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THE GENERAL DIED AT DAWN – Werner Janssen
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
In 1936 Paramount Pictures came upon an unpublished manuscript by novelist Charles G. Booth inspired by the real-life exploits of Morris “Two-Gun” Cohen. Cohen was a colorful, British-born Jewish adventurer who traveled to China and became a general in the National Revolutionary Army. He served as the personal bodyguard to Sun Yat-sen, leader of the 1911 revolution that toppled the Qing Dynasty. The studio was impressed, purchased the film rights, and signed Booth to a multi-film writing deal. William LeBaron was assigned to the production, Oscar-winning director Lewis Milestone was recruited, and Booth would collaborate with Clifford Odets to write the screenplay. The studio wanted marquee star power for the film, so Gary Cooper would star as O’Hara, joined by Madeleine Carroll as Judy Pierre, Akim Tamiroff as General Yang, Dudley Digges as Mr. Wu, Porter Hall as Peter Pierre, and Philip Ahn as Oxford. Read more…
Remembering Werner Janssen, 1899-1990
Composer and conductor Werner Janssen died ten years ago today, on September 19, 1990, in Stony Brook, New York, following a brief illness, at the age of 91,
A distinguished symphonic conductor as well as a Hollywood film composer, Janssen enjoyed an unusually varied career, earning six Academy Award nominations for his film music while also championing contemporary concert music in the United States and Europe.
Janssen was born in New York City on June 1, 1899, the son of German immigrants. He studied at Dartmouth College and the New England Conservatory, and later pursued conducting studies in Europe. After winning the Rome Prize in 1930 he studied orchestration in Rome, and during the early 1930s established an international reputation as a conductor. In 1934 he became the first American-born conductor to lead the New York Philharmonic, and subsequently served as conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra from 1937 to 1939.
Janssen entered Hollywood relatively late. His first major film score was Lewis Milestone’s The General Died at Dawn (1936), starring Gary Cooper. The film’s Chinese setting gave Janssen an opportunity to incorporate Asian-influenced colors into an otherwise large-scale symphonic score, while its combination of romance, political intrigue and action brought out the dramatic instincts he had developed in the concert hall. The score immediately earned him an Academy Award nomination. Read more…
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