Elisabeth Grace Foley

Historical Fiction Author

Favorite Western Film Scores

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Film scores are among my favorite kinds of music—and many of my favorite scores are from Westerns. To me, the colorful, energetic (and Copland-influenced) style that Elmer Bernstein and others developed in the early ’60s is the signature Western film-score sound, even though most of my favorite Western movies come from earlier decades. It seems a shame that just as this wonderful music style was developing, Western movies were already changing, and the traditional Western would be well on the downward slide by the end of the decade. There ought to have been more movies and better movies to go with scores like this!

But anyway, to return to the subject of this post—I’ve done plenty of talking about Westerns, and a good deal about music, so I thought it was about time I did a post on my very favorite Western film scores. So here are my top three:

Updated in 2019 to be a top-five list!

1. The Cowboys (1973) by John Williams
I wish the traditional Western movie had lasted another decade if only so John Williams could have written more scores like this. It’s got everything—a lively, toe-tapping main theme with sparkling orchestrations, which reappears with a fresh twist and creative syncopation for each action scene; plus a couple of achingly beautiful slow themes. (Not to mention that utterly odd bass harmonica villain’s theme.) I love practically every minute of this soundtrack.

2. The Magnificent Seven (1960) by Elmer Bernstein
It’s a classic, that’s all there is to it. It’s practically impossible not to get a huge grin on your face when you listen to the exuberant main theme. This is one of those scores that really ‘makes’ its movie—can you honestly imagine the film without it? I knew the music long before I ever saw the movie, and when I finally did see it, I was astonished that some of the most energetic cues, which sounded like they came from all-out action scenes, actually belonged to moments where not much was happening onscreen. As the CD liner notes observe, the music supplies much of the film’s energy.

3. The Big Country (1958) by Jerome Moross
A slightly earlier score, but with a similar sensibility. The marvelous sweeping main theme is undoubtedly the best part; it’s another one of those pieces that you just can’t help loving, both in the grand main title and the lovely slower renditions later on. There’s other good moments throughout the score too.

4. The Proud Rebel by Jerome Moross
Sometimes I’m not sure which of the two Moross scores is my favorite. The main theme of The Big Country wins out easily, but then the gentler melodies that make up the main body of The Proud Rebel‘s soundtrack tip the scale in the other direction. It also features a brief, ominous martial theme harking back to memories of the Civil War in the story, and some tense and energetic action music too—and many chords and phrases that betray the hand of the same composer in both scores.

5. Lonesome Dove by Basil Poledouris
I love, love the main theme music from this score. The rich, sweeping melody could be the soundtrack to just about anything Western that you wanted it to be. Some other parts of the soundtrack are a little too jangly and twangy for my taste, but a few of my favorite tracks that feature the main theme are “Night Mares,” “The Leaving,” and “Captain Call’s Journey.”

Runners-up: Red River by Dimitri Tiomkin; The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) and The Comancheros (1961), both by Elmer Bernstein; the gorgeous main theme to Rio Grande (1950) by Victor Young; The Searchers (1956) by Max Steiner; Dances With Wolves (1990) by John Barry. I also really like the main theme of Silverado (1985) by Bruce Broughton, though I haven’t heard the whole score.

It is a curious thing that my favorite scores don’t come from my favorite movies. Several of these films I’ve never seen, haven’t seen all the way through, or didn’t particularly care for. Favorite films are a subject for another day. But anyway…what are your favorite Western movie scores?

War and Peace (1956)

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I waited quite a while to see this movie. I’d told my mom that it would best be seen after reading the book—which I’d already done several years ago—and she had plans to read it, so we put off watching the movie till then. Mom finally read the book this summer. For a long time she kept telling me it was slow going, but by the final quarter of the book she was completely invested in the story and characters—giving the rest of us periodic bulletins on what they were up to, while I was kind of grinning behind my hand because I already knew how things turned out and had a feeling she’d like it. And when she finished the book last week, we finally watched the movie.

