After a break because
of life’s hectic pace, I am back and I welcome you back to “Vinyl Mania,” the
blog that looks back at the wonderful world of vinyl records (with CDs also
thrown into the mix).
With this post, I will
institute a feature entitled “From Broadway to Hollywood.” These posts will look at a Broadway cast
album and its corresponding movie soundtrack of its Hollywood film
adaptation. I hope that you will enjoy
this post and it will become a regular series – I will probably post a new
“From Broadway to Hollywood every few months.
For nearly four
decades musicals were a major motion picture genre that thrilled and delighted
audiences not only in America but all around the world. Musicals being totally dependent upon sound,
not surprisingly, were the last major genre of films to be born. Beginning with the very first sound film,
Warner Bros. The Jazz Singer in 1927, audiences continued to be captivated
and thrilled by singing and dancing on the screen. By the late 1930’s Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer began
to focus a large part of their output on musicals and by the mid-1940’s MGM had
become king of the musical motion picture.
By the mid-1950’s, the
Hollywood studios began to look to Broadway as a source for musical
entertainment and began adapting many of Broadway’s biggest shows for the
motion picture screen. New advancements
in technology such as CinemaScope, Todd-AO, and stereophonic sound helped to
bring a sense of grandeur to these adaptations.
There is no denying
that the partnership of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II was a match made
in heaven. Beginning in 1943 with the
debut of Oklahoma! on Broadway they reigned as Broadway’s top musical
songwriters until 1960 with Hammerstein’s death at the age of 65. Although the had a few clinkers along the
way: 1947’s Allegro, 1953’s Me and Juliet, and 1955’s Pipe Dream (which
included a book written by one of America’s greatest writers, John Steinbeck). However their successes far outshined these
few flops, just look at what this dynamic duo left the musical theater world:
Oklahoma! (1943), Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949), The King and I (1951),
Flower Drum Song (1958), and The Sound of Music (1959). In addition to these six classic musicals
they also composed an original score for a motion picture: State Fair (1945);
and an early television spectacular: Cinderella (1957). Each of their six Broadway musicals was
eventually adapted for the big screen beginning with Oklahoma! in 1955 and each
of these films has become film classics.
On November 16, 1959
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical The Sound of Music opened at the
Lunt-Fontanne Theater on Broadway; it would move to the Mark Hellinger Theater
on November 6, 1962 and would close there on June 15, 1963 after a total of
1,443 performances. The show would go on
to win five Tony Awards, including Best Musical (in a tie with Fiorello!). Other Tony Awards won included: Best Actress
(Mary Martin), Best Featured Actress (Patricia Neway), Best Scenic Design
(Oliver Smith) and Best Musical Direction (Frederick Dvonch). The show’s original cast recording was
released by Columbia Masterworks in December, 1959 and was produced by Goddard
Lieberson; it became one of Columbia’s most popular cast albums of all time and
has never been out of print.
 |
| The original release — Columbia Masterworks [KOS-2020] |
The Sound of Music — Original Broadway Cast
Columbia Masterworks KOS-2020 (mono version KOL-5450)
Produced for records by Goddard Lieberson
Musical Direction: Frederick Dvonch
Cast: Mary Martin, Theodore Bikel, Patricia Neway, Kurt Kasznar, Marion
Marlowe, Lauri Peters, Brian Davies
Originally released: December, 1959
Track Listing:
Side 1
1.
Preludium; The Sound of Music (5:03)
2.
Maria (3:14)
3.
My Favorite Things (2:50)
4.
Do-Re-Mi (5:56)
5.
Sixteen Going on Seventeen (3:53)
6.
The Lonely Goatherd (3:23)
7.
How Can Love Survive? (3:05)
Side
2
1.
The Sound of Music (reprise) (3:16)
2.
Laendler (2:26)
3.
So Long, Farewell (2:53)
4.
Climb Ev’ry Mountain (3:33)
5.
No Way to Stop It (3:07)
6.
