Principal cast (from left); Clifton Webb (John
S. Shadwell); Dorothy McGuire (Miss Frances); Louis
Jourdan (Prince Dino di Cessi); Maggie McNamara (Maria
Williams); Rossano Brazzi (Georgio Bianchi) and Jean
Peters (Anita Hutchins).
It must be stated first that this CD does not include
Frank Sinatra’s rendition of that song. It can however be found
on the CD Frank
Sinatra sings Sammy Kahn:
Having
got that admission out of the way there is so much more to admire
on this album. The first track ‘Prelude’, high spirited and
infectious, heard under the opening credits, is typical of Victor
Young’s sparkling easy-listening score. The 1954 film, Three
Coins in the Fountain, was an enormous box office hit for
20th Century Fox. It was made even more popular,
of course, by that song delivered by Sinatra against a backdrop
of fountains in and around Rome including the spectacular water
displays at the Villa D’Este (pictured right) in the
film’s pre-opening credit sequence. It was the first Cinemascope
film to be shot on location outside the United States and it
was distinguished by the wonderful colour photography, by Milton
Krasner, of Rome and Venice. The film is now available on DVD.
The slight storylines concerned the romantic
entanglements of three women – two young American secretaries
and the older Miss Frances secretary to the pompous author and
intellectual, Shadwell. Maggie McNamara’s ensnaring of Louis
Jourdan by unscrupulously studying his tastes was quite charming
but the stand out episodes featured Webb and McGuire. Shadwell’s
witticisms were biting and memorable; e.g. when, at the cocktail
party, he is accosted by a forbidding admirer claiming that
any author following her around with notebook and pencil would
gather lots of material, he replies straight-faced, “Madam,
I would love to get behind you with a pencil”
Victor Young, gruff and tough, was hardly, one
might think, a man to write such romantic songs as ‘Stella by
Starlight’, ‘My Foolish Heart’, and ‘When I Fall in Love’.
He worked on some 350 films. His work included:
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Shane, Samson and
Delilah, The Greatest Show on Earth, Around the World in Eighty
Days and Scaramouche. His talents were deeply rooted
in the classics. Richard Strauss’s influence is marked in,
for instance, in his Scaramouche music and Tchaikovsky’s
Capriccio Italien is surely remembered in this Three
Coins score.
Young uses Sammy Cahn’s Three Coins theme
subtly varied to underline the various emotional states of the
three heroines but he enriches this score with so many more
delights: the music to underline the beauty of the Italian locales
such as ‘Rome’ and ‘Venetain Plaza’, the lovely waltz for the
cocktail party sequence, the joyous ‘Tarantella’ and the playful
‘Piccolo serenade’ as Maria tries to persuade her Prince she
is learning the piccolo. There are darker shadings; tracks like
‘The Tenