| The approach of the sixties saw the end of MacCarthyism and Fielding's return to Hollywood. In 1962, at the suggestion of his writer friend Dalton Trumbo, Fielding was hired by Otto Preminger for the film Advise and Consent, a tale of political intrigue amid the halls of Washington DC. It was a remarkable debut score which combined light orchestral lyricism with hints of the richer, almost ethereal textures of his later work. It was also drenched in Fielding's own brand of dark irony - a trademark of the composer. Around this time, Fielding, hungry to expand his compositional technique, enrolled as a student of the venerated composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco; a teacher who had given similar instruction to film composers Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams. Jerry Fielding was an artist who formed close creative partnerships with his directors; chief among them were Michael Winner, Clint Eastwood and, most notably, Sam Peckinpah. In 1967, after scoring many television shows such as Mission Impossible and Star Trek, Fielding scored Noon Wine, a contemporary TV western directed by Peckinpah. It was the first in a legendary though sometimes tumultuous partnership. In 1969 came The Wild Bunch. This landmark film was Peckinpah's and Fielding's breakthrough movie. The composer caught the weariness, dust, dirt and blood of a vanishing West in a rich underscore which interspersed sprightly action cues with wistful Mexican folk melodies and nostalgic, bittersweet dirges. But, as always, the nostalgia was tempered with Fielding's characteristically steely irony. It earned him his first Oscar nomination. Fielding's association with Michael Winner began in 1970 with Lawman, for which the composer supplied an epic score tinted with jazz - something of a first for a western! Then followed the searing, impressionistic music for Chato's Land (1972), The Mechanic (1973) and Scorpio (1974). A standout score was for Winner's gothic melodrama, The Nightcomers (1971). This gave Fielding a chance to indulge his love of 18th century baroque music. The composer considered it among his finest works. His final Winner score was for the 1978 remake of The Big Sleep. It was an admirable compendium of the composer's various techniques which by then had become deeply influenced by the concert works of Bartok, Hindermith and, most strikingly, Lutoslawski. Clint Eastwood was well served by Fielding's music for The Enforcer and The Gauntlet. The composer responded to their hard edged urban milieu with full-on jazz compositions featuring some of the best jazz players in America. In 1976, Jerry Fielding received his third and final Oscar nomination for Eastwood's The Outlaw Josey Wales, a score which composer Bronislaw Kaper rightly praised for its complete avoidance of Western movie-music cliches. Fielding fought hard to get his brand of music into films. He was no Hollywood glad-harry. He was an uncompromising artist who perhaps sacrificed many prestigious commissions by spurning easy, producer-friendly routes. These stances may have taken their toll on him. From the mid-seventies onwards, the composer endured a series of heart attacks, and on February 17 1980 he suffered a fatal heart seizure while in Canada scoring the now virtually unknown horror film Funeral Home. He was survived by his wife, Camille, and his two daughters Elizabeth and Claudia. Along with a handful of composers such as Alex North, Jerry Goldsmith and Leonard Rosenman, Jerry Fielding extended the vocabulary of film music to new limits of harmonic, melodic and rhythmic expression. But whatever techniques he used, Fielding's was always an innately humane approach to film scoring. He largely eschewed traditional 'mickey-mousing' methods (i.e. slavishly following every on-screen action). Rather, his music sought to mirror and illuminate the motivations and deepest inner lives of the characters. This it did with great compassion, beauty and sensitivity. Producer Gordon Dawson touchingly described Jerry Fielding's music as being "... like a man in a green suit walking in a forest". And so it is. |
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A three time Oscar nominee, Jerry Fielding was among the boldest and most experimental of all Hollywood film composers. Typically, his music utilized advanced compositional procedures, producing dense, often richly dissonant orchestral textures, sometimes flavoured with jazz. Fielding's film music career was marked by enduring and rewarding collaborations with Sam Peckinpah, Michael Winner and Clint Eastwood. Born Joshua Feldman in Pittsburgh in 1922 to migrant Russian parents, Jerry Fielding was brought up in a music loving but non-musical household. As a home-bound, somewhat sickly teenager, Fielding derived early inspiration from the radio productions of Orson Welles with their groundbreaking Bernard Herrmann scores. He was also fascinated by the increasingly advanced orchestrations being done for the swing bands of the time, with their heavy reliance on aspects of classical music. The young Fielding joined the studio of Max Atkins, the noted director of theatrical music who also included Henry Mancini among his students. After picking up vital arranging skills, Fielding toured with some of the leading dance bands of the 1940s. This led to Hollywood where his radio and television assignments included conducting and arranging for many popular entertainment shows such as Groucho Marx's famous You Bet Your Life gameshow. |
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| AN APPRECIATION OF A COMPOSER AND HIS CRAFT |
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| At this time, the shadow of MacCarthyism was looming over America, and Fielding, a self-confessed "loud mouthed crusader", found himself among its many victims. His hiring of black musicians for his television orchestra (unheard of in those days) attracted criticism and threats. His leftist affiliations brought him to the attention of the FBI and HUAC. Despite his strong liberal beliefs, Fielding claimed that MacCarthy's men were probably more interested in getting him to name Groucho Marx as a 'fellow traveller'. He took the Fifth Amendment and promptly found his Hollywood career in ruins. Even Groucho, by then deeply spooked, turned his back on him... much to the great comedian's later regret. |
| Fielding eventually found employment in the safe haven of Las Vegas where he became musical director for the stage shows of Abbott And Costello, Debbie Reynolds, Eddie Fisher and others. He also began recording the first of many pop and swing standards for record LP's such as 'Fielding's Formula', 'Sweet With A Beat' and 'Hollywood Brass' |
| "Films need serious composers, and they are going to need them even more in the future. Film music is the main forum for composers of serious intent to possibly create something of value, something that has a real function and can reach a audience". Jerry Fielding, 1979. |
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| "I have always felt that the duty of the serious artist is not primarily to please the public; the primary obligation is to speak the truth. That is the function of the artist, and although the public may not at first like what they hear or see, they may eventually change their minds". Jerry Fielding, 1979. |
| Text by Heathcliff Blair, 2002 |
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Fielding provided another sensitive, exquisitely forlorn score for Peckinpah's proxy self-portrait, Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia (listen to an excerpt below). Scores for Junior Bonner and The Killer Elite continued the partnership. However, some Peckinpah collaborations were not so happy. Fielding's music for The Getaway was rejected, at the behest of Steve McQueen, in favour of a score by Quincy Jones. Then in 1973, Fielding backed out of working with Bob Dylan on the score for Pat Garret And Billy The Kid. |
A second nomination came with Peckinpah's Straw Dogs in 1971. This controversial though somewhat garbled tale of the violence lurking within a meek man saw Fielding's music take a new direction. Inspired by Stravinsky's Histoire Du Soldat, and with a large orchestra supplying dense, yearning sound clusters, this remarkable work gives voice to both the characters' inner turmoil and the desolate Cornish landscapes of the film's setting. |
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