Sheet Music from the Movies

This week's post on my Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. blog features a contribution from an Ann Blyth fan -- scans of sheet music from her 1952 film The World in His Arms (which we had discussed in this earlier post) illustrating that the beautiful love theme I thought had no words actually was published with lyrics.  Today we have a look at a few other examples of sheet music from classic films.

Hollywood was extremely resourceful in its juggernaut promotion of films, and sheet music played a role in publicizing a film by exploiting the popularity of songs from a movie, or by trying to make those songs popular to increase interest in the movie.  The sheet music usually pictured stars on the cover, and that was an added feature desired by fans who collected photos of their favorites. 

While these earlier decades of the twentieth century could boast a larger percentage of the population who owned pianos or otherwise played musical instruments, I suspect many collectors of these items kept them mainly for their walls and their scrapbooks.  

Sheet music of movie themes continue to be published for modern films, but perhaps used today more in the form of a high school band playing the theme from Star Wars (1979).  I don't imagine sheet music from modern films is as popular today among fans who are not musicians.

Do you have any sheet music in your classic film memorabilia collection?

Western Theme Music

As a genre, Westerns have some of the best theme music.  Here from The Magnificent Seven (1959):

There is something quite moving, a grand, sweeping musical statement.   Or just a sense of quiet conscience.  From High Noon (1951):

Some Western themes, like some of these here, became pop hits.  From The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962):

And some are just musically pure that we could lump them among classical music.  From The Alamo (1960) 

And here from Stagecoach (1939): 

And here from The Big Country (1959):

They suggest a big country, with great drama, and great promise.