An Ordinary Couple (3:38)
7.
Processional (3:52)
8.
Sixteen Going on Seventeen (reprise) (2:19)
9.
Edelweiss (2:09)
10. Climb
Ev’ry Mountain (reprise) (3:33)
In
the mid-1990’s Sony, who had become the owner of CBS Records in the late
1980’s, began a series of re-mastered releases of classic Broadway cast
recordings. In 1998 a re-mastered
version of The Sound of Music was released by Sony as part of their Columbia
Broadway Masterworks series. This
release saw 20-bit mastering as well as two bonus tracks.
 |
| 1998 Remastered CD release — Columbia Masterworks Broadway/Sony Classical [SK-60583] |
The Sound of Music — Original Broadway
Cast Recording
Columbia Masterworks Broadway / Sony
Classical SK-60583
Reissue Producer: Didier C. Deutsch
& Darcy M. Proper
Mixing/Mastering Engineers: Darcy M.
Proper & Dawn Frank
Released: 1998
The CD release replicates the original
LPs 17 tracks and adds the following bonus tracks:
1.
The Sound of Music – A Symphonic Picture for
Orchestra (16:38)
William
Steinberg & The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra
Originally
released in the album “Rodgers & Hammerstein: The Sound of Music Symphonic
Picture / Lerner & Loewe: My Fair Lady Symphonic Picture” (Command CC-11041
SD)
2.
Do-Re-Mi (2:07)
Mitch
Miller and The Sing-Along Chorus and The Kids from The Sound of Music
Originally
released as a Columbia single (41499) and later appeared in stereo on the
Columbia Lp “Mitch’s Greatest Hits” (CL-1544 / CS-8573)
In
1960, Twentieth Century-Fox purchased the film rights to The Sound of Music
although a clause in the contract, common with Broadway musicals, prevented the
studio from producing a film version until the show closed on Broadway which
did not happen until 1963. Unfortunately
for Fox 1963 saw the release of the monumental epic Cleopatra starring
Elizabeth Taylor, Rex Harrison and Richard Burton; Cleopatra cost an
astronomical $40 million dollars and although it would gross $48 million at the
box office, Fox saw only $26 million of that.
Cleopatra threw 20th Century-Fox in financial peril and it was hoped The
Sound of Music would rescue the studio from total bankruptcy. Robert Wise was chosen to direct after
original director William Wyler began to turn the musical into a war film and
was promptly fired. Julie Andrews, still
fresh from her triumph on Broadway in My Fair Lady (Andrews first film Mary
Poppins had not yet been released) was chosen for the starring role of Maria
with Christopher Plummer as Captain Georg Von Trapp and Peggy Wood as the
Mother Abbess. The film began production
with the pre-recording of the soundtrack and choreography rehearsals in
Hollywood before the cast and crew travelled to Austria for the on-location
shoot. The majority of the shoot was
done in and around Salzburg while many interiors were shot after the cast
returned to the Fox lot in Hollywood.
The Sound of Music had its premiere on March 2, 1965 and would go on to become one
of the most popular films of all-time – it was the first film to surpass Gone
with the Wind at the box office a record that had stood for over 20 years. The original soundtrack album was released by
RCA Victor on March 20, 1965, just a few weeks after the film began mesmerizing
audiences worldwide. The album would
reach number one on the Billboard charts and go on to not only become one of
the bestselling albums of the year but one of the biggest selling soundtracks
of all time and, like the original cast album, has never been out of print. Curiously the soundtrack album is one of the
rare RCA Victor albums of this era that was not released in the “Dynagroove”
process.
 |
| Original 1965 release of the soundtrack album (shown w/ special booklet) — RCA Victor [LSOD-2005] |
The Sound of Music — An Original
Soundtrack Recording
RCA Victor LSOD-2005 (mono version
LOCD-2005)
Produced for records by Neely Plumb
Musical Direction: Irwin Kostal
Cast: Julie Andrews, Bill Lee (performed
the vocals for Christopher Plummer), Margery McKay (performed the vocals for
Peggy Wood), Dan Truhitte, Charmian Carr.
