[78-L] Marvin Hamlisch dies

[Cary Ginell]

Yes, it was Hill's idea. The music in "The Sting" somehow fit the movie perfectly - I was just wondering why period appropriate music wasn't selected instead. "The Sting" takes place in the early '30s as did "Kansas City," but the latter film got the music right and the film worked on that level. The main difference is that much of the music in "Kansas City" was "source" music - not background music. Ragtime was separated from the action and was not supposed to be played or heard by the characters. Scenes in "Kansas City" took place in clubs where the music was actually being played. It can be argued that ragtime did exist in the early '30s and that it was being played still on vaudeville stages, but it was far from the predominant music of the day. The use of bluegrass in "Bonnie & Clyde," however, is totally inappropriate, since the first bluegrass recordings didn't occur until Flatt & Scruggs joined Bill Monroe in 1947, 13 years after the deaths of B&C. I think early western swing might have worked even better than bluegrass - not just because it has that frenetic dance feel, but that the music CAME from the area being depicted in the movie (instead of the distant southern Appalachians & Smoky Mountains), and that Bonnie & Clyde themselves were fans of the music - see my biography on Milton Brown concerning encounters the Brownies actually had with the Barrow gang at the Crystal Springs Dancing Pavilion in Fort Worth. 
 
Cary Ginell 
 

> Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2012 12:49:17 -0400
> From: dlennick at sympatico.ca
> To: 78-l at klickitat.78online.com
> Subject: Re: [78-L] Marvin Hamlisch dies
> 
> It was totally off base but wasn't it George Roy Hill who asked for it, having 
> heard his kid playing the Schuller album? When I finally saw the movie I 
> couldn't understand why it didn't take place in 1910.
> 
> "Carnivale" managed to get a lot of the music right, except for using Sing Sing 
> Sing (two or three years too early), and putting a 33rpm locked groove in Ruth 
> Etting's "Love Me Or Leave Me".
> 
> dl
> 
> On 8/7/2012 12:41 PM, Cary Ginell wrote:
> >
> >
> > The interesting thing about "The Sting" for me was how off-base Hamlisch was, timewise, in selecting ragtime for that score. "The Sting" took place in the early 1930s, 20 years after ragtime's heyday ended. Nobody listened to ragtime then, ...
> > but somehow, the charm of the music worked perfectly for that film, just as bluegrass worked for "Bonnie& Clyde." Bluegrass wouldn't be established for a decade after that. What is it about the 1930s that filmmakers couldn't get? Would those films have worked just as well if they had used music that was appropriate for the period?
> >
> > Cary Ginell 
> > _______________________________
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