The first thing one has to acknowledge, of course, are the film’s limitations. So much of the meat of Tolstoy’s novels lies in the thoughts of his characters; so many important events are viewed through their eyes. That’s the kind of thing that is nearly impossible to transfer to the screen. And the sheer massive size of War and Peace means that a feature film, even a three-and-a-half-hour one, must choose which scenes to dramatize and move quickly through them. The beginning of the film feels a little piecemeal, with a little of these characters, a little of those, different scenes that don’t connect right away, but it gradually picks up steam and draws together a little as it goes on. I told my mom that if you borrowed a bit of music terminology you could call it “Selections From War and Peace.” But there are a lot of individual moments and crucial scenes that are beautifully done.

The thing that has to be the biggest head-scratcher for anyone who knows the book is how the character of Pierre Bezukhov, variously described as “stout,” “enormous,” “corpulent” and “fat,” could possibly be portrayed by…Henry Fonda? Yet he manages to give a pretty good performance. In spite of the obvious wrongness of his age and appearance, one still somehow gets glimpses of the personality and mannerisms of Tolstoy’s Pierre. I don’t know if it’s the spectacles or something in makeup or hairstyling, but Fonda doesn’t even look quite like himself sometimes (though there’s never any question of his being the least bit stout).

On the other hand, the casting of Audrey Hepburn as Natasha Rostov is absolute perfection. She brings to life the flighty, heedless but bewitching girl and her gradual, sometimes painful maturation through love, mistakes made and the suffering of war. And she looks and sounds just as I always pictured Natasha. Mel Ferrer’s Prince Andrei is also excellent, in spite of the script’s stinting a bit on the development of his character. I thought their real-life chemistry (they were newly married at the time) particularly showed through in the lovely proposal scene, one of those fine moments of the film. (I also loved the whole sequence of Natasha’s first ball). John Mills has fairly little screen time in the role of Platon Karatev, but makes the most of it, although the film doesn’t really capture the importance of the character. I was amazed how entirely different his voice, accent and entire personality were from other characters I’ve seen him play. Some supporting characters, such as Dolokhov (Helmut Dantine), Anatole Kuragin (Vittorio Gassman) and the rest of the Rostov family, come off well, but others such as Helene Kuragina (Anita Ekberg) and Lisa Bolkonskaya (Milly Vitale) don’t really have enough screen time to be understood or make an impression.

The film spends a while on Peace before working its way into War, but once there, the historical scenes really crackle with the contrasting personalities of the two commanding generals, Napoleon (Herbert Lom) and Field Marshal Kutuzov (Oscar Homolka). The appearance, posturing and mannerisms of Lom’s Napoleon are so remarkably like every picture I’ve ever seen of the real man, it’s uncannily like seeing a historical figure come to life before your eyes. The initial battle scenes seemed a trifle flat, but as the film goes on they gradually built in complexity and intensity—the battle of Borodino is staggering in its sheer scale and detail; moments like the French cavalry charge just stunning. It all climaxes in the devastating retreat from Moscow, with the demoralized French army struggling through rain, mud and snow. The final shot of Napoleon’s face as he leaves the scene of the disastrous river crossing says it all.

The one thing that I found unforgiveable in this adaptation, however, was the slashing of the subplot concerning Nikolai Rostov (Jeremy Brett) and Princess Marya (Anna Maria Ferrero). In the novel, they are the most significant characters after the trio of Pierre, Natasha and Andrei, with large sections of plot told from their perspective; and incidentally some of my favorites. In the film they are reduced to peripheral characters, Marya practically a nonentity. The scene where Nikolai comes to her rescue during the French invasion becomes an off-screen incident, briefly mentioned in a couple of lines spoken by Pierre. I was also disappointed that the character of Denisov (Patrick Crean) was cut down to practically nothing; I enjoyed his scenes in the book.

Is it a good adaptation? Yes and no. The ending is obviously too quick; there isn’t enough emphasis on how much time is supposed to have passed since the end of the war, and an important relationship is brought to a resolution almost instantly instead of undergoing the slow and natural growth it sees in the book. But this, as with most of the film’s flaws, has to be put down to time limits. A viewer who doesn’t know the book would probably find it an occasionally wandering but predominately well-acted and visually beautiful film. I still think it’s best seen after reading the book; even though you know there are enormous gaps, it’s worth the experience of seeing some parts attractively brought to life.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’m off to read War and Peace again…

Tuesday’s Overlooked Movies: The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

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Booth Tarkington’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Magnificent Ambersons has been a favorite of mine ever since I first read it a couple years ago. Since reading it I’ve been wanting to see Orson Welles’ 1942 film adaptation—the movie that is more famous for what it isn’t than for what it is. A couple weeks ago I finally got the chance, when I discovered my library system had added a copy of the DVD, to see for myself exactly what the film is or isn’t.


