, I liked the English
and I had felt at home. I had been able to write both my own music and music
for films in the way I wanted to, always bearing in mind the kind of contribution
Honegger had made to the cinema. I was sorry too to be saying goodbye to
my beloved Trinity College and to the Civil Service Orchestra, who were
still meeting every week to play good music badly but with great enthusiasm.
My plane left from Croydon, and I expected the journey to Paris to last
about an hour and a half. After five hours or so, while we were still in
the air, I began to wonder whether it would have been better to take the
risk of being sunk by a submarine. Then suddenly I saw the Eiffel Tower.
I learned that we had had to take a roundabout route via the Channel Islands
to avoid German planes. The sight of Paris was incredible. We had had ten
months of blackout in London; the foggy, unlit streets were a constant danger
for the pedestrian, for even car headlights were masked. But Paris was lit
up like a Christmas tree, another world altogether. Nobody seemed worried
- they trusted their Maginot Line. I saw all my friends, said goodbye to
them and caught the train for Genoa where I found my ship in the harbour.
The trip took ten long days. We were to call at Gibraltar on the way. I
spotted a familiar face: it was Noel Coward. He usually sat reading in a
deckchair. I was sure everybody must have recognised him, but he talked
to no one, and no one bothered him. When we dropped anchor at Gibraltar
a cutter came alongside and took him off. We waited about ten hours, then
the boat brought him back and we set sail again. Later I read that he had
been sent to America by the authorities for propaganda purposes, and I assumed
that his short visit to Gibraltar was to meet the Governor or to receive
a final briefing.
Charles Boyer's mother was also on board, a lovely, elegant, elderly lady.
When at last we arrived in New York, there were Charles Boyer and his wife
to meet his mother, and Gertrude Lawrence waiting for Noel Coward. They
embraced and seemed overjoyed to see each other again.
After a few days at the St. Regis Hotel in New York (Korda's favourite),
I set off for Hollywood. I went there, as I thought, for a month or so,
forty days at the most. Now, forty years later, I am still there.
Rózsa, Miklós: Double Life: The Autobiography of Miklós
Rózsa, Composer in the Golden Years of Hollywood.
Tunbridge Wells: The Baton Press. 1982. pp.77-87.
(Paperback edition 1984, ISBN 0 85936 141 1)
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