Originally released: March 20, 1965
Track Listing:
Side
1
1.
Prelude and The Sound of Music (2:33)
2.
Overture and Preludium (Dixit Dominus) (3:12)
3.
Morning Hymn and Alleluia (2:00)
4.
Maria (3:15)
5.
I Have Confidence (3:21)
6.
Sixteen Going on Seventeen (3:13)
7.
My Favorite Things (2:16)
8.
Climb Ev’ry Mountain (2:13)
Side
2
1.
The Lonely Goatherd (3:08)
2.
The Sound of Music (2:09)
3.
Do-Re-Mi (5:30)
4.
Something Good (3:15)
5.
Processional and Maria (2:25)
6.
Edelweiss (1:48)
7.
So Long, Farewell (2:52)
8.
Climb Ev’ry Mountain (reprise) (1:18)
The original album was released in a
standard flat cover and came with an eight-page booklet; a later reissue in
1973, to coincide with the film re-release, deleted the booklet and packaged
the album in a gatefold cover.
In
2000, to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of the film, RCA released a
special two-disc CD version of the soundtrack.
This release was notable because it not only presented fifteen bonus
tracks on disc two but also presented the full original soundtrack album on
disc one with the songs re-ordered to match the order they are presented in the
film. The album is still available as of
this writing, so to anyone who is a fan of the film, you should really pick up
a copy of this particular release.
 |
| Deluxe 35th Anniversary Soundtrack release — RCA [0786367972-2] |
The Sound of Music — An Original
Soundtrack Recording
35th Anniversary 2-CD
Collector’s Edition
RCA 0786367972-2
Reissue Supervision: Paul Williams
Audio Restoration: Bill Lacy (disc 1)
Tape Transfers: Mike Hartry (disc 1)
Disc 2 Produced by Nick Redman
Music Restoration: Nick Redman and
Michael Matessino (disc 2)
Music Score Remix: Brian Risner (disc 2)
Additional Audio Restoration and Post
Production: Bill Lacey at Digital Sound & Picture, NY
Compilation Produced by Paul Williams
for House of Hits, Ltd.
Released: 2000
Track Listing:
Disc
1
1.
Prelude and The Sound of Music (2:44)
2.
Overture and Preludium (Dixit Dominus) (3:14)
3.
Morning Hymn and Alleluia (2:01)
4.
Maria (3:16)
5.
I Have Confidence (3:26)
6.
Sixteen Going on Seventeen (3:18)
7.
My Favorite Things (2:18)
8.
Do-Re-Mi (5:33)
9.
The Sound of Music (2:10)
10. The
Lonely Goatherd (3:10)
11. So
Long, Farewell (2:54)
12. Climb
Ev’ry Mountain (2:16)
13. Something
Good (3:16)
14. Processional
and Maria (2:27)
15. Edelweiss
(1:50)
16. Climb
Ev’ry Mountain (reprise) (1:21)
Disc 2
1.
Prelude and The Sound of Music* (3:28)
2.
I Have Confidence* (3:41)
3.
Sixteen Going on Seventeen* (4:53)
4.
My Favorite Things* / Salzburg Montage‡ (4:22)
5.
Edelweiss‡ (2:17)
6.
The Grand Waltz‡ (2:19)
7.
Laendler‡ (2:34)
8.
Processional Waltz‡ (1:19)
9.
Climb Ev’ry Mountain* (2:37)
10. Something
Good* (3:50)
11. Sixteen
Going on Seventeen** (3:04)
12. Edelweiss
(reprise)* (2:01)
13. The
Chase‡ (2:39)
14. Escape
/ Climb Ev’ry Mountain (reprise) / Finale* (2:08)
15. Richard
Rodgers Speaks (9:24)
*
Contains some music not on original soundtrack album
‡
Not on original soundtrack album
**
Includes additional verse not used in the film
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