Our member Chuck Klaus majored in speech communications in college. He produced music programs for a radio station in Syracuse, New York, taught at the University there, and was a Drama and Music critic for the newspaper. He met his wife, Marylyn, at a concert there. When they married, he moved to California to be with her, and she brought him into our Rotary Club.
Chuck described brain function as having separate storage areas for images and sound, which need to connect their pathways for association in memory. Original silent films were accompanied by live music in the theater, with music and instruments specified for each movie, using a theater organ or a small orchestra. In 1927, the sound of recorded dialogue and singing was first synchronized with the film action, and soon most movies were talkies. David Selznick made fancier films with more action and drama, producing “King Kong” in 1933 and “Gone with the Wind” in 1939. The sounds were recorded on the set with the action, and music scores were written while watching the film. Music for dramatic scenes was timed with the screen action, as Chuck illustrated with a sword-fighting video clip.
In 1941, Orson Welles produced “Citizen Kane” (reportedly based in part on newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst), which won many Academy Awards. (Welles had become famous for his dramatic 1938 radio broadcast of “The War of the Worlds”.) He was very difficult to get along with, and quickly “exiled” anyone who disagreed with him. Alfred Hitchcock, an English producer, produced “Psycho”, an American psychological horror film, in 1960, pushing the film boundaries for violence and sexuality. He reluctantly put music into his film.
Separate film score albums became popular in the LP records era for marketing their movies, which were getting competition from television. Although separate movie soundtracks are just music, the actual soundtrack in the movie also includes the voice and sound effects.