I went into the plot of the story more in my review of the novel, so I won’t go over it all again here. The thing that initially surprised me about the film was what it isn’t, in a literal sense. Eighty-eight minutes is pretty short even for a feature film. The result is about the same thing you usually get with a feature film adaptation of a thick classic novel: it moves pretty quickly through the story, just touching on the high points. A viewer seeing The Magnificent Ambersons film without having read the book wouldn’t be able to guess at the additional depths the novel contains, in spite of the film’s good qualities.

On the positive side, what there is of the film is very attractive—the filming is beautiful, the acting is fine, and the pivotal scenes from the novel that were chosen for portrayal on screen are often beautifully done: the ball, the sleigh ride, Eugene’s (Joseph Cotten) famous speech on the future that the automobile might bring. I appreciated the fact that a lot of the dialogue and narration comes straight out of the novel. The speech near the beginning by a neighbor woman predicting how and why Isabel (Dolores Costello) and Wilbur will have spoiled children is just perfect. (I did miss the “Riff-raff!” theme, though.) I found it interesting that Welles was attracted to that opening monologue on the fashions and customs of the time period that I found so delightful when I read the book. Usually this type of passage is the last thing that makes its way into a film adaptation. Perhaps Welles realized that the firm grounding in the historical period that it provided was vital to the whole story. It would have been even more effective, though, if he had been able to better portray the gradual industrialization of the Ambersons’ city that is a major theme of the novel. This is one of the film’s weaknesses, I think. We don’t actually get to see the changes—it’s represented mostly by a line of dialogue here and there about how much the town has changed, up until the montage of city streets and buildings near the end.

I think it also diminishes the effect of the ending that we don’t actually get to see George (Tim Holt) and Lucy (Anne Baxter) together and Eugene’s entrance, which forms the closing scene of the novel. Neither Welles’ original ending nor the released version followed the book in this way. I think I can see what Welles was going for here—he wanted to share what Eugene was thinking in this scene as well as what was said, so he adopted the expedient of having him relate it to Fanny (Agnes Moorehead). Personally, though, I wonder why he couldn’t have just said it to George during their conversation.

But you know, after seeing this film and reading a good deal about it, it’s my opinion that whatever weaknesses it has are not all owing to the infamous studio editing job. In my personal opinion, the two “porch scenes” removed by Welles himself would have strengthened it greatly, giving a better idea of the passage of time after Wilbur’s death, and especially making clearer the business of the headlight company, which kind of comes out of the blue later on. The vivid contrast between these two scenes in the novel is also a big part of the industrialization theme. There was also apparently a cut scene showing George’s fury when he discovers his grandfather has sold property near the Amberson Mansion for new buildings, which is also straight out of the novel and would have supported the theme even more.


In a purely visual sense, the movie is artistically beautiful, filmed with unusual camera angles and lighting and some striking use of silhouette shots. The scenes with George and Fanny on the enormous staircase of the Amberson Mansion are quite stunning, showing off an amazing set. Several scenes, I noticed, feature a number of characters all talking at once in a kind of organized chaos, so you take in bits of two or three different conversations simultaneously, something rather unusual for a movie of the time period. I also noticed that in the scene where George and Lucy argue during a carriage ride, the carriage is actually being drawn by a horse and filmed from the side, rather than filmed from a truck pulling a carriage, as you often see in movie behind-the-scenes shots! The costumes are also lovely and quite period-correct, which was also not always the case in older classic films.

In short, my advice to the viewer is the same I’d give for nearly every other film adapted from a classic novel: if you want the whole story, read the book, and then you’ll probably enjoy the movie.

If you’d like to read in detail about The Magnificent Ambersons’ long and chaotic journey to film, I recommend this six-part blog series at Jim Lane’s Cinedrome: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six (caveat: some profanity quoted in the sixth part). For my own article on “The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo,” the popular song featured in both novel and film, go here to The Vintage Reader.