Chinatown (1974)

Don't know how many fans of the great Chinatown there are on these boards, but a very interesting piece of film music history was finally released last month - the initial score by Phillip Lambro, which was discarded and replaced by the now-iconic score composed by Jerry Goldsmith (which he had only ten days to complete). As Chinatown is my favourite film of all time, hearing Lambro's music in its complete form been one of my Holy Grails for a long time.

Pieces of Lambro's score can be heard in the theatrical trailer for the film:



Lambro's involvement has been dismissed briefly in most accounts of the making of the film, although he's told his own side of the story in his autobiography, Close Encounters of the Worst Kind, the bitter, caustic and self-serving tone of which erodes his credibility. Nevertheless, it's a fascinating score to listen to as an alternative which didn't quite work, despite being well-composed and effectively sinister music. A bit too sinister and creepy - that's probably why it was dropped.

Due to copyright issues, the Lambro score has been called Los Angeles, 1937: The Unused Score of a Film by Roman Polanski.




It can be bought here, limited edition of 1000 copies:

http://store.fortytwotradingco.com/losan19cresc.html

There were initial plans by Perseverance Records to re-record it and release it in 2006, unfortunately they fell through.
Further information about the bizarre story surrounding this score and the equally bizarre Phillip Lambro can be found in these threads at the Film Score Monthly discussion boards:

http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=34753&forumID=2&archive=1
http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=36244&forumID=1&archive=1
http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=46117&forumID=1&archive=0
http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=92836&forumID=1&archive=0
http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=93417&forumID=1&archive=0

 

That first previewable track is so bizarre. Reading up on this now. Thanks for posting.

 

Bit of a shameless bump and an edit to the thread title (I'd like to encourage a bit more non-SW film music discussion), so here's some of Jerry Goldsmith's magnificent score that he had less than a fortnight to compose and complete:





After being out of print on CD for nearly 20 years, Jerry Goldsmith's score for Chinatown was given a limited re-release by Varese Sarabande last year, and is still in stock at the time of this post (as is Phillip Lambro's rejected score on Perseverance).
http://www.varesesarabande.com/servlet/the-1041/Chinatown/Detail
http://www.fortytwotradingco.com/los-angeles-1937-chinatown-rejected-score/