PRINTER FRIENDLY VIEW
(inverts site colors)

Corman and Teague had brought in a music consultant to recommend cheap 1930's source music to cover the needs of much of the film, and he prevailed upon the use of Harry Warren's 1933 hit "42nd Street," which recurs throughout the movie and is adapted into the score. Some of Horner's rather short recording for The Lady in Red is occupied by recycled or original source music as a result. The trio of "Now That You Know," "Lonely," and "Oriental Blues" are for on-screen band performance, and the Arabian-oriented source music for "The Garden Party" is a distinct oddity that was recycled later in Horner's career. Also heard in context on screen is a reprise of the main source theme in "42nd Street - Juke Box Source." The instrumentation is minimal, consisting of four woodwinds, four brass, one violin, string bass, acoustic guitar, steel guitar, and drum kit. Many cues are generated by four musicians or less. Thematically, the adapted "42nd Street" theme runs throughout and has impressive malleability. Originally for the lead character's dreams of becoming a respected dancer, the tune is arranged faithfully for "Main Title Music - 42nd Street" and "42nd Street - Juke Box Source" but becomes better engrained thereafter. Its fragments accompany killings in "Dillinger's Death #1," "The Getaway," and "Eddie's Goodbye" while trombone and clarinet carefully navigate it alone in "42nd Street - The Eggs." More engrossing for Horner enthusiasts will be his original love theme for The Lady in Red, a decent idea that struggles to achieve warmth because of its sparse renderings. It was arranged several times for a guitar duet, including the "Theme From The Lady in Red" performance that was actually Horner's intended end titles cues. Since this idea only gets its legs under it once Polly meets Dillinger, the theme comes alive for the ensemble in true Horner drama form in "Playing Baseball," the clear highlight of the work. The pair of guitars is joined by harp and flute in "Love Theme (Film Version)," and the love theme is softly expanded to the orchestral players again in "California." It's reduced, however, to solemn, high piano and then the two guitars in "Dillinger's Death #2," becomes faint on woodwinds for just a few bars in "Polly's Slap," and receives another guitar duet rearranged for "Love Theme - Postlude."

Horner also wrote a pair of secondary themes for The Lady in Red, the more prominent being a suspense motif that is an octave-spanning ostinato on piano and bass with blurting brass in a strange major/minor formation on top. This idea suddenly appears in "Laying the Trap - Part 1" and "Laying the Trap - Part 2" and continues with dissonant bursts of "42nd Street" from trumpets in "Dillinger's Death #1." It interrupts the love theme on ominous brass in "Polly's Slap" and reprises its dichotomy with "42nd Street" heard earlier during "Dillinger's Death #1" in "The Getaway." The motif is drawn out for more streamlined suspense from the whole ensemble in "Eddie's Goodbye" while the piano allows the motif to descend and die in "Pop's Death." Finally, a chase motif explodes as an ambitious, big band jazz piece for clarinet, saxophone, and brass in "First Bank Robbery," a style reprised in a longer arrangement in "End Title." Because of the breadth of this material's stylings, not to mention how poor many of Horner's earliest scores tended to be, The Lady in Red stands as a comparatively impressive work. While the composer was clearly a novice at this time, you can hear his trademark sound start to develop in a few cues, most notably the affably pretty "Playing Baseball." That cue alone, along with the many variants of the love theme for the guitars and other instruments, may not merit a pursuit of the score on album for most Horner collectors, but the work stands as a distinct intellectual curiosity. One can clearly hear the composer's knack for 1930's big band jazz adaptations right up front. The score was long unreleased until Intrada Records unearthed the original masters that had recorded most of the instruments separately, which allowed an album presentation in stereo whereas the film's mix was in mono. The sound quality of the product is better than some other early Horner albums and contains no audible distortion. One of the source cues, "Oriental Blues," came from an inferior source, and another cue was lost in the master tapes, presumably because it was recorded separately later. In the end, The Lady in Red is served its film well and previews some of the composer's later music, but don't expect for Horner to have truly announced himself by this point. The composer completed the entire project for around $4,000, a remarkable price for his talent but well worth giving the kid a foot in the door.  ***   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.15 (in 108 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.23 (in 200,400 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.

Total Time: 27:16