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I'VE OFTEN wondered if I’d never purchased a copy of Bill
Haley and His Comets’ "Thirteen Women (And Only One Man in Town)" in 1954
how the history of Rock and Roll might have changed. Of course, if my dad
hadn’t been Glenn Ford who was the star of the film Blackboard Jungle in
which the flipside of that song was featured, it wouldn’t have mattered. But
I did, and he was, so I guess now the rest is just Rock & Roll history. This
is my story. Rock on.
Some time ago actress Anne Francis came over to the house for a visit with
my father and me. As we sat around the pool that afternoon and reminisced
about the days of yore, we talked about the film Blackboard Jungle in which
she played the part of dad’s wife. Anne asked me if any book had ever been
written about my father. I told her "No, not even a ‘films of …’ book." She
then proceeded to lovingly lecture me on my dereliction of duty to preserve
Glenn Ford’s legacy as an important actor from Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Today, my family and I live with my dad and I have unfettered access to all
his memorabilia, and most importantly to the man himself. Anne said I’d
better get to work. Within the week she called me and suggested that I call
a writer friend, Christopher Nickens. It wasn’t long before Chris and I met
and began our journey writing Glenn Ford’s story of his life in films.
In addition to my role as the official researcher on the project, I thought
I could contribute something else. I could write about a few of my favorite
films that my father made over his seven-decade career. I decided to start
with three films with which I was intimately acquainted: The Big Heat (Fritz
Lang, 1953), Blackboard Jungle (Richard Brooks, 1955) and 3:10 to Yuma (Delmer
Daves, 1957).
I began my writing exercise with MGM Studios’ Blackboard Jungle in which my
father starred as teacher Richard Dadier. I had a personal connection with
the film and I thought it would be nice to detail that.
In my writing, I discussed the culture in postwar America before the
production of Blackboard Jungle and the reaction the film received at home
and abroad when it was released in March 1955. I was also looking forward to
telling a bit about my participation in how theme song of the film, "(We’re
Gonna) Rock Around the Clock" (or "RATC") was discovered. However, in my
research in the library and on the Internet, much to my amazement I
discovered that there were already a few attributions, but I believed they
were in error. Because of this, I decided to excerpt and expand upon this
episode from my longer story about Blackboard Jungle.
Let me say at the onset, if anyone thinks they know how the song was chosen
to be used in the film - they don’t. This is how it really happened.
My parents were married in 1943 and each brought to the union their huge
collections of record albums. My mother was dancer Eleanor Powell who
starred in some of MGM’s most endearing musicals, including the Broadway
Melody series. Her taste in music reflected her show business
background—swing and a little blues. Many of the era’s greatest musical
talents that she knew and worked with were guests in our home, from Arturo
Toscanini to Tommy Dorsey. My father, meanwhile, had in his collection every
imaginable record from every other musical discipline from symphonic to
Hawaiian to Country. Their marriage was a merger of musical tastes and,
happily, I was exposed to all of it. By age seven I could identify many
classical compositions, knew many of the Big Band leaders and their work,
and had developed an ardent interest in music. This eclectic education was
definitely a defining element in my upbringing.
We had a room in our home in Beverly Hills, California, called the China
Room. It was our music room and it was there we would often retire after
dinner to enjoy whatever offering was on the evening’s agenda. My mother
would knit, my dad would study his scripts, and we would all listen to the
record player.
My parents purchased this house from composer Max Steiner and the China Room
had been his music room. Within in its walls he composed the scores of Gone
With the Wind, Casablanca, and practically every film at Warner Brothers
during Hollywood’s Golden Age within its walls. It was the perfect place to
hear music. There was an aura about that room, with its burnished gold leaf
walls, deep red trim and door panels with Chinese figures painted in an
oriental tableau. Today, I have many of those panels salvaged from a
demolition crew working at the house after mom sold it. They are sacred to
me because of the film history they had witnessed.
In the fall of 1954, I was a precocious fifth grader who loved music.
Between the Beverly Hills Music Shop and Wallich’s Music City at Sunset and
Vine, I was a busy lad indulging myself in the thing I loved most—my music.
I loved rhythm and blues or "race music" as it was formally known in the
late 1940s. My mother was "raised" on the stage working with black
performers as early as the 1920s, and she understood and encouraged my
interests. Mom had Fats Waller, Ink Spots, and Art Tatum records that I
loved. In fact, she played her Waller discs so much that she wore away the
vinyl. Meanwhile, I introduced her and dad to Willie Mae "Big Mama"
Thornton’s "Hound Dog," the Midnighters featuring Hank Ballard, and the
wonderful ballads of Johnny Ace. I was the only "black" white kid I knew in
Beverly Hills at the time, and I was proud of it.
