SPACE INTERVIEWS

IR: Let me know if there are any specific areas you can jog my memory with. You are making me relive a career! You are also slowing up work on a string quartet, but don't worry about that. By the way, my nickname is Binny; I have even used it as a credit on some programs.

RR: To get away from the 1950s for a while, you worked for one of the most distinguished producers of the 1960s, David Susskind. He was probably the last producer to carry forward the torch of 1949 - 55, when TV was alive with serious drama, classical concerts, and a wide variety of cultural programming. I can well remember when filmed 30-minute programs (mainly sitcoms and westerns) ate television alive, about 1956. Serious programming was confined to a ghetto on Sunday afternoon for about a decade, but by the late 1960s even this ghetto was cleaned out and TV became the relentlessly trivial and mediocre means for the housebound to dispose of unwanted consciousness it has been ever since.

IR: In the early 1960s I went for an interview at Talent Associates, the production firm run by David Susskind. They were looking for a new music director. By then I had many credits and easily went through their interviews and was retained. I was allowed also to continue free-lancing in the industry, with the proviso that any Talent Associates program took precedence. They gave me a desk in the office of Robert Israel, who ran their music rights and publishing operation. The working staff was a fantastic collection of talent! Robert Alan Arthur did a lot of writing there. Jaqueline Babbin was one of the best producers I ever worked for. Audrey Gellen wrote scripts, and Mel Brooks came and went when needed. I can't easily bring to mind the many fine talents I met there.

RR: How about Susskind himself?

IR: Susskind always aimed high, was a superb salesman, and attempted many important and serious projects. He always had instant entry to the networks, at least in the 1960s, and sold them many fine specials. The top directors and acting stars were used, and I was quite proud to be part of the group. I worked on specials, prime-time series, and some films, as can been seen from the credit list we discussed in the previous interview.

Susskind was a gregarious, easy-going man who told you what to do, but not how to do it. We sometimes questioned his taste, but as a working crew all of us were able to convince him when a choice arose. He knew enough to take the advice of all the experts who worked for him.

RR: It's my understanding that that is a very rare trait among people in power in the entertainment industry!

IR: The firm was first organized by Susskind, Al Levy and George Roy Hill. Hill left early on and went to Hollywood to direct some fine films. Al Levy, a warm man, died in a tragic accident. He was succeeded by Dan Melnick, who came over from ABC, having purchased Al Levy's stock. Curiously, I had known Dan when we were teenagers--- since we shared an aunt by marriage.

RR: Any vivid memories of those days?

IR: In the memory vault of my mind are many incidents connected with the many TV programs. I can't forget the day President Kennedy was shot. Bob Israel and I returned from lunch and found everyone gathered in the board room. Susskind came in and said, "Everyone go home. This is a time to be with your families."

RR: That assassination changed the U.S. forever, that and the Vietnam war which seemed to follow immediately. And television changed with the times, not for the better.

IR: Yes, sometime in the late 60s or early 70s, the network television industry took another slide into mediocrity. The big serious dramatic specials were not desired. Sitcoms took over and became more and more trivial. Pop entertainment triumphed. Susskind's Talent Associates eventually closed, and I moved on to soap operas and documentary and industrial films, as mentioned in the previous interview. But early in the 60s, Susskind worked out a deal with the BBC in London to produce and video-tape drama specials and then have them broadcast both in England and the United States. They were to use famous actors and they were to be famous plays adapted for television.

RR: And they were!

IR: Let me tell you, the first production was Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler," and the cast was fantastic: Ingrid Bergman, Michael Redgrave, Trevor Howard, Ralph Richardson, and Ursula Jeans!! Susskind sent Jaqueline Babbin to produce, Alex Segal to direct, and I was sent to score the entire production. I arrived in London about a week after rehearsals began, checked into Grosvenor House, and went to rehearsal the next day in a rehearsal hall on Brompton Road. It was my first time in London and I was there years before the tourist rush to Europe. At the rehearsal hall I met the great actors that I had seen only in movies before that time.

