The Big Country and The Big Symphony


Last Friday night the Valley Symphony Orchestra treated my husband and I and another couple to a night of grand music.  First, we heard Scherzo Capriccioso, Op. 66 by Dvořák and a Trumpet Concerto by Arutunian featuring soloist Jared Broussard. Both were excellent and exciting.  The second half of the performance was the music of both Indiana Jones and, to my delight, the score from one of my favorite westerns, The Big Country.
The Big Country is a sprawling western filled with stars from Hollywood’s golden era.  There is Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston (more on him later), Burl Ives, Chuck Conners, and just when you are about to overdose on testosterone, you are saved by the presence of Jean Simmons and Carroll Baker.  I am not the only person who loves this movie.  President Eisenhower watched it at least eight times in five days and pronounced it the best film ever made. 
The movie was directed by William Wyler and while he is certainly a skilled technician, he seems to have picked an on-going argument with every actor in the film.  Gregory Peck declared he would never work with Wyler again.  He didn’t.  The only person who got along with Wyler was Burl Ives, probably because Ives listened to what Wyler had to say, nodded his head, silently told him to go pound salt and did the job the way he wanted.  [Burl Ives went on to win the Academy Award for best supporting role for his work on The Big Country.] 
In the meantime, Wyler was irritating Peck by not giving him enough retakes; Heston was given too many; Jean Simmons was driven to distraction with the hourly revisions of the script, and  Slim Pickens insisted on doubling for Gregory Peck in the scenes where he is repeatedly bucked of a difficult horse.  It seems the horse was owned by Pickens and he didn’t want just anyone riding him in key scenes. 
William Wyler proved equally difficult in working with Jerome Moross who wrote the magnificent score for The Big Country.  It seems Wyler detested the music and had already hired someone to re-write the score when preview audiences started raving about the sound, especially the opening theme.  Star and co-producer Gregory Peck intervened and said Moross’s score stayed.  Thank goodness!  The score for The Big Country is now considered a classic piece of work and is recognizable in an instant.
We still get good movies, but we don’t get westerns like The Big Country anymore.   Similarly, we have good actors, but not like the stars of the ‘50’s. 
Just think of those men: Kirk Douglass, Burt Lancaster, John Wayne, Robert Mitchem, Gregory Peck, Cary Grant and Charlton Heston.  Now that is my idea of Best in Show.  Of that group Charlton Heston always makes me get a dreamy look.  His best role is one of his least known, as namesake and star of the movie Will Penny.  Sigh…..big sigh…..
The Big Country is more than a western.  It is a lesson in how we see and define ourselves, and how we can sometimes suffer from tunnel vision and become intransigent in the face of changing times.  It is a good movie, the symphony was a joy, the introduction to the piece by Maestro Peter Dabrowski was, as always, interesting and instructive.  It was a good night. 
There is one symphony left in the VSO’s season, “Designed by Dabrowski” on Friday, March 27.  Do something good for your heart, your mind and your soul.  Plan a night at the VSO.
Good music helps you keep the faith. 

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