One of the records I bought during the fall of 1954 was "Thirteen Women (and
Only One Man in Town)," recorded by a rockabilly group called Bill Haley and
The Comets. Earlier I had purchased my first Haley record called "Crazy Man
Crazy" and knew that this Haley fellow was on to something. I looked forward
to their next release. When I brought "Thirteen Women" home and played it I
didn’t like it. As many kids did in those days, I turned the record over to
discover the real A-side: "Rock Around the Clock." How Decca Records could
have thought that "Thirteen Women" could have been the A-side was a mystery
to me. Still, "RATC" sold well rising to number 23 on the charts before the
end of the year.
On October 4, 1954 my father was signed by MGM to star in what everyone felt
was going to be a controversial film about a hot topic that was recently
making news: juvenile delinquency. The film was called Blackboard Jungle.
Pandro Berman was the producer and Richard Brooks was chosen to direct and
write the screenplay from Evan Hunter‘s novel. Berman wanted to start
production on the film immediately after he signed dad, as Hunter’s book was
scheduled to be serialized in the Ladies’ Home Journal the same month. When
the novel was published the previous August it caused quite a bit of
controversy—so it was a "hot" property. But my father was already working on
another project at the studio, Interrupted Melody, co-starring Eleanor
Parker, so Berman had no choice but to wait for him. Interrupted Melody
finished principal photography on Saturday, November 13, 1954. Shooting
started two days later on Blackboard Jungle.
When I began my research to write an extensive article about The Blackboard
Jungle and started investigating information about "RATC," I was quite
delighted when the Internet provided me a wonderful and insightful tribute
about the song and its history written by Alex Frazer-Harrison
(see -
www.rockabillyhall.com/RockClockTribute.html)
This article had everything one would ever want to know about
Bill Haley, his Comets, and the song "RATC." It had everything except one
thing; like every other source I found, it misidentified how the song was
"discovered" and eventually used in the picture. I contacted Alex, told him
what I believed to be the true story, and he encouraged me to do further
research to set the record straight.
There are many sources that concern the discovery of "RATC" as it applies to
Blackboard Jungle. In some, including a biography of Bill Haley written by
his son, John W. Haley and John Von Hoelle called Sound and Glory, it is
stated that the song was first noticed by Richard Brooks, when he heard it
playing on his daughter’s record player. In other versions of the tale,
Pandro Berman discovered "RATC" one day by hearing it playing on his
daughter’s record player. Both Brooks and Berman were deceased. I was
determined to find their children to ask them if any of them had any direct
involvement in "RATC" being used in Blackboard Jungle. I now know that none
of them did.
Richard Brooks married Harriet Levin on September 20, 1945. They had no
children. I discovered that Richard and his second wife, actress Jean
Simmons, who he married in 1960, did indeed have a daughter, Kate, but she
wasn’t born until July 9, 1961—six years after Blackboard Jungle was made.
So the association of "RATC" and the director’s daughter was simply not
possible. I now turned to the possibility that there could be a connection
to the producer’s daughter.
Bill Haley and The Comets recorded "Rock Around the Clock" on April 12, 1954
and the single was released in May. James E. Myers (a.k.a. Jimmy De Knight
), who is credited with co-writing "RATC" with Max C. Freedman in 1953, said
that after sales slowed on that record, he sent it to many producers in
Hollywood, trying to generate renewed interest in the song. This could be
true, but even if he did send it around, based on the films that Pandro
Berman had produced until 1954 (Morning Glory, Follow the Fleet, National
Velvet, and Ivanhoe to name just a few), it seems unlikely that he would
have been interested in a song like "RATC." However, I knew I had to locate
his children to make sure.
Berman had three children: Michael (b. 06/03/36), Susan (b. 12/01/41) and
Cynthia (b. 07/13/42). I discussed the making of Blackboard Jungle and "RATC"
with each of them. Michael remembered his dad telling him just before making
the film, "You won’t believe what’s going on in the New York City school
system. I’m going to do a film that will shock you." Later, Berman played "RATC"
for his children. Michael asked, "Was this written expressly for the film?"
His father answered, "No, this has been out, and it was a hit." The fact
that his dad brought the record home (my copy I imagine) to play for his
children was confirmed when Susan, Berman’s eldest daughter said, "Dad came
home with ‘Rock Around the Clock’ and played it for us. I loved it." So, it
wasn’t the son or at least one of Pandro’s daughters who was playing "RATC"
when he first heard the song. Berman brought it home and played it for them.
I now had to find the other daughter, and that took some doing. When I
finally found Cynthia and asked her what she knew about how "Rock Around The
Clock" got in the film, she answered, "the studio hired those two writers.
You know Leiber and ...?" I said, "You mean Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller?"
She said "Yes, they’re still around. They just sold their music rights
recently. Call them. They’ll tell you about it." Well, I had my answer.
