Continuing my rundown of scores mentioned in last summer’s Big Board Extravaganza that I haven’t heard before.

Last time - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=133191

-----------------

This time - The Time Machine (1960)
Russell Garcia
Mentioned by: Soundtracker94

The music of the 1960 adaptation of H. G. Wells’ novella The Time Machine makes for an interesting transitional score in that it both seems to look backwards towards the great fantasy / adventure scores of Hollywood’s Golden Age and anticipate the sci-fi scores of the 1960s. Film and TV scoring was arguably a secondary career for composer Russell Garcia, who had a much more extensive resume as a conductor and jazz arranger and also wrote textbooks on composition, but he clearly could have made more of a career out of it - his orchestrations are vivid, his tunes memorable and heroic, his music imbued with a sense of wonder and discovery. It compares favorably with Klaus Badelt’s score for the 2002 film adaptation.

****½

Film Score Monthly released the film recording on CD in 2005; that album has been out of print for a while. Garcia oversaw a new recording in 1987 performed by what is now known as the Munich Symphony Orchestra that was released on LP and CD by GNP Crescendo. In 2022, a remaster of that later recording was issued on a separate label, a release longtime internet curmudgeon Ford Thaxton speculated producer Arnold Leibovit had screwed up given that some track times were now longer (“sounds like it was an incorrect digital conversion”) until it was revealed that the new release reversed pitch and speed adjustments and other post-recording editorial decisions made on the earlier album (Ford was strangely silent after that news). The latter album is also on U.S. digital / streaming services.

2022 rerecording remaster - https://open.spotify.com/album/7C8XixdE3wyyA5rt73iWqB?si=-g13A9vtRkO6TOTkdsyFOw

Garcia did work with the director of The Time Machine on Atlantis: The Lost Continent in 1961, but five years after that he and his wife sold their possessions and sailed around the world to teach the Baháʼí faith before later settling in New Zealand. As if the 1972 Oscar for Best Score (with its disqualification of The Godfather and awarding of Charlie Chaplin’s delayed 1952 film Limelight) wasn’t controversial enough, Garcia also probably should’ve been attached to it - https://www.allaboutjazz.com/news/russ-garcia-1916-2011/

-----------------

Next time: 1960 again