tadpole-596-918256 Review of The Making of 'the High and the Mighty'

The Making of 'the High and the Mighty' (2005 Video)

When I tried to thank it for all the fish . . .

[8/10 · 12 February 2016]

. . . the Universe directed me to this page to review THE MUSIC AND WORLD OF DMITRI TIOMKIN, who won an Oscar for Best Score as a result of his "Whistling Dan" motif for a John Wayne vehicle titled THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY. This 19-minute documentary short can be found on Disc Two of Warner Bros.' 2005 DVD release of this pioneering aviation disaster flick. It turns out that Tiomkin conducted his own orchestra for 8 or 9 sessions to record this score, and the musical bunch numbered as many as 83 noisemakers. It's also disclosed here that Mr. Wayne was blowing out "Mary," a George M. Cohen tune, during his many on-set whistling scenes, but this sounded so lame in the "dailies" that Tiomkin whipped out the famous notes movie goers heard in their theaters, which was performed by Hollywood's best whistler--Muzzy Marcellino--NOT Mr. Wayne. It also is revealed here that someone wrote words to this tune, and it charted on Billboard's Radio Playlist in 1956, but the notoriously corrupt Academy Awards honchos tried to deny it Oscar eligibility just because these lyrics were not included in the final version of the movie. To get around these stinkers, Warner dubbed the lyrics in on one print of THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY, and played that print for one week in December, 1956, in one Los Angeles theater, making it eligible for the Best Song statuette (which Tiomkin had won the year before with HIGH NOON, along with another Best Score Oscar). However, the Academy was highly miffed at this turn of events, and forked over the Oscar for Best Song of 1956 to "Three Coins in a Fountain," depriving Dmitri of what would have become a fifth career Oscar (counting his fourth, which he won later for the score to THE GUNS OF NAVARRONE).