Universal's Monster MusicStein

By: Randall D. Larson
Date: Thursday, July 13, 2006

In the 1950s, film music was a far different game than it is now. The studio system was still in effect and film composers were, for the most part, contracted to one studio or another. Universal Studios was one of Hollywood's most productive movie factories and had been since the 1930s when they invented monster movies with the original DRACULA, FRANKENSTEIN, MUMMY and WOLF-MAN films. These movies like their brethren the B-movie Westerns and crime films, were made quickly and cheaply although with lots of talent and imagination, as their longevity as icons of horror cinema has shown.

Universal also defined horror film music for the decades from the 1930s to the 1950s with a stable staff of contracted composers. The dependable Hans Salter and Frank Skinner first established a consistent, Gothic music tonality for the Frankenstein and Wolf-man films of the 1940s, a style which was carried over when outer-space, science fiction pictures replaced the venerable creaking monsters in the 1950s. Other musical staff members certainly played a hand in scoring these films usually a whole barrelful of composers (under the supervision of Universal's master music supervisor, Joseph Gershenson) would tackle a single film score, each one taking a reel or two and sharing each other's themes so that a unified whole resulted. But in the 1950s, Herman Stein was the studio's leading horror composer, aided by Hans Salter, who carried over his Gothic, ghoulish gems from the 1940s, and newcomer Henry Mancini, who would go on from his monster music roots to become one of Hollywood's leading composers during the 1960s. Stein composed the signature themes for THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE, THIS ISLAND EARTH, scored portions of other classic horror films like TARANTULA,THE MOLE PEOPLE, THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, THE MONOLITH MONSTERS and others, including dozens of Westerns and other programmers, including the Abbott & Costello, Ma & Pa Kettle, and Francis the talking mule series. He and his fellow staff composers also found their work re-used over and over as library tracks in compiled scores for films like MONSTER ON THE CAMPUS and THE THING THAT COULDN'T DIE.

I had the opportunity to interview Herman Stein some years ago for my book on fantastic film music, and since both the book and the magazine I used to publish are long sold out, I thought it would be time to resurrect the interview from its icy grave beneath Castle Frankenstein and dust it off and see what insights into classic 1950s science fiction film scoring could be gleaned. Enjoy.



Born in Philadelphia in 1915, Herman Stein was a self-taught musician who became a noted arranger for jazz orchestras and radio programs in New York during the 1930s and 40s. In 1948 he moved to Los Angeles, where he studied formally with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, joining the music staff at Universal Pictures in 1951, where he remained until 1958. Following the end of the studio system and the demise of the Universal music department, Stein and many of his fellow staffers found work in television, scoring episodes of VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA and LOST IN SPACE. Stein retired from composing at the end of the 1960s. He's still living, poking around Hollywood, a living legacy of some of the most potent monster movie music of all time.



Q: You worked on many of the classic Universal science fiction films of the 50s, often in collaboration with many other composers...

Herman Stein:Yes. There was a staff of composers in those days. There was me, Frank Skinner and Henry Mancini, and of course Hans Salter was frequently called in because he had been the director of the music department prior to my coming there. Heinz Roemheld and others would come in now and then when we needed more people, but I was on salary there with Frank Skinner and Hank Mancini, we were the main three, along with David Tamkin, the orchestrator, who was also on salary. The head of the music department was Joseph Gershenson. We'd grind pictures out like a factory in those days of course it's entirely different now. Sometimes two or three of us would work on a picture; one of us would come up with the main theme and the others would use that theme in the cues we'd do. Sometimes I would do a reel or Hank would do a reel, or Skinner would do a reel, that sort of thing. It was quite a collaborative effort.

Q: Working with all those other composers, how was a musical consistency maintained throughout the film?

