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Episode 19 - “Battle of Leyte Gulf “
- George J. Ferencz
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- Book:
- The Music for <i>Victory at Sea</i>
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 10 January 2024
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- 16 May 2023, pp 277-285
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Summary
At the Philippines’ Leyte Gulf, a 23–26 October 1944 sea battle followed the nearby American landings which had occurred several days earlier. Admiral Halsey led the Navy's Third Fleet, with Admiral Kinkaid in command of the Seventh Fleet, bolstered by forces from the Royal Australian Navy. Samuel Eliot Morison wrote:
As the amphibious vessels completed unloading on the shores of Leyte Gulf and the Sixth Army extended its beachhead, Japanese naval forces were sal-lying forth to give battle. The quadripartite Battle for Leyte Gulf which re-sulted comprised every type of naval warfare invented up to that time—gun-fire of heavy and light ships, bombing, suicide crashing, strafing, rocketing and torpedoing by land-based and carrier-based planes; torpedo attacks by submarines, destroyers and motor boats. Every naval and air weapon but the mine was employed by both sides.
Opposing Japanese Navy vessels were divided into what HUSNO and other western WWII historians refer to as “Northern,” “Central,” and “Southern” Forces, intent on crushing this first invasion of the Philippines by the Allies. The action at Leyte Gulf constituted the war's biggest sea battle and remains by some measures history's largest-ever naval conflict.
Morison's HUSNO devotes his entire Vol. XII to Leyte, June 1944– January 1945, and its various sea battles can't be easily summarized here. In broad terms, EP19's three parts describe: I (1:00–9:20) Convergence of American and Japanese Forces in the Philippines, and then the “Battle of the Sibuyan Sea,” the initial US engagement with Japan's Central Force; II (9:21–18:48) the “Battle of Surigao Strait” with the Southern Force and then the “Battle off Samar” with a re-emerging Central Force; III (18:49– 26:25) the “Battle of Cape Engaño,” with Halsey taking on Japan's sacrificial-decoy Northern Force.
EP19's plentiful day and night battle scenes demanded lots of vigorous “ugly music” to be written, and its 1,594-word narration leaves more than fifteen minutes to music alone. A further indication of Salomon's reliance on the orchestra to set the scene is that despite all torpedoes, artillery, and more, only one explosion is enhanced by SFX—the 8:20 strike on one of Japan's ships.
As mentioned in my discussion of EP4, Rodgers's VIC-HYMN for EP19 was his last theme for Victory, submitted in December 1952. For Bennett, the interval between EP19's completion and its airing had shrunk to roughly two months, 13 January 1953 to 15 March.
Eight - Robert Montgomery, C. S. Forester, and Victory
- George J. Ferencz
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- Book:
- The Music for <i>Victory at Sea</i>
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 10 January 2024
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- 16 May 2023, pp 85-90
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Summary
Late in 1950, NBC was making its final decision about Salomon's “Navy-TV” proposal. NBC's management believed the Navy program would benefit from a recurring central-figure persona, as with Eisenhower and Crusade in Europe—even if Eisenhower himself hadn't done Crusade's narrating. In response, Salomon and Weaver selected as Victory's narrator neither a statesman nor a career military man, but a high-profile actor-director from NBC's roster: Robert Montgomery. Montgomery, in Salomon's mind, was as opportune and appropriate a choice as was Richard Rodgers for the music.
Montgomery (1904–81) would be yet another Navy veteran brought into NBC's documentary series. Following a few years on the New York stage in the 1920s he had ascended to Hollywood stardom by the late 1930s. In 1940, he briefly took a Red Cross position as ambulance driver around Beauvais as the Germans advanced on Paris, which preceded an April 1941 Naval Reserve commission. At first an American observer with the Royal Navy in the North Atlantic, he then spent much of 1942–43 in the South Pacific aboard Navy cruisers and destroyers. Montgomery eventually rose to the rank of Lieutenant Commander and was aboard the destroyer USS Barton on D-Day.
His postwar activities broadened to include film directing and radio. A pivotal moment for Montgomery and the entertainment industry was his 1949 move to NBC, described by Billboard as “the first big-scale breaking down of major Hollywood film studios’ reluctance to collaborate with television.” The network had installed him as an executive producer, overseeing this drama series and serving as consultant to the television division. The decision to offer him Victory's narration role rested with Pat Weaver, as Salomon advised Sarnoff in early 1951:
I think it would be well if you spoke to Mr. Weaver regarding Robert Mont-gomery's services… . Should we use a man of Montgomery's caliber we ought to know well in advance as this will influence the format and treat-ment. Further, we should capitalize on his [wartime Navy] experience and knowledge… . I think Montgomery is the ideal choice for principal nar-ration, in addition to which his name would be of great value from a sales point of view.
However Sarnoff might have then responded to Weaver, a light-toned query to the actor-director quickly followed: “Bob Montgomery, Sir: We want you to narrate the official history of the U.S. Navy in World War II.