Leiber and Stoller were seminal composers and gave us much of early Rock &
Roll’s best music, but they had nothing to do with "RATC." I had now
confirmed that it wasn’t the director or the producer’s daughters. It was my
recording of "RATC" that Pandro Berman heard at his home.
Richard Brooks and my father would meet away from MGM during production to
discuss the film. Working on a short schedule with no rehearsals with mainly
non-actors was a test for everyone. Richard stopped by our house on occasion
to visit dad and talk about the production. It was on one of these visits
that Richard heard some records I owned. One of them was "Rock Around the
Clock." I now know that he borrowed that record and some others on one of
his visits.
Joel Freeman, who was the assistant director on Blackboard Jungle, recalled
that toward the end of production, which would have been mid-December 1954,
Brooks called him into his office to hear some records that he thought might
possibly be used in the opening of the film. He played Joel three songs and
they agreed that Haley’s up-tempo "jump blues" tune was the perfect choice.
I recently asked Joel what the other songs were but he didn’t remember. My
guess would be that in addition to "RATC" they could have been Big Joe
Turner’s version of "Shake Rattle and Roll" and quite possibly "All Night
Long" by the Joe Huston Orchestra.
MGM eventually purchased the rights to "RATC" for $5,000 from Decca Records
with the condition that they could only use the music three times in the
film. It has been written that for $2,500 more they could have owned the
song outright. The producer of Haley’s recording, Milt Gabler, once claimed
that MGM bought the song for a dollar.
Brooks, having found what he wanted, would now also use the music in the
beginning of the film over the opening credits as well as at the end. Since
MGM had paid for another opportunity to use the song the music department at
the studio cleverly used strains and riffs from "RATC" intermixed with some
jazz music during the fight scene between Dadier and his fellow teacher Josh
Edwards against the gang of juvenile delinquents who attacked them in an
alley.
What I always knew and wanted to talk about before I began writing my
article on Blackboard Jungle was my experience at first hearing "RATC" in
the film. It was this memory that made me suspicious of all those other
attributions that I discovered when I began my research. This is what
happened:
On Thursday January 13, 1955 my dad went to a screening room at MGM to see a
rough cut of Blackboard Jungle. Pandro Berman, Richard Brooks, and dad’s
agent, Bert Allenberg from the William Morris office, were also there. Dad
hoped the film was going to be good and he wasn‘t disappointed. The final
cut was a few weeks away from completion and there were only hints of the
music track, but film editor Ferris Webster had done a great job of putting
together a first look at what was to be the finished film (he would later be
nominated for an Academy Award for his efforts). The next night, mom, dad
and I celebrated by going out to dinner at our favorite haunt, the Brown
Derby restaurant in Beverly Hills.
About two weeks later, the final version was complete and a sneak preview
was scheduled. As an early tenth birthday surprise, my father asked me if
I’d like to go to the Encino Theatre in the San Fernando Valley to see
Blackboard Jungle. It was Wednesday night February 2, a night I‘ll never
forget. It was the first showing of the film to the general public.
Dad knew that I would like it and told me to expect to hear "that song"
somewhere during the film. All dad knew is that they laid in a music track
for the first time and that "my song" was going to be in the film somewhere.
We snuck into the back of the theatre along with Mr. Berman and Mr. Brooks
just before it was to begin. The theater grew dark, and I remember very
clearly my thoughts as the first scene opened on the empty blackboard as the
credits rolled by: Wow! Not only were they playing "Rock Around the Clock,"
the song that dad had borrowed from my record collection and given to Mr.
Brooks, but it was so loud—just like I played it at home. It was wonderful!
I liked the film too, of course, but it was the music that I remember most.
There couldn’t have been a happier kid in the whole world than me at that
moment.
"(We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock" was the first rock song ever to be
used in a motion picture. I recently asked Evan Hunter what he thought about
"RATC" being used in the film. He said, "Terrific! It started the film off
with a bang. Kids were getting up and dancing in the isles. Every kid in
America went to see that film. They were carrying copies of the paperback
book in the back pocket of their jeans." And dance they did, and cause some
mischief too. Teenagers—misunderstood, lonely and rebellious—had discovered
a touchstone with which they could identify. Teens at that time had been
islands unto themselves, unaware that thousands of others were just like
them. In celebrating "RATC," they became united, powerful and their spirit
of unbridled freedom changed the culture of America forever.
By July 5, 1955, seven months after Richard Brooks first heard my 78 RPM
copy of the record at my house, "RATC" was the top single in the nation, and
it stayed on the charts for eight weeks, eventually selling more than 25
million copies. After a good deal of research, I now feel that I can say
with certainty that I played a small but, it seems, pivotal role in
launching a musical revolution. Thanks to a unique set of circumstances, the
musical passion of a 5th grader helped "RATC" become the anthem of Rock &
Roll. ▲ |
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