“Star Trek” composer based TV show’s theme song on Jeanette MacDonald’s “Beyond the Blue Horizon”

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — Alexander “Sandy” Courage, an Emmy-winning and Academy Award-nominated arranger, orchestrator and composer who created the otherworldly theme for the classic “Star Trek” TV show, has died. He was 88.

Courage died May 15 at the Sunrise assisted-living facility in Pacific Palisades, his stepdaughter Renata Pompelli of Los Angeles, said Thursday. He had been in poor health for three years.

Over a decades-long career, Courage collaborated on dozens of movies and orchestrated some of the greatest musicals of the 1950s and 1960s, including “My Fair Lady,” “Hello, Dolly!” “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” “Gigi,” “Porgy and Bess” and “Fiddler on the Roof.”

But his most famous work is undoubtedly the “Star Trek” theme, which he composed, arranged and conducted in a week in 1965.

“I have to confess to the world that I am not a science fiction fan,” Courage said in an interview for the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation’s Archive of American Television in 2000. “Never have been. I think it’s just marvelous malarkey. … So you write some, you hope, marvelous malarkey music that goes with it.”

Courage said the tune, with its ringing fanfare, eerie soprano part and swooping orchestration, was inspired by an arrangement of the song “Beyond the Blue Horizon” he heard as a youngster. [Note: Jeanette MacDonald introduced it in “Monte Carlo” (1930) and sang it again in “Follow the Boys” (1943).]

“Little did I know when I wrote that first A-flat for the flute that it was going to go down in history, somehow,” Courage said. “It’s a very strange feeling.”

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A 21-year old movie fan in Estonia writes about Ernst Lubitsch

…I was shocked to learn yesterday,that in association with the German embassy in Estonia, there is a huge tribute to Ernst Lubitsch’s films in the middle of the Pöff film festival in Tallinn…

I don’t know whether I was more shocked about the fact that I was missing it,because it was into  it’s third day, so it was too,too late for me to even comprehend the event-after all,I’m a devotee of the master with ‘the touch’ and would kill to see his works on the big screen-,or because of the fact somebody actually had the guts to come out with classic films in the middle of that god-forsaken hipster event!

And not only that,but Estonia is probably the last place on earth they show classic films anyway. Anything produced before the late 60’s is a taboo around here. I say,thank god for cable TV with it’s shabby European TCM schedule and the Internet,because these are the only sources for classic movies around here.

Even getting DVDs  is a pain-unless you’re willing to pay about 769860886780 crowns to buy off Amazon or Ebay and don’t forget to add the shipping prices!

Not to mention-people couldn’t care less.There isn’t even a small fan-base for those movies.Whereas in Russia or Latvia,or probably every other ex-soviet country, there are large vintage communities of all sorts,delighting in the movies and music of the past.

Anyway,the Lubitsch retrospective is a big break.I’m sad I will miss it,and wish I would have found out earlier,because I haven’t seen more than a few of the movies that are scheduled, but I’ll live through it.

….I love Lubitsch,really I do.There was this man who had the divine ability to mix rather low-brow humor with sparkling sophistication,and he did it ever so effortlessly.His ‘Trouble In Paradise’ and ‘Design for  Living’  are amongst my ALL TIME favourite comedies and I quite enjoy the insane opperettas and Weimar silents he directed.In fact,I love every single movie of his, I’ve seen so far. And he was also a fascinating man in other ways-one of the few ‘darling ‘ directors in Hollywood and genuinely good-natured and witty.

In conclusion: it’s good that his work gets attention around here, but  I doubt many people will care and…ah…who are we kidding…I’m actually damn mad at myself, I didn’t hear about the event about two weeks ago or so.

…Lubitsch seized upon the advent of talkies to direct musicals. With his first sound film, The Love Parade (1929), starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, Lubitsch hit his stride as a maker of worldly musical comedies (and earned himself another Oscar nomination). The Love Parade (1929), Monte Carlo (1930), and The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) were hailed by critics as masterpieces of the newly emerging musical genre…. Whether with music, as in MGM’s opulent The Merry Widow (1934) and Paramount’s One Hour with You (1932), or without, as in Design for Living (1933) Lubitsch continued to specialize in comedy. He made only one other dramatic film, the antiwar Broken Lullaby (also known as The Man I Killed, 1932)….

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Nice mention of “Naughty Marietta”

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by Steven Uhles, Augusta Chronicle

It’s rare that there isn’t some princess action happening at my house. I am the father of a 4-year-old, and, like so many children of her gender and age, she has a thing for princesses. For the most part, this manifests itself in the expected Disney ways, with a well-worn copy of Cinderella getting a lot of DVD play. It’s also a current career choice, although in all fairness, it receives stiff competition from dentistry and rock star.

Still, give the girl a tiara, flouncy gown and a ball to wear them to, and she’ll be happy.

So, in honor of the little Princess Uhles, I’d like to present the following list of princess films, nary a one produced by the Mouse House. That would be too easy.

ROMAN HOLIDAY (1953): Although it might be argued that Gregory Peck is playing Cary Grant in this film, there are charm and chemistry between him as an American newsman in Rome and Audrey Hepburn as a princess on the lam.

THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1940): This special effects spectacular has aged much better than the later Disney version. Sabu stars as the thief; Conrad Veidt chews scenery as the villain Jaffar; and, in the all-important princess role, the rarely seen June Duprez, who retired from film in the late 1940s.

THE PRISONER OF ZENDA (1937): Part swashbuckler, part romantic comedy and part Prince and the Pauper rehash, this immensely enjoyable movie about a prince pretender and the royal to whom he is falsely engaged is the very lightest sort of Saturday matinee treat. Ronald Colman stars as both the real and pretender prince, and the lovely Madeleine Carroll stars as Princess Flavia, who begins to uncover the truth behind the deception.

THE SWAN (1956): MGM celebrated the engagement of Grace Kelly to Monaco’s Prince Rainier by resurrecting an old script about a young princess in love for the soon-to-be-royal actress to star in. This is neither Ms. Kelly’s finest role nor film, but given the historical perspective that surrounds it, it’s a lot of fun.

NAUGHTY MARIETTA (1935): In this Jeanette MacDonald/Nelson Eddy vehicle, the princess in question hops a slow boat to New Orleans to escape an undesired marriage. In the Big Easy, she finds herself falling for the mercenary who saved her from pirates. Awkward. In true MacDonald/Eddy fashion, all problems are resolved with the aid of a heartfelt ballad, in this case the classic Sweet Mystery of Life .

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