3 - Digest of Victory's Music-Scoring Statistics
- George J. Ferencz
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- Book:
- The Music for <i>Victory at Sea</i>
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 10 January 2024
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- 16 May 2023, pp 359-360
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Summary
The Victory episodes’ completion order and broadcast sequence are only roughly alike. Bennett's music recording dates reliably establish a completion order for the series, as all that then remained to complete an episode was a few days’ work mixing the sparse SFX and already-recorded narration, and the pair with the music into a final soundtrack; a film laboratory then combined these with the edited footage. Note that EP16 appears here twice: its first completion that was announced in the press, and then the fall 1952 revision. Exact date(s) of EP8's revisions are unknown—but unlike EP16 these didn't involve new scoring and recording by Bennett:
Recording Order
EPs 1–3–2–4–15–[16]–7–10–11–6–5–13–12–9–8–[16]–17–20–14–19– 21–18–22–25–23–24–26
Recording Order, with First Appearances of Each Rodgers Theme
EP1 (SONG-SEAS, SUB, DEATH-DEBRIS)–3 (HAWAII)– 2–4 (MARCH)–15 (D-DAY)–16 (first version, MUSTERING)– 7–10 (TANGO)–11 (FIDDLE-GTR)–6–5–13–12 (CARRIER)– 9–8 (NAPLES-ROME)–16 (revised)–17–20–14–19 (VIC-HYMN)– 21–18–22–25–23–24–26
As mentioned previously, a few Rodgers themes were first heard by viewers in advance of the episode for which they’d been written. D-DAY appeared in the later-completed, but earlier-broadcast EPs 9 and 14; MUSTERING appeared earlier in EPs 7 and 11.
Recording Order, with Bennett's Re-uses From Earlier-Completed Episodes
EPs 1–3–2–4–15–16 (first version)–7–10–11–6–5 had no re-uses.
EP13 had his first re-uses (from EPs 6, 4, 2), followed by EP12 (from EP13), EP9 (from EPs 3, 15), EP8 (from EP3), EP16 (revised). EP17 (from EPs 12, 6—with the EP12 re-use incorporating some EP13 secondhand!), EP20 (from EP2). EP14 had no re-uses, followed by EP19 (from EPs 2, 12, 4). EP21 (from EPs 10, 2). Bennett's all-original EP18 was followed by EP22 (re-uses from EPs 8, 11, 15, 6), EP25 (from EPs 13, 21, 4, 2, 12), EP23 (from EPs 19, 15, 11, 5, 7, 22, 6), and EP24 (re-use from EP12). The concluding EP26 re-used material from EPs 20, 12, 10, 22, 5.
Episode 5 - “Mediterranean Mosaic”
- George J. Ferencz
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- Book:
- The Music for <i>Victory at Sea</i>
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 10 January 2024
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- 16 May 2023, pp 151-160
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Summary
Though EP5's coverage spans 1939–43, it's unlike all other Victory episodes in that American forces are never seen or mentioned. The focus is Royal Navy activity in the Mediterranean, giving EP5 the highest percentage of British-sourced footage in the series. Recorded 26 August 1952, three and a half months after EP4, it's Victory's eleventh-completed installment. Before examining this episode and its score, it's important to recap the efforts of Henry Salomon and NBC to access wartime film held by America's closest ally.
Just as Samuel Eliot Morison's fifteen-volume History of United States Naval Operations in World War II (HUSNO) hadn't strictly limited itself to the US Navy's actions in WWII, Salomon always figured his “Navy Project” would touch on all branches of America's military. As Victory moved through its planning stages, Salomon's vision expanded to encompass the seaborne activity of the other Allied nations, which he related to Robert Sarnoff in June 1951: “As our thinking has progressed on the format for the NBC-Navy Project, we are in agreement that it would be desirable to use film pertaining to the Royal Navy in the series… . it will present a fairer picture of historical events and … give the series a less provincial and more global basis.”
A pivotal issue was identifying the rights-holders for Britain's wartime film and inducing them to share footage with NBC. Salomon explained:
Lord Mountbatten … pointed out that most of the film shot prior to 1944 was done by the newsreel syndicates, under contract to the British govern-ment. Unlike the pooling arrangements our Armed Forces [each having camera units] made with our newsreel syndicates during World War II, the British newsreel syndicates controlled the disposition of their film and still own the rights. In view of the antagonistic attitude of the British newsreels to television, they are loath to make this film available to television. This, of course, presents something of a dilemma for us.
Negotiations would eventually involve Salomon, Robert Sarnoff, and others at NBC, plus US Navy officials. Likewise, several British agencies and individuals were of necessity involved: the British Embassy in Washington, Lord Mountbatten and other high-ranking military men, the British Foreign Office, NBC's London offices, and more.
Episode 3 - “Sealing the Breach”
- George J. Ferencz
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- Book:
- The Music for <i>Victory at Sea</i>
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 10 January 2024
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- 16 May 2023, pp 132-141
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Summary
This episode's subject matter—the Atlantic convoys and battles with the U-boats—continues from EP1. Chronologically, it picks up after EP2 with President Roosevelt's declaration of war. There are three U-boat strikes here—the first at 7:12 is upon an oil tanker off America's eastern seaboard, south of New York; a second attack at 16:20 is east of Newfoundland in the mid-ocean gap beyond the coverage offered by Canada's land-based planes. The third U-boat assault is around 22:00, much farther east in the Atlantic. The subject convoy's destination is presumably Liverpool, the Allies’ arrival port for “HX” convoys which at first originated in Halifax, Nova Scotia. As the convoy ships near their destination they’re threatened not only by Germany's U-boats, but also by its land-based airplanes.
