Prince of Players

Prince of Players, the true life story of a theatrical family, was the directorial debut of respected Hollywood screenwriter Philip Dunne, whose work included the script for The Ghost and Mrs Muir. Dunne, who asked for Herrmann to score his picture, was himself knowledgeable about music and was able to give his composer notes on orchestration - notes which Herrmann rejected out of hand, saying, "Well, if you know so much about it, why don't you write the music?" Despite these occasional run-ins the collaboration was a fruitful one.

Two years earlier Herrmann had narrowly lost out to Miklos Rozsa on scoring MGM's prestigious production of Julius Caesar, starring Marlon Brando and John Gielgud. Prince of Players, which interpolates scenes from Hamlet, King Lear and The Tempest within its own family drama, now gave Herrmann to opportunity to write for Shakespeare. In fact, much of the music in the film is heard under dialogue and Herrmann proved once again that he was a master of the technique. The "Prelude", which opens the film, is a theatrical curtain-raiser to the drama, an extended fanfare that suggests the pageantry of the theatre and would not have been out of place as the title music for a knights in armour spectacle.

The score is represented on two discs. There are seven cues from the original soundtrack on Bernard Herrmann at Fox Volume 2 (VSD-6053), and eight cues of re-recorded music on the Morgan/Stromberg disc (8.223841).

The film was liked by the critics, but the public stayed away in droves, and Dunne proudly claimed in his autobiography that the picture had "the dubious distinction of becoming the first production in CineamScope to lose money." Dunne wanted Herrmann to score his second picture - The View from Pompey's Head - but the composer had to decline the offer, having received a call from Alfred Hitchcock. Herrmann was about to embark on the most productive and most turbulent professional relationship of his career.