True Grit: Elmer Bernstein’s Classic Score (Opening Credits – Title Song, Suite, "Rooster's Theme" and Photoessay), Revised and Expanded

 

 

 

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

For years, I slighted this score. All I recalled from it was the sappy opening theme. Then, via the miracle of youtube and the fine folks who have labored to post uploads there, I got to listen to large swathes of Elmer Bernstein’s score, and also began periodically watching the movie again with my babies. The funny thing is, the same theme that can make for a sappy song can be arranged this way and that, with different orchestration and tempos, and sound magnificent.
 

Elmer Bernstein was nicknamed “Bernstein West,” to distinguish him from another pretty good composer with the same surname: Leonard, aka “Bernstein East.” Head shot, from 1968.
 

Jerry Goldsmith was the master at using the same theme in multiple different ways in the same score, sometimes sounding like a completely different theme; Bernstein does it with equal facility here.
 

Glen Campbell, left, Kim Darby, right, and some old fat man in the middle
 

I had a similar revelation about the picture, too. Each time I viewed it again, I admired it more. It’s probably one of the ten greatest Westerns I’ve ever seen, after Shane, The Wild Bunch, The Searchers, Unforgiven, High Noon, Ride the High Country, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and oh, I dunno, Lonely are the Brave. But this isn’t a movie review. That’ll have to wait for another time.
 

 

True Grit Opening Credits – Title Song by Glen Campbell

Upload by Bill Clarke, published on Aug 28, 2013.
 

Suite

 

Elmer Bernstein with his Oscar for Thoroughly Modern Millie, 1968
 

River2Walk’s Cut

(It says 5:09, but only lasts 2:32, and the stunning first 52 seconds are not on the selections above.)



Upload at river2walk’s channel, on Aug 26, 2008.
 

It’s no accident that river2walk chose this music as the theme to True Grit. Officially, the theme is the title song and the variations thereon, but this is the real theme, “Rooster’s Theme.” It’s played during the scene where Mattie outraces the barge, causing Rooster to say, “She reminds me of me,” and re-played in what, for my money, is the greatest fadeout in the history of pictures.
 

More classic themes from "Bernstein West" at WEJB/NSU, from:

To Kill a Mockingbird;

The Great Escape;

TV’s National Geographic specials;

The Magnificent Seven (1960);

The Man with the Golden Arm; and

"Elmer Bernstein: A Musical Tribute (The Magnificent Seven, To Kill a Mockingbird, etc.)"