Bennett recorded EP3 on 2 April 1952, one day before EP2. In the three weeks since his first recording session, EP1's on 12 March, a few musical changes had been made that would hold for the rest of the series. Bennett added two more woodwinds, a second oboe (also assuming English horn duties) and a second bassoon. Also, he revised his original orchestration for Victory’s one-minute SONG-SEAS title sequence around this time, which became the final version heard on all succeeding episodes.
Victory's EPs 1, 2, and 3 were the first three programs completed. Available to Bennett were Rodgers's SONG-SEAS, SUB, and DEATH-DEBRIS based on scenes in EP1. If EP2's HAWAII was also in Bennett's hands when scoring EP3, it would be useless here in the Atlantic. The initial three Rodgers themes are used generously, especially SONG-SEAS and SUB.
Victory's EP3 opens on 8 December 1941, the day after the Pearl Harbor attack, with President Roosevelt's war-declaration speech to Congress. Japan, however, never again figures in this program, meaning no J-tunes to be heard. Early in EP3, the US ramps up production of war goods destined for convoys forming up on America's eastern seaboard from ports in Texas, Louisiana, and Florida. Their eventual destination is England, as were such Atlantic convoys even before Pearl Harbor. The vessels are menaced early on by German U-boats, which operate shockingly close to America's eastern shoreline. Later, nearing the end of the convoy's journey, France-based German aircraft threaten the cargo ships and their escorts. A timely matter is Germany's declaration of war with the US just days after Pearl Harbor, eliminating American ships’ claims to neutrality.
Frontmatter
- George J. Ferencz
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- Book:
- The Music for <i>Victory at Sea</i>
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 10 January 2024
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- 16 May 2023, pp i-iv
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Episode 24 - “The Road to Mandalay”
- George J. Ferencz
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- Book:
- The Music for <i>Victory at Sea</i>
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 10 January 2024
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- 16 May 2023, pp 321-330
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Summary
EP24 spends little time “at sea,” and the US Navy is barely present. As a result, this episode helps round out Victory's worldwide coverage, as had EP10's South Atlantic footage. Bennett was challenged here to craft music for EP24's various Asian locales, plus a fine extended concert march in Part Three. The eighteen-day recording-to-airdate interval (1–19 April 1953) matched EP23 as the series’ shortest, but there are few Bennett re-uses, with almost all the music newly scored.
EP24's settings are nearly all Asian: China, Siam (now Thailand), Burma (Myanmar), India, and the Indian Ocean; the never-reprised opening music [A] sets the stage. Chronologically, this installment reaches back as far as any in Victory, to the late 1920s and the now-discredited “Tanaka Memorial” document. EP24 then quickly moves at 1:31 [B] to Japan's 1937 offensives in Shanghai, Nanking (Nanjing), and Hankow (Hankou), with J-5a at 1:55 and then two summary gunshot executions at 2:11, footage widely shown in prewar Western newsreels: “The Japanese slash at the vast, unyielding body of China. China bleeds from a thousand wounds, but her 500 million people will not be subdued.” China's longtime leader Chiang Kai-Shek and other military leaders meet at 2:20 [C], and millions of uprooted Chinese migrate west and south to Chungking (Chongqing), destroying anything in their path of possible value to the invading Japanese army.
A memorable vignette at 3:19 shows Chinese refugees struggling to bring a sizable boat along with them as they flee inland. Perhaps a hundred men and women are yoked together in elaborate harness, and they struggle along their mountainside path to pull the vessel upstream—and seriously uphill—through human effort alone. At 3:43 are more of the endless lines of refugees [D], and then at 4:12 [E] an overflowing train taking the uprooted Chinese to Chungking.
The animation-map at 4:45 illustrates China's sole lifeline, originating at the Burmese port of Rangoon (Yangon). Supplies were moved north by truck or rail to Mandalay and then Lashio, after which the Burma Road, completed in 1938, allowed passage to Chungking. Victory's viewers now hear the two most-used Bennett melodies in EP24: [F] at 4:46, symbolizing the Burma and Ledo Roads (= “ROAD”), and [G] at 5:08, which will reappear at 18:25 to begin the third strain (= “TRIO”) of Part Three's expansive concert march.
The Music for Victory at Sea
- Richard Rodgers, Robert Russell Bennett, and the Making of a TV Masterpiece
- George J. Ferencz
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- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 10 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 16 May 2023
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This long-awaited study explores the creation of NBC-TV's landmark 1952-53 WWII documentary series, with particular attention to its evocative Rodgers-Bennett score.
Eleven - Victory's Predecessors and Successors
- George J. Ferencz
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- Book:
- The Music for <i>Victory at Sea</i>
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 10 January 2024
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- 16 May 2023, pp 104-110
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Summary
Victory wasn't American TV's first WWII documentary series, but it was the most successful and enduring by several measures. The pioneering effort was ABC's 1949 Crusade in Europe, an adaptation of General Eisenhower's wartime memoir published in 1948 when “Ike” was already being courted for the presidency. 20th Century-Fox bought the TV-film rights and then contracted production from newsreel house March of Time—a subsidiary of Time, Inc.
