by Charles Emge
Real Jazzmen Really Blow, And Act, In Ferrer-Produced 'Blind
Spot'
Hollywood - A little item squeezed into our Dec. 2 issue mentioned a picture
in the making at RKO which had something unusual in the way of a sequence
built around a jam session. It also was reported that in the same picture,
Blind Spot, guitarist Dave Barbour was playing one of the key roles.
He's a musician who gets involved in a blackmail plot aimed at a girl
pianist (Claudette Colbert), coming thereby to an unhappy but deserved end
at the hands of her boyfriend (Robert Ryan).
All this sounded so much like the kind of stuff hard working studio
publicity men plant with great success in movie fan magazines, we decided
the subject called for a closer investigation. So we dropped in at RKO for a
chat with Mel Ferrer, the Lost Boundaries star, who is directing
Blind Spot. He is the kind who, when he does something, wants to do it
right. He is, furthermore, truly alert and understanding where music -
particularly the music of the day - is concerned.
The fact that he has been able to make a place for himself in the movie
business is an indication that we'll have, at long last, something fresh and
interesting in the use of music in films.
Ferrer told us how Barbour, originally engaged only to record the sound
track and coach an actor for the role, found himself before the camera.
EASIER WAY OUT
"While talking with Dave regarding the selection of musicians for the jam
session sequence (during which the musician-blackmailer is trapped and shot)
it occurred to me," said Ferrer, "that it might be easier to make an actor
of him than to make an actor look and act like a guitarist. We gave him a
screen test and - well, he's great!"
It was Ferrer who insisted on calling in a specially assembled group of
musicians to do not only the sound track but the visual roles in the
sequence. Studio practice is to use staff orchestra men (who have to be paid
anyway) for the recording and use "side-line" musicians for the action. It
doesn't come off very successfully in this type of thing, but few directors
or producers know the difference.
"I don't like bop," said Ferrer when we queried him on the musicians who
work with Barbour in the picture, "mainly because it is responsible for so
many bad imitators of a few really fine musicians.
"But I wanted music with an up-to-date flavor, and I think we caught
something very good here with Dave, Ernie Royal (trumpet), Vido Musso
(tenor), Hal Schaefer (piano), Alvin Stoller (drums), and Walt Yoder (bass).
The music reflects the emotional intensity of the storyline, which is what I
hope to capture."
Ferrer doesn't look for anything very good to come out of the forthcoming
screen version of Young Man with a Horn as produced by Warner Brothers. It
is said he could have had an important part in the making of it, but bowed
out rather than try to fit his ideas of how it should have been done into
the pattern demanded by the high authorities there.
"I don't want to criticize the picture until I see it," he said, "but I just
can't see the character of Rick Martin, and hear the trumpet of Harry James.
They just don't go together."
