Hear This Symphony Version of David Raksin’s Brilliant Score to Across the Wide Missouri (1951), and Some Good Gable Talk!

Re-posted by N.S.

I know of the picture, but never saw it. In any event, this score is stunning. God bless you, David Raksin, wherever you are!

This was supposed to be a hit for Clark Gable (1901-1960), who was paired with Robert Ryan, who played his brother, but “the King,” after three-and-a-half years of honorable and unnecessary service in the war as an aerial photographer on bombers, even though he was officially too old to serve, came back to a cold shoulder from the movie-going public.

It wasn’t until the end of his career that Gable managed to snag a series of excellent scripts in successful pictures: Teacher’s Pet (1958), Run Silent, Run Deep (1958), But Not for Me (1959) and The Misfits (1961), which wasn’t released until after his death from a massive coronary brought on from too many years of smoking and boozing.

In case you "heard" that Gable "raped" a young Loretta Young when they made a picture in 1934, that's a retroactive Me-Too hoax some feminazi cooked up 80 years after the fact. Young and Gable's torrid affair was the worst-kept secret in Hollywood. Marlene Dietrich joked about it. Gable knocked up Young, and she acted as if she'd adopted the child. Dietrich once quipped,

"Have you ever wondered why there are so many Catholic churches in Hollywood? It's because every time Loretta Young commits a sin, she builds another church!"

That Marlene was a pistol.

Some of this is going to sound familiar, in part from folk tunes. But in other cases, before you assume that Raksin ripped someone off, check the date. Did the other composition come before or after 1951?

I’m thinking Basil Pouledoris, for one name, and Alex North for another.

Previously by Raksin at WEJB/NSU:

The Bad and the Beautiful (1952): The title sounds trashy, but the picture, by Minelli, may have been a masterpiece. I say, “may have been,” because I only saw it once, about 53 years ago, though I still recall Gilbert Roland and Dick Powell having flash backs to an interviewer, Kane-style, about the protagonist (Kirk Douglas, in his berserker heyday), both of whom I saw there for the first time.

Raksin also scored Laura (1944) for Otto Preminger, his most famous music.


Across the Wide Missouri - A Symphony (David Raksin – 1951)