Europe's twenty-six episodes are fully in the newsreel mode from which Victory would distinctively depart. Westbrook Van Voorhis's stentorian narration is interspersed with passages from Eisenhower's book, read by a sound-alike. Compared to Victory, narration is fairly continuous, SFX plentiful, and music minimal. ABC, said to have invested half a million dollars, naturally sought a commercial sponsor. It was Time, Inc. itself, however—under the banner of its LIFE and TIME magazines—that subsidized Europe's initial May–October 1949 run. This was expected in the emerging TV industry: “No producer has yet found a profitable way to produce films for TV… . Perhaps as more stations go on the air and set circulation increases, the problem of making money out of producing films for TV will no longer exist.” Crusade did, nonetheless, benefit from a Thursday evening scheduling—what if Victory had gotten prime time in 1952?—and reviews were positive. Recognition included Peabody and Emmy awards.
ABC and March of Time touted the millions of feet of film that Europe drew upon, including German and Italian sources. Their Axis partner Japan, obviously, was not a factor. Though Salomon's Victory team would later decide that storytelling must be bound by available film, March of Time sometimes created what it needed, including use of a BBC studio “to re-create the day when Neville Chamberlain informed the Empire that war had broken out.”
A filmed series for TV was a novelty in 1949, with prospects of syndication being new territory. When Europe's first-run sponsor Time, Inc. dropped its option to underwrite a second national showing, ABC was still in debt; it charged its affiliates with finding local sponsors for 1950's second run. In the end, Europe did become modestly profitable for ABC, with syndication continuing for several years in gradually fewer and smaller markets.
Crusade in Europe's initial success prompted Time, Inc. to quickly announced a follow-up series on the Pacific war.
Episode 1 - “Design for War”
- George J. Ferencz
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- Book:
- The Music for <i>Victory at Sea</i>
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 10 January 2024
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- 16 May 2023, pp 115-122
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Summary
EP1 was Victory's pilot episode: the first to be edited to final form and scripted, and the first shown to Rodgers, whose initial three themes SONG-SEAS, SUB, and DEATH-DEBRIS (see chapter 4) reference EP1 footage. Bennett's score was his first to be written and recorded, and his holograph has as many timing-related revisions and adjustments as does any later installment.
Henry Salomon's earliest series outline of 1951 had projected an opening that reached back to the aftermath of WWI. The idea was later discarded and his planned EP1 became “Prologue: up to Spring 1940,” to be followed up with three “Anti-Submarine” chapters, then posited as EPs 2, 3, and 17. In the end, though, the intended EP1 prologue and EP2 were compressed into a single episode, the first of the three “Anti-Sub” programs that became EPs 1, 3, and 16. EP1 thus highlights Germany's provocative moves of 1939– 40: a campaign to dominate the Atlantic with its U-boats, and its aggressive European territorial expansion to the east and west.
“Design for War” begins with a full minute of no-narration underscoring. At first, the tranquil Rodgers SONG-SEAS tune is in cello and bassoon, with gentle violins and woodwinds above. The locales are all seascapes, lacking shorelines or signs of human life. At 1:21 we hear Rodgers's SUB for the very first time as a submarine's periscope appears from the depths: an Atlantic U-boat is stalking a cargo ship. The U-boat submerges and fires a pair of torpedoes, which strike the victim craft at 1:59 as the German sailors celebrate in the depths. The narration finally begins, soberly establishing the series’ poetic tone: “War has begun. Ships are sinking. Men are dying. It is September 1939.”
Next at 2:20 are several German warships, accompanied by musical example [A] (see this chapter's end). This is Bennett's own creation—I’ll call it his “SUB-extension”—which dovetails so nicely with SUB that listeners might figure it to be part of Rodgers's own melody: “(2:18) While German Panzer divisions race toward Warsaw, the German navy … prepares for … the Battle of the Atlantic.”
Rodgers's SUB returns at 2:46 in the orchestra's strings, now in counterpoint with the debut of Bennett's own ersatz-German melody, GER, which recurs regularly in Victory. Shown next are busy German shipyards, evidence of Hitler's high priority for U-boat development and production within his Kriegsmarine.
Episode 15 - “D-Day”
- George J. Ferencz
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- Book:
- The Music for <i>Victory at Sea</i>
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- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 10 January 2024
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- 16 May 2023, pp 241-249
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Summary
EP15 chronicles the Allies’ long-awaited June 1944 invasion of France on the Normandy coast, encompassing the preceding buildup and then aftermath as the invaders moved inland. Though Rodgers's SONG-SEAS and DEATH-DEBRIS themes appear briefly, EP15 stands apart from other Victory episodes for Bennett's extensive and near-exclusive use of Rodgers's new D-DAY theme, especially between 3:42 and 16:18. EP15, with its study “plugging” of a lone Rodgers theme, has a kind of thematic unity uncommon in Victory, and might be what Henry Salomon had hoped for in his original conception of the series, or expected from his musical collaborators: Bennett putting a new Rodgers tune through its paces in each episode.