Rehearsals had been underway for a week when I got there and I had a job to do immediately. The play calls for Redgrave's character's first entrance coming joyfully down a flight of stairs, singing a Norwegian folk song. Back in New York, I had researched many Norwegian folk songs and selected the one I wanted to use on the program. I carefully copied the music and brought it with me to London. After the rehearsal, I told Regrave that I had the music for him and would reserve a BBC studio with a piano so that I could teach him the song. All he said was, "Send it to my flat." The next morning at rehearsal he was singing it flawlessly. I was surprised, to say the least. Some months earlier, I had to teach a Hollywood star a Welsh folk song to sing in a TV drama; it was a gruelling experience! I told Redgrave I was impressed with his speed in learning the music. Then he gave me a friendly lecture about the training of the British actor. He pointed out, for instance, that his training and early experience taught him how to duel with seven different styles of swords. He could dance all the early folk dances, the Elizabethan dances, and modern ballroom dances. Did I think he didn't learn to read music as well?! His remarks were given in a very friendly manner, and I learned a great deal. I had been used to the rapid, generally untrained rise of the American actor, especially in Hollywood.

RR: I gather the others were equally expert.

IR: Ralph Richardson was a very warm and friendly man. We soon discovered that we were both pipe smokers and shared preferences in tobacco. Trevor Howard, a completely reliable actor, kept mostly to himself. But Ingrid Bergman was the warmest of all--- friendly, outgoing, interested in everyone's work on the program, and a most compelling actress. She gave me a signed photograph for my young daughter.

Our director, Alex Segal, who had done so many great programs on American television, had troubles with the technical rituals of the British system. They were not used to moving cameras around the studio at the pace of the Americans. Instead, they used many more cameras and kept them in set positions. Alex was used to the fluidity of American camera work, and the ability of the studio men to move the cables rapidly. So Alex would lose his temper and the British would smile indulgently at the American's intensity.

RR: It's fascinating that American directors were fighting for camera mobility from the earliest days of live TV. In those days before zoom lenses, and with typically three cameras at most, camera mobility was the only way to get a variety of shots to compete with what the audience was used to seeing in the movies. Larry Menkin's sons have told me how he used to stage races and contests for the cameramen, betting they could or couldn't get from spot A to spot B in 25 seconds or less.

IR: Well, our producer, Jacqueline Babbin, had the additional job of tyring to reconcile these differences in British and American techniques and temperaments. Her tact was amazing. She would calm everyone down--- solve the problem--- and keep the rehearsal going. She also had the important problem of keeping Susskind away from the working crew! She rarely showed the strain. She would blow her stack privately, when a few of us had drinks together after each day's rehearsal. I had no problems at all with my British music crew--- they were most helpful.

There was a curious contretemps about the screen credits. Ingrid Bergman, of course, had the leading credit. But Redgrave, Howard and Richardson (or their agents) were very competitive about the order of their names on the screen. As I understood it at the time, there were big "behind the scenes" arguments about this billing order. We called this the "Battle of the Knights," because all three actors had been knighted by the crown, and had a "Sir" in front of their names. The question was settled, as it should have been, by ordering the names alphabetically!

The program went very well. It was telecast in Great Britain and over CBS here in the United States. I was proud to have been a part of it. Last year I went to the Museum of Broadcasting in New York City and looked at it after all these years. It was a thrill for me to see my name there in the closing credits!

RR: You also worked with Ingrid Bergman in Cocteau's "The Human Voice," I believe. This was a very unsual play, to say the least.

IR: Susskind decided to continue with the concept of specials produced in London for airing in Britain and the United States. The next one was "The Human Voice," a long one-act play by Jean Cocteau, which had had some success in Paris, but which in my opinion was not a good play. It has only one part, a woman, and takes place on a single set. I don't know whose idea it was to present this, but it was Ingrid Bergman, fresh from her success in "Hedda Gabler," who was cast. The play is about a woman who has had a fight with her lover and is desperately waiting for him to telephone her. Her moods rise and fall as she waits for the phone to ring, as it does several times, but it is always someone else calling. For television it was broken into two acts for a commercial break and the first act ends with Ingrid falling to her knees and weeping bitterly.