Stein: Sometimes somebody would inherit the Main Title, and we would have a theme there. Whoever had to use that particular theme would compose it in his own particular way. For example, we did a picture called IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE that was a little different. I remember that I did the Main Title and some other cues, and we also used some library music. Everybody would do different things, but for continuity, somebody would come up with a certain theme for this character or that character. When the rest of us had to compose a cue that involved that particular character we based our writing on that theme. We actually used each other's themes interchangeably but we would compose it in our own way.

When you take a theme and you compose something on it you are composing--the fact that you used another theme doesn't mean that you are not a composer. I always think, as an example, of the beginning of Beethoven's 5th. If somebody should say Ba-Ba-Ba-BOM and then you proceed to write the rest of the First Movement, you are a composer. But not according to ASCAP! That's the strange thing about that whole system whoever writes the melody is considered the composer, but that is not always meaningful. You could take a snatch of the melody and you can build all kinds of things on it, but you are a composer, that's what you are doing.

Anyhow, for continuity that's the way it would be. Somebody had a theme and whoever had a particular cue would use it. I would use Hank's themes for something, or he would use something I wrote, or Frank Skinner wrote, or Hans would do it. We all would do it the same way. Sometimes we wouldn't get credit for the music. We did an awful lot of pictures that way, where just the head of the department got credit for "music supervision"; there was no actual music credit, but that's fair enough.

Q: That's why in many of those films only Joseph Gershenson is given music credit?

Stein: When his name appeared it would say "music supervision." He was not a composer, he was a very excellent conductor and he had very excellent ideas. He assigned the music to us; he would say, "Hank, you do this reel" and "Frank, you do that." He was an executive, actually, and a very splendid one, too, he had excellent taste, and I think we're all very grateful to him. I am and I know that Hank Mancini is because he gave us both a job.

Q: You scored a number of science fiction films for Universal, starting with IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE in 1953. Do you recall if you took any special approach on these kinds of films?

Stein: I should point out in the beginning that in 1953 films were different and the music would be different. Your approach would be different, you'd want a different sound, that's why in IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE I used the Theremin. The Theremin had been used before, and today of course I wouldn't think of using a Theremin, I'd use something else. But you approach a science fiction film like you do any other film. Music is music, and if you compose for a dramatic situation, which happens to be a film, you approach it fundamentally the same way. The fact that it's an outer space plot, or a supernatural one, really doesn't matter to the composer. You're composing music for a film, and you're fulfilling the function of a film composer which is to intensify what you see on the screen--not necessarily to describe it or to identify it, but to get an overall effect. When you see a film with music and everything, the photography, the story, it all becomes a homogeneous whole, and everything contributes to that total effect. So it's really no different writing for a science fiction picture than any other, it is not a specialty. The fact that you do it today with the synthesizer doesn't make it more outer space. You can write the most conventional and lousy music for a synthesizer as you can for a violin! And I hear plenty of it! And writing sound effects doesn't make it necessarily more eerie.

You can get a cretin to write a thirty-two bar tune and play it on a guitar, but that does not necessarily make him a film scorer. They may use it in the picture, but that doesn't mean that he scored a picture. I have little patience with that, really. For example, Randall, you write, and I'm sure you have no patience with any so-called writer who can not write a simple, declarative sentence, and likewise I have no patience with a so-called artist who can not draw (even Picasso, and the most far-out guys in the world, all know how to draw), and I have no patience with a so-called composer who doesn't take the time and sweat to learn his craft, and to learn how to orchestrate. You can tap out a melody and yet it does not make you a composer. A film composer has to be able to write music. You can't just be a cretin and learn six chords on a guitar and then become a film scorer.

The nature of music, specifically for science fiction films, will change through the years. It already has. They wouldn't make these rather naive outer space pictures, they make them differently today, and therefore the music is different, just as the photography and the effects are different. I'm thinking of Bernard Herrmann, for example, in PSYCHO, which is an excellent score, where he used sixty-five strings, and that wouldn't be any more exciting if he had ten synthesizers! Of course, if you were writing it today you might use a synthesizer, but you would write differently. Whenever you compose music, you write your music in terms of what the instruments are. In other words, you don't write something and say, "I'll give that to a flute." You conceive it for flute, you conceive it for strings, and ultimately (which they're not doing yet), you'll conceive synthesizer music precisely for that instrument. You will think in terms of synthesizer.