The program begins with Allied landing craft hitting the Normandy beaches on 6 June 1944, where invading soldiers under fire immediately take casualties. This is, however, merely a prologue to establish EP15's subject and scope, as there's a quick segue at 1:45 back to the Allies’ preliminary January 1943 planning conference at Casablanca, fundamentally a conversation among Roosevelt, Churchill, and their military advisors. 1942's Operation Torch (EP9) had yielded a solid Allied foothold in North Africa, and the conference led to the “unconditional surrender” policy and agreement that the Sicily-Italy campaign would precede the all-out assault in France, delayed to 1944. We see General Eisenhower in London at 2:17, during the winter of 1943–44, leading staff discussions upon assuming his role as Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force.
Bennett's music opens EP15 [A] by previewing the tempo and four-note ostinato bass line of Rodgers's D-DAY—with his own composing above—while holding off the Rodgers tune's actual appearance. Before invasion preparations are detailed, a somber E-flat minor chord at 2:30 (see EP3) and GER underscore reminders of Hitler's formidable Atlantic Wall of defenses on France's coast awaiting the Allies. The all-high-register music at 3:30 [B], as Allied planes exploit their air superiority along France's coast, is reminiscent of Bennett's EP1 writing for the Luftwaffe.
Commencing at 3:42 is a twelve-plus-minute sequence duplicated nowhere in Victory. Bennett notates and labels his elaborations on Rodgers's D-DAY theme as a Theme with Nine Variations, lasting through 16:18.
5 - The 1959 Companion Book
- George J. Ferencz
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- Book:
- The Music for <i>Victory at Sea</i>
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 10 January 2024
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- 16 May 2023, pp 363-366
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From the earliest stages of its “Navy Project” NBC planned to market both a Rodgers-Bennett soundtrack recording and an illustrated book. The record's amazing sales prompted production of follow-up sequels, but the book wouldn't appear until 1959, much changed from its original vision.
NBC's search for a publisher began in 1951 and its first overtures were to a Boston firm with ties to Forester, Morison, and Salomon. Little, Brown, and Company had published Forester's popular Horatio Hornblower novels since the 1930s, and Morison's History of United States Naval Operations in World War Two was a Little, Brown imprint as well, seven of its fifteen volumes having appeared by 1951.
On 1 November 1951 Salomon met with the press's representative and then recapped details for David Sarnoff:
Yesterday afternoon I had a meeting with one Ned Bradford, Editor-in- Chief… . he professed a great interest in publishing a pictorial book, using film clips from the series together with the scripts. So great was this interest, I can practically guarantee that by next week Little, Brown will make a formal pitch to NBC for a contract… . Meanwhile … I think the book should include. 1) Twenty-six chapters corresponding to the twenty-six programs. 2) Every other page text and every other page pictures. This is the only practical format if we are to publish the book in the fall of 1952, in time for Christmas sales of that year. 3) I should like to make a publishing innovation by printing the principal musical themes along with the title page for each chapter. 4) I believe I could get Winston Churchill to write a foreword or introduction. I believe we should have both, with General Sarnoff writing one or the other … 5) The book would be written by Forester and Rodgers, edited by me and copyrighted by NBC. 6) The book will be about 8 by 11 with the front endpapers consisting of a chart of the Atlantic, and the rear ones a chart of the Pacific. 7) The book should sell for not more than five dollars ($5.00), and, following an early idea of yours, perhaps could be tied into the Rodgers record sales by arranging a deal with RCA Victor. A simple postage-free card could be inserted with each copy entitling the buyer to a discount on the record.
Episode 20 - “The Return of the Allies”
- George J. Ferencz
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- Book:
- The Music for <i>Victory at Sea</i>
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 10 January 2024
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- 16 May 2023, pp 286-294
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EP20 continues the previous program's coverage of the Philippine campaign through and beyond the liberation of Manila in February–March 1945. This episode's first fifteen minutes, like much of Victory's footage, is populated mostly by combatants. Later segments, however, include jubilant Filipinos welcoming their liberators near Lingayen Gulf and then Manila's own beleaguered residents, caught up in building-to-building urban fighting on a scale unmatched in the Pacific. Japan's kamikaze pilots make their first Victory appearance here, in Lingayen Gulf. Musically, Bennett's score is nearly all new, recycling only a half-minute of his EP2 Pearl Harbor composing.
This episode begins with a shorthand recounting of the then-recent decades of Philippine history, which would have been familiar to at least some of Victory's 1952–53 audience: its 1898 ceding to the US following the Spanish-American War was followed by 1930s treaties guaranteeing independence in the 1940s while preserving America's military bases there. These installations received a substantial buildup as WWII dawned, and the US was also aiding the Philippine Army, established only in 1936. The music at 1:01 [A] opens in A minor with a woodwind tune and then a trumpet's hint of the bugle call that will later appear in the major at 1:37. Scenes of daily civilian life in Manila shift to those of the Commonwealth's military in training.
