Saturday 2 (17/07/10)

I went to the Hollywood Bowl today, fulfilling a life-long wish. I’ve known about the Hollywood Bowl since I was about 3, partly through Monty Python (who played a sell-out live show of their sketches there in 1982, but mostly through Tom and Jerry at the Hollywood Bowl. How appropriate, then, that my trip there should be to see screenings of cartoons, with music played live by the LA Philharmonic, and that the program should contain this very cartoon.

The concert was a Warner Brothers presentation, so of course the cartoons featured were mainly WB, but this “guest appearance” by T&J was my favourite piece (what can I say – there’s a reason I’m studying MGM, not WB). In it, Tom and Jerry fight over the privilege of conducting Johann Strauss Jr’s overture to “Die Fledermaus”. I urge anyone interested to look it up on Youtube – and then to imagine trying to conduct a live orchestra in time to the images. I have no idea by what technical means the synchronisation was accomplished, possibly the orchestral players had earpieces with the beat playing continuously (called a click-track – a process that was used to record the music for the cartoons in the first place) or possibly some form of visual metronome in front of the conductor. I imagine the most important technique was lots and lots of practice, and conductor (George Docherty) and orchestra did a masterful job.

At the end of the concert were fireworks that came out of the top of the amphitheatre, synchronised to Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries. This piece was chosen because Milt Franklin and Carl Stalling (WB’s cartoon composers) used bits of Wagner frequently. Most famous is Franklin’s score for What’s Opera, Doc? – the last cartoon screened, and another must-see. (Be quick if you want to Youtube it, though – WB is very prompt at taking down web videos, and the current one has been posted for 3 weeks already!) Funnily enough, the Ride of the Valkyries was the one piece of Wagner least likely to be used, because it was so recognisably German. It was used throughout the war to accompany newsreel footage, and the connotations were so negative that Disney scrapped a planned segment from Fantasia based on it.