Q: How would you describe the music you did provide for IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE and some of these others?

Stein: I don't know how to describe it. I remember I did quite a bit of the film, including the Main Title. There were others, THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, for example. I remember Joe Gershenson and I discussing it, that's the one that goes Bom-ba-BOM, that three note figure with the dissonance at the end. I think that was my particular theme, and then we had some others. Frank had one, and I think Hank had a few. In those days you had a theme for this and a theme for that; that's not necessarily always the best way to go, that came from Wagner, you know, the idea of the leitmotif. In those early days, we laughed at a guy who'd say, "Well, Wagner used the leitmotif, and I used a leitmotif, too; so therefore I write like Wagner!" That's pretentious, really.

The idea of using a particular theme for a particular thing is not always the way to go, but that was the thing to do at that time, and sometimes it did help. It is very useful sometimes, like the JAWS theme. That's the approach I used, I don't know how to describe it any further.

There were some others, I can't remember all of them, but I know there were quite a few. THE MONOLITH MONSTERS well, that doesn't count so much THIS ISLAND EARTH; that one I did the whole picture except the last reel. There was a lot of dialog in there and the idea was just to get a sustained mood, there was nothing particularly different about that. I remember I did a lot of cues on THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, some of them were just straight dramatic cues, that's all. I don't know what music you'd use for a person getting smaller, you can't get too literal with that thing. We had things like TARANTULA, THE DEADLY MANTIS we all worked on that, will Bill Lava and Hank Mancini.

The only thing I object to in science fiction pictures is when the music just becomes sound effects. That does not help. There's one generality that I'd like to make, and it's not only about science fiction pictures but about all film music, and I think it's an important one, and that is this: music can be a good piece of music, played away from the film, and it may not help the picture because it may not be right, but if it is bad as music, it can never, never help a picture. I don't know if anybody else ever made this observation but I make it twenty times a day! If it is bad music it is not going to help. A lot of pictures work not because of the music but in spite of it, and I've heard many pictures that would have been better if the music had been better.

I think of a picture like THE GREAT MAN, that's one of the few that I got a credit on, we just wrote a main title theme, and that set a kind of mood. I think that's a good illustration. The music has to set a mood for you, sometimes right from the main title. It will set a mood that will grab you right away, whether it's a science fiction picture or a horror picture or a dramatic picture or, for that matter, a comedy. There was one picture I did and I guess it's one of the best ones, called THE UNGUARDED MOMENT, an Esther Williams picture, and that had a lot of frantic stuff in it. Similar music could be written, I guess, for a science fiction picture, as well.

Q: The Universal pictures used a lot of music library material over and over, didn't they?

Stein: Some things we did just with library stock. Some bad ones, too, because they ground out a lot of junk in those days! It was a studio that needed an awful lot of music because they turned out so many pictures. I think Gershenson should get all the credit on that, because he ran the department, and he said "you have to pick the right people to do it and you have to look over them." I know I did a lot of things like THE BLACK SHIELD OF FALWORTH, I worked on that, too. Hans did and everybody else did, and we did a lot of Abbott & Costello and Ma & Pa Kettle. I did many of those. I was looking at that Themes From Horror Movies album, where they used some of these things, but I didn't like the way they were orchestrated. This was not the orchestration we used in the pictures.

Q: Are there any of these films you're especially proud of?

Stein: I did a complete picture for Roger Corman, called THE INTRUDER, and I'm happy that Roger Corman was pleased with that film because when he speaks of his pictures, and he's done so many, he says that the one he always likes, his pet picture, was THE INTRUDER; but that's one nobody's ever heard of, I suppose. It was from a book written by Charles Beaumont. I had written the music to that, and I'm very proud of it, but it doesn't play around very much anymore. William Shatner was the star, and he was superb. We were all proud of that picture, everybody who worked on it. It'll never mean a thing to us, but everybody has a little pet picture, and THE INTRUDER, for Roger Corman, is my pet. I think that was a fine picture, for the time.