I had my usual job of music director, and went to the rehearsal hall across the Thames, found a good spot at one edge of the set which was marked in chalk on the floor. With the script in my lap and a stopwatch in my hand, I clocked the places where I had planned to have music. When we came to the end of the first act, fortuitously I was seated at the edge of the set where Ingrid was to come and drop to her knees, crying. As we came to that point, I hit my stopwatch to clock the length of the act ending and heard the director say, "And we fade it to black." As I stopped the watch, Ingrid, with tears streaming down her face, looked at me with a wry grin, and said, "What a lot of bull s@#$!" The production went smoothly. It showed in both countries, but I can't remember how it was received. I guess I basically didn't like the play. I agreed with Ingrid.

RR: We have heard from many people active in live TV during 1949 - 55 that Broadway actors often had trouble with TV performances. I believe one of your London experiences illustrates that point yet again.

IR: That was "The Glass Menagerie," by Tennesee Williams. Shirley Booth and Hal Holbrook were the leads in this television version of the Broadway play. Because of some arcane contractual provision, the stage music, written by Alex North, had to be used in the television production. So off I went to London with a copy of the original score. It was not easy to adapt! The play as rewritten for television had more scene changes, and the long silent moments that work well on stage can be deadly on a television screen.

The plan was to record the music, edit the various sections, and dub them onto acetate discs to be rolled into the production as it went along. I had to extract from North's score bits that could be used for scene bridges, backgrounds and act curtains. Poking around a BBC prop room, I came upon a set of very delicate wind chimes, which I recorded and used as a theme for the collection of glass figures. The Broadway score had been written for a curious group of instruments, to say the least... a Hammond organ, some woodwinds, a few strings. My lead violinist was concertmaster of the Royal Philharmonic, and arrived at the recording session with one of the most beautiful Stradvarius violins I had ever seen. It was not his. He had gone to the British Museum, which has a superb collection of instruments, and arranged to borrow it for the session. The recording went well and I headed off to the rehearsal studio across the Thames to get timings of the action.

On the last day of rehearsal, the usual group arrived from New York, Susskind, executives from CBS, and people from the advertising agency. The run-through of the first act went well--- we took a break and began the second act. Shirley Booth was suffering from a cold, and when her first cue came, she froze! She then broke down in tears. Jacqueline Babbin, always in charge, bundled her into her coat, grabbed my arm, and took us down to the street where she hailed a cab and told me to get Shirley to her hotel. So I rode across London with Shirley sobbing on my shoulder. At the hotel I called the hotel doctor, who gave her a sedative and we tucked her into bed.

The next day we recorded the program in a studio near Wimbleton. The control room was in a remote truck parked in the lot. I was in a separate room with turntables and my engineer, and we spent the day putting the program together. It went well.

RR: Video tape was the salvation of long dramatic programs during that period. I am surprised, however, that the Hollywood practice of putting the music in during the final sound mix was not adopted sooner. Having the music director lay the music in during the actual performance seems to be an unnecessary bit of stress. But there were times when you had to go the Hollywood way, when given a "finished" tape, am I right?

IR: "From Chekov with Love" was a program about the great Russian playwright, Chekov, who had a relationship with a wealthy society lady whom he never met face to face. They knew one another only through the letters they exchanged. She was a great support to the troubled writer, and he owed a great deal of his success to her counseling. The famous English director, Jonathon Miller, had also written the script and videotaped the play in England with John Gielgud and Wendy Hiller as the leads. The tape was brought to New York, where the music was to be added in the final sound mix. I was assigned as music director and had several sessions with Miller. He had arrived with very definite concepts about the music he wanted... only the music of Erik Satie, the French impressionist composer. That was a very difficult assignment! Miller felt that the delicate and evanescent quality of the Satie music would provide a perfect background for the sensitive story. I learned a great deal about Satie's music at that time! There was no budget for musicians, so the score had to be assembled from recordings that I found. I had to worry about all the clearances and royalty payments involved, edit the music on tape, and with Miller's supervision guide the final mix. It all worked. I remember that program fondly. I would like to see it again.

RR: On a personal note, you were not only one of the first science fiction fans, but also always interested in science?

IR: Yes, I was fascinated to hear that you are in physics. That is what I wanted to do originally. I graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York City with a deep background in physics and chemistry, but somehow music took over and I ended up in Julliard and with a scholarship with Roy Harris. I keep up my interest in science by reading SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN. So it goes.