White Witch Doctor

After The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Herrmann stayed (musically, not literally) in Africa for his next assignment, White Witch Doctor. Although it was not as prestigious a production as the Zanuck picture, it was a well-crafted entertainment that boasted an appealing cast and some colourful location work. Robert Mitchum was his normal stoical self in the role of Lonni Douglas, animal wrangler and fortune hunter, who is hired to take Nurse Ellen Burton (Susan Hayward) upriver to help bring the white man's modern medicines to the indigenous population. On the way they encounter the kind of dangers you would expect (gorillas, lions, hostile natives, and large spiders) and - also as you would expect - they begin to fall in love.

Although White Witch Doctor was nothing more than a well polished B picture, Herrmann brought his A game to it, and produced one of his most exotic and colourful scores. Having avoided the obvious cliches of scoring an African-set picture in Kilimanjaro, Herrmann now embraced the opportunity to weave the rhythms of the jungle into his music. The main title sequence was scored with a savage and pulsating dance for full orchestra with an augmented percussion section (including a native log drum, a brake drum, marimbas, and maracas). Herrmann provides evocative "musical scenery" for "The Safari", using individual instruments to suggest the sounds of the jungle. For a sequence in which a sleeping Susan Hayward is menaced by a large spider, the composer employed a bass wind instrument called a serpent. The sound it produced - a slow poisonous growl - was the perfect accompaniment for a creeping arachnid. For the romance between the adventurer and the nurse, Herrmann wrote a beautiful "Nocturne" for strings and solo clarinet, and, as was his custom with his best tunes, he recyled it as the love theme for North by Northwest.

Both Alfred Newman and Darryl Zanuck enthused about the score. "One of the very best we have on any of our pictures," gushed the head of the music department. The head of the stuido concurred. "In every respect this is a wonderful score,"  he wrote in a memo to the film's producer. "It has great class and distinction." All this love for the score most likely secured Herrmann his next gig - Beneath the Twelve Mile Reef - which would also require musical colour to give it a lift.

Given the praise that has been heaped on White Witch Doctor, it's curious that it is one of the few remaining Herrmann scores that has not been released on CD or re-recorded. There's a suite on the RCA disc The Classic Film Scores of Bernard Herrmann and, at just under fourteen minutes, it's a tantalising appetiser, but not satisfying enough. What is doubly frustrating is that my cassette tape transfer of the original vinyl - currently in storage - cuts out about three and a half minutes before the end.