Q: How would you describe the music you wrote for it?

Stein: It was dramatic, and I like it very much. The main title was something that they use a lot now, and we used a similar thing in THE UNGUARDED MOMENT, that pulsating kind of a thing. I don't know how to describe it, it's pulsating and exciting.

Q: You worked in television in the mid 1960s...

Stein: Yes. After Universal, I just freelanced for a while and did different television series at Fox. On these shows, whenever I would get a segment I would do the whole segment. On LOST IN SPACE, it wasn't a collaborative effort, we each wrote a whole segment, and Johnny Williams wrote the theme. But I hated television! I didn't like the rush.

Q: These horror and science fiction pictures we've discussed were, of course, only a portion of your overall output for films. Can you comment about some of the other types of films you've scored and any particular impressions that may stand out?

Stein: I can only say that there were all kinds. There were something like eighty-five different titles that I've worked on. When you worked on a studio staff, and they turned out so many pictures a year, like sixty pictures a year, you worked on a lot. I worked on MISTER CORY with Hank, MAN WITHOUT A STAR, that was with Hans Salter. I got a credit on SLIM CARTER, which was a western. There's a whole bunch of pictures. THE TOY TIGER was one that I did with Hank there was a picture called THE PRIVATE WAR OF MAJOR BENSON and Hank wrote the theme for the main title, and then I took Hank's eight bars, wrote a middle, and I orchestrated a main title that became THE TOY TIGER. That, with me and Hank, was a purely collaborative effort.

Q: What sort of musical activities have you undertaken since leaving films and television?

Stein: In the 60s, I just withdrew from the business all together, and sort of dropped out. I got involved in mathematics and that drove me to financial commodities, and I spend a lot of my time with that, now. There are only two things, if I live long enough, that I want to finish. There's a ballet, from a story by Ben Hecht, he wrote a novel called Count Ruga, and within that novel there was a little story about a magician, and it's a magnificent story. In fact the one who called it to my attention was Chuck Beaumont (I knew some of the writers, I knew Chuck, and I know Dick Matheson, a very fine writer). I always wanted to do a ballet, and I remember speaking to Ben Hecht once, just over the telephone (I never met him), and I said "I love your beautiful little story and I would love to do a ballet on it" and asked if I could have his permission. He said, "Yes, all I want is fifty percent of the losses!", and that was cute.

Another thing that I'm working on is an opera. Princess Pamela, based on a novel by Ray Russell, who's quite a good science fiction writer. If I can do that ballet and the opera I think I would die happy. I'm not involved in the business too much now I'm still in the Academy, of course, and I get to hear what's being done. Some of it is very good, and most of it is very bad, as always. But that's with anything, the good stuff is about ten percent, the mediocre is about eighty, and the junk is a good portion too. But what is good is very good, and I'm sure this was true in the time of Mozart, Bach and Paleolithic Man!



Former editor/publisher of CinemaScore magazine, Randall Larson was for many years senior editor for Soundtrack Magazine and a film music columnist for Cinefantastique magazine. He is the author of Musique Fantastique: A Survey of Film Music in the Fantastic Cinema (Scarecrow, 1984) and Music from the House of Hammer (Scarecrow, 1995). In addition to Soundtrax and Music News for Cinescape.com, Randall reviews soundtracks Music from the Movies, writes for Film Music Magazine, and in many other fields.

Recommended Soundtrack sources:

www.buysoundtrax.com
www.intrada.com
www.screenarchives.com
www.footlight.com
www.arksquare.com/index_main.html (Japan)
www.intermezzomedia.com/ (Italy)
www.moviegrooves.com
www.moviemusic.com

For questions or comments, contact the author at Soundtrax@cinescape.com