Gateway Scores: Alien

I don’t know if this is a true story. Richard Burton was playing the lead in a comedy on Broadway. Before making his entrance he told the stage manager, “Tonight, I’m gonna make ‘em cry”. He went on and, as promised, he brought the audience to tears when they should have been laughing. With the greatest respect to the ghost of Richard Burton, film music can also evoke tears, tension, fright and every other conceivable emotion. Speaking of ghosts, I’ve sat many times on an empty Fox scoring stage wondering how Joseph Mankiewicz reacted the first time he heard Bernard Hermann’s main title of “The Ghost And Mrs. Muir”. Did Mankiewicz break down in tears?…