<< The New Year brings with it a new release from the Brigham Young University

Film Music Archives. The combined cd of Max Steiner's original scores to

DODGE CITY and THE OKLAHOMA KID, both 1939, is now available exclusively

through Screen Archives Entertainment (www.screenarchives.com) or (540)

635-2575. The wonderful sound on the cd, derived from archival studio

recordings in the Max Steiner Collection at BYU, was ably produced by Ray

Faiola. Virtually all of the DODGE CITY score survived in the Steiner

Collection, but not all of the cues from THE OKLAHOMA KID. The 78-minute cd

is accompanied by a 72-page booklet that contains a newly-commissioned

essay, "Winning the West at Warners," by noted film historian Rudy Behlmer

on the making of both films; extensive music notes for each cue by John

Morgan and James D'Arc, including excerpts from Steiner's marginal notes in

his original sketches; and an essay "Steiner on Scoring" by James D'Arc. The

booklet is heavily illustrated with color posters, lobby cards, and

photographs from both films.

With Warners' DODGE CITY, filmed in Technicolor and starring Errol Flynn

and Olivia deHavilland, Steiner was arguably the first composer to

stylistically establish a fully integrated score for a big-budgeted Western

film. Up until the late 1930s, Western scores either were assemblies of

period tunes or received very little musical attention whatsoever. Steiner's

epic, sweeping leitmotifs, more evident in DODGE CITY than in THE OKLAHOMA

KID, placed the Hollywood Western solidly into an aural experience befitting

an "A" budget. In a year when Steiner was working on 11 films at Warners,

and GONE WITH THE WIND at Selznick, the score to THE OKLAHOMA KID was fresh,

original, and particularly vigorous in enhancing the story of the 1893

Cherokee Strip land rush in Oklahoma and in keeping up with the fast-riding,

fast-talking James Cagney in his first Western film.

I have mixed feelings about the Caine Mutiny release. If it is the original score that will be great although I bet it won't be as sonically nice as one your re-recordings.