We see a few calm scenes of Manila Bay's Cavite, the headquarters of America's Asiatic fleet. Immediately following is the aftermath of Japan's initial attacks there, hours after Pearl Harbor—December 8th on Japan's side of the International Date Line: “The bones of American sailors litter the harbor, and the Philippines are torn from the United States. Manila goes. Bataan goes … the Japanese take over.” There's a hint of Rodgers's DEATH-DEBRIS, and then at 2:21 [B] a somber bass clarinet solo over timpani, much like Bennett's EP6 lead-in to the “Guadalcanal March.” Scenes of ruin continue, with J-1 at 2:46 and then the “Old Hundredth” hymn tune for a church in shambles. J-1 repeats and then J-2 at 3:17 as the victorious Japanese celebrate, soon contrasted with the first images of American POWs behind bars at 3:40.
The scene shifts eastward at 3:46, and ahead in time more than two years. Misterioso horn music [C] using Rodgers's HAWAII accompanies Roosevelt's 28 July 1944 Pearl Harbor conference.
Preface
- George J. Ferencz
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- Book:
- The Music for <i>Victory at Sea</i>
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- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 10 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 16 May 2023, pp vii-viii
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Summary
The National Broadcasting Company launched its long-awaited World War II documentary program Victory at Sea on 26 October 1952, when America was mired in a “police action” conflict of ideologies in Korea. Victory wasn't US television's first such WWII series, but it quickly captivated both critics and viewers. Television, not yet in color then, was rapidly expanding across the United States; by 1953, half of the country's homes would have receivers.
Each week, Victory's audience viewed a skillfully edited array of wartime footage, much of it shot in combat by US armed forces cameramen or taken from military training films. The perspective, however, wasn't solely American. Newsreel and battle footage was sourced from fourteen different nations, including the Axis powers Germany, Japan, and Italy who had fought the Allies around the globe.
The twenty-six Victory episodes weren't war college studies or history lessons for the uninitiated. All but the youngest of Victory's 1952–53 viewers had experienced WWII either in military service or on the home front, and they remembered Pearl Harbor, Midway, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Normandy, Yalta, and Hiroshima from the war years’ headlines. Each installment aimed not to be a blow-by-blow documentary, but rather to take a compelling and emotional approach to its subject.
Victory's producer Henry Salomon sought to let the filmed sequences speak for themselves as much as possible, with terse and often poetic scripts. Sound effects were few, with some episodes using none whatsoever. What audiences mostly heard was the music: a non-stop score credited to Richard Rodgers, as arranged for orchestra by Robert Russell Bennett. Bennett, too, conducted the hallowed NBC Symphony Orchestra's musicians at the soundtrack recording sessions.
NBC had funded Victory with expectations of modest post-1953 returns in syndicated re-runs, but the series’ durability shattered expectations, eventually being aired in dozens of countries on six continents. The music proved to have notable staying power independently; three LP records of orchestral excerpts generated strong sales for RCA, the first becoming a $1million-selling “Gold Record.” Richard Rodgers was known worldwide in the early 1950s for his stage musicals, especially Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, and The King and I, and Victory at Sea added a new dimension to his celebrity.
Victory is now celebrating its seventieth birthday. Its several decades as NBC's valuable syndication property were followed by home video and then online access, making it available to seemingly anyone, anytime.
One - Victory's Inception, Production, and Impact
- George J. Ferencz
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- Book:
- The Music for <i>Victory at Sea</i>
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 10 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 16 May 2023, pp 1-2
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Episode 2 - “The Pacific Boils Over”
- George J. Ferencz
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- Book:
- The Music for <i>Victory at Sea</i>
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 10 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 16 May 2023, pp 123-131
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Summary
In some Americans’ mindsets, Japan's Pearl Harbor attack on 7 December 1941 was WWII's opening volley. But Henry Salomon's original Victory outline had three full episodes to precede it: a “Prologue: to Spring 1940” and then two segments on anti-submarine warfare against Germany in the Atlantic. Perhaps Salomon decided he’d more quickly engage his audience by presenting Pearl Harbor earlier in the series, prompting its move to EP2.
EP2 marks Japan's initial appearance in Victory. Viewers thus get first hearings of numerous “J-tunes,” including nearly all of Bennett's most-reprised ones (see chapter 5), plus a few appearing only in EP2. In short, EP2 consists of Japan's planning and training for its attack on Hawaii, fol-lowed by the lengthy battle sequence, much of it unfolding without narration. Afterward, Japan's home front celebrates the good news while US military authorities assess casualties and destruction at Pearl Harbor. The program ends with a note of US optimism: America's surprising success in repairing many of the damaged vessels for their return to action.
Rodgers's HAWAII opens this episode, and the territory's populace gives little thought to possible hostilities. This first exposition of HAWAII receives the same arranger's treatment given SONG-SEAS for Victory's title sequence. Bennett had filled out SONG-SEAS fore-and-aft to accompany the full minute of opening credits and does likewise for HAWAII to span EP2's initial, sixty-eight-second segment.
At 2:08 there's an immediate shift to the Japanese viewpoint. A gong [A], along with Bennett's open-fifth chord, establishes an Asian locale for the first time in the series. J-1 then accompanies a quick scene-setting in Japan, “the most thoroughly industrialized nation in the east” where “social, economic and religious ideas from an isolated past survive with superimposed industrial methods and western ways.”
The narration outlines Japan's territorial ambitions for an East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, and we hear the series’ first presentation of J-2 (2:58), followed immediately by a throwaway J-tune [B] at 3:31, never again heard in Victory. J-1 reappears at 3:48, more single-use material at 4:00, and then at 4:23 is J-3's debut, accompanying the first mention of Japan's designs on Pearl Harbor. J-3 recurs at 4:54, 5:04, and 5:14. Next is a detailed Japanese map of Oahu and Pearl Harbor accompanied by Bennett's first transformation of Rodgers's HAWAII (5:19). For Japan's pilots-in-training at 5:43 Bennett crafts [C] a declamatory muted trombone “recitative.”
Episode 18 - “Two if by Sea”
- George J. Ferencz
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- Book:
- The Music for <i>Victory at Sea</i>
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 10 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 16 May 2023, pp 269-276
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Summary
EP18 profiles America's fall 1944 invasions of Peleliu and Angaur, two of the Pacific's Palau islands southeast of the Philippines. Casualties were as high as in any such Pacific theater assaults, and these offensives’ strategic necessity continues to be debated. Still, many of the lessons learned were useful in the early 1945 attacks on Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
Henry Salomon may have most fully achieved his vision for Victory with EP18. The 826-word script, incorporating passages from Ecclesiastes 3 and Exodus alongside official Pacific Fleet Communiques, is Victory's tersest, leaving nearly twenty-one minutes of the soundtrack to the music, which is solely Bennett's and suggests the orchestral sound of an all-Bennett Victory. A present-day viewer first introduced to the series via EP18 would receive a markedly different initial impression from another who had first sampled the uplifting series conclusion of the tuneful EP26.
Another of the EP18 soundtrack's distinctions is its total lack of SFX, which, according to Bennett, Salomon “detested.” The timpani scoring, sensitively played by Karl Glassman, is a handy stand-in for the big battleship guns and mobile artillery, and viewers may not have missed audible ordnance at all. With limited narration and no SFX, this episode's soundtrack would have been especially uncomplicated to mix.
Bennett described EP18 as a “tragic episode” and his “most difficult” creative challenge of the entire series, this program being concerned with bloodshed-filled invasions which left several US combat cameramen among the casualties. The tensely scored Part One, lasting to 8:13, portrays the initial landings on Peleliu and, after 6:44, those at Angaur. Musical examples [A], [B], [C], [D], and [E] are components of this first reel's scoring, which constitutes a compact sonata form as detailed in the Musical Postlude below.
As with EP15's “D-Day” account, EP18 opens not with scenic vistas or grand strategies, but with close-in images of American servicemen aboard their landing craft, approaching the beaches of Peleliu. The narration's parallels are characteristically Salomon-Hanser: “These men are called Marines. These men are called Sailors. These men are called Soldiers. Pacific is the ocean. Peleliu is the island. 1944 is the year.” Within the first minute the Marines have come ashore amidst amphibious tanks aflame and dead comrades at the water's edge.
2 - Victory at Sea: A Chronology
- George J. Ferencz
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- Book:
- The Music for <i>Victory at Sea</i>
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 10 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 16 May 2023, pp 353-358
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Summary
1894 Robert Russell Bennett born in Kansas City. His early work as a musician there includes performances with his father's concert band; violinist with the Kansas City Symphony; piano, organ, and conducting for vaudeville and silent films. Moves to New York 1916; stateside Army service during WWI.
1902 Richard Rodgers born in New York; studies at Institute of Musical Art; first Broadway shows with Larry Hart, 1925.
1917 Henry Salomon born; later attends Harvard (1939). Serves in US Navy, 1942–48.
1927–30 Bennett's first theater orchestrations for Rodgers: One Dam Thing after Another (London), A Connecticut Yankee, She's My Baby, Heads Up, Ever Green (London).
1936–40 Bennett mostly in Hollywood, providing arranging and composing for Gershwin, Kern, and Berlin musicals as well as dramatic and comic films.
1940 17 November: “Russell Bennett's Note Book” (WOR/Mutual radio) debuts; all-American orchestral fare is mostly composed by music director and commentator Bennett.
1942 5 May: Harvard's Samuel Eliot Morison joins the Naval Reserve, commissioned by Roosevelt to prepare the History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. Salomon joins Morison's research-writing team in 1943.
1943 31 March: Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!, orchestrated by Bennett, opens in New York.
1945 19 April: Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel opens in New York. Don Walker is orchestrator, Bennett leading his Stars of the Future radio program.
1947 10 October: Rodgers and Hammerstein's Allegro, orchestrated by Bennett, opens in New York.
1948 30 September: FCC announces “freeze” on new television station licenses.
1949 4 April: Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific, orchestrated by Bennett, opens in New York. 5 May: First installment of ABC-TV's Crusade in Europe airs, based on Eisenhower's memoir. Summer: Henry Salomon first proposes “Navy Project” TV series to Robert Sarnoff. Fall: Morison offers TV rights for his HUSNO to Salomon.
1950 Robert Montgomery joins NBC as an executive TV producer; NBC evaluates Salomon's Navy Project proposal. In December, Navy pledges its cooperation.
1951 The NBC Symphony Orchestra's salaried core of fifty-five to sixty-five salaried staff musicians is supplemented by roughly thirty additional strings for Toscanini’s recordings and broadcasts. January: American ownership of TV receivers has grown from ca. 1 million to more than 10 million sets since early 1949. NBC approves Navy Project funding, and NBC and Navy finalize their agreement, publicized in March.
Episode 25 - “Suicide for Glory”
- George J. Ferencz
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- Book:
- The Music for <i>Victory at Sea</i>
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 10 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 16 May 2023, pp 331-337
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Summary
EP25 greatly resembles the “Iwo and Okinawa” episode Henry Salomon outlined in his initial 1951 prospectus for Victory. Though coverage of Iwo Jima's conquest was eventually shifted to EP23, the main topics of the early synopsis were otherwise retained: (1) Japan's Special Attack Unit kamikaze suicide planes, activated in the second half of 1944; (2) the Allies’ April 1945 sea, air, and land assault on Okinawa; and (3) President Roosevelt's 12 April 1945 passing.
All of Bennett's J-tunes but J-5a are heard; his musical re-uses are in total 9 minutes 23 seconds and comfortably parallel the action in the source episodes’ scenes: (1) Japan's EP2 Pearl Harbor assault music repurposed for kamikaze planes; (2) Japan's home front war materiel production borrowing from EP21's factory-work scoring; and (3) Roosevelt's funeral procession borrowing musically from an EP12 sailor's burial. EP25 is also the rare Victory episode with no SFX at all—leaving tympanic gunnery to Karl Glassman.
EP25 opens with one of Victory's periodic returns to Japan's home front, a tranquil travelogue of scenery and civilian activity with no initial indications of wartime. Bennett supplies a gentle new “Japan” tune [A] in flute and celeste, nearly two octaves in range. The narration begins with Emperor Hirohito's entry in his Imperial Court's 1938 New Year poetry contest: “Peaceful is morning in the shrine garden; world conditions, it is hoped, will also be peaceful.” Numerous American newspapers had printed it as a column-filler, a few of them chiding Japan for its decidedly un-peaceful 1930s aggression in Asia beginning in 1937. Here in EP25, at 2:04, narrator Leonard Graves acknowledges a cultural distinction: “Materially the Japanese emulate the west. but spiritually they belong to the east.” We hear J-3 and then J-4 at 2:16, followed by J-2 at 2:35.
At 2:56 the setting shifts to early 1945 in the western Pacific, accompanied by CARRIER. More than three years after Pearl Harbor, the Allies progressively close on mainland Japan, and now mass for an invasion of one of its own prefectures, Okinawa. The 3:47–4:38 music is the score's first re-use, originally written for EP13's Allied advances in New Guinea (21:08– 21:59—see [M] in EP13). The passage is another example of a lively, “tuneful” Bennett passage that stands on its own thematically before becoming the background for another melody—SONG-SEAS here.
Episode 9 - “Sea and Sand”
- George J. Ferencz
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- Book:
- The Music for <i>Victory at Sea</i>
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 10 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 16 May 2023, pp 189-197
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Summary
This program's focus is North Africa and the Allies’ “Operation Torch” invasion of November 1942. EP9 opens, however, with some useful scene-setting, as Russia has suffered Germany's wrath since mid-1941. Some “Russian” Bennett music [A] is first heard here, though composed for the already-completed EP11: “Hitler is on the brink of doing what Napoleon failed to do—conquer Russia… . Russia reels and calls on her allies for help. ‘Open a second front!’ cry the Russians, hoping to divert the German divisions at the gates of Leningrad, of Moscow, of Sevastopol, of Stalingrad. The German guns keep pounding.”
The pounding of the guns is heard after 1:35 [B]. This prologue is followed by the principal Allied leaders’ June 1942 Washington conference, shown at 2:21 [C]: “Roosevelt and Churchill must strike. But where? How? The statesmen of democracy ponder the issues and decide: invasion … a second front. The orders go out to America, to England; the trans-Atlantic planning begins. Target: top secret.”
At 3:00 Eisenhower, in overall command, confers with staff in planning the Anglo-American offensive. Operation Torch consisted of landings on (a) Morocco's western coast at Safi and Fedala, near Mehedia and Casablanca (Mohammedia today), and (b) east of Gibraltar, at Oran and Algiers. For the former, Casablanca was the overall objective, and for simplicity EP9 references “Casablanca.” It was the more familiar locale to early Victory viewers thanks to 1942's headlines and the Bogart-Bergman film—whose release soon after the Torch landings became Warner Brothers’ fine stroke of fortune.
EP9's footage of men and supplies converging on British ports is set to a new A-flat major march, beginning at 3:13 [D]. We see materiel destined for the invasion's beaches, and then at 3:24 British troops assembling for departure. There's a charming Bennett touch during his march's second strain [E], which begins at 3:44. One British point of embarkation being Southampton, the final four measures [F], 4:08–4:16, are from the 1917 popular song “The Bells of St. Mary’s,” sentimentally recalling that Southampton church and its carillon.
The march's third strain [G] at 4:16 is in the customary subdominant, D flat, and we’re taken across the Atlantic again to visit American departure ports at Norfolk and Portland, “the crystal sands of Virginia, the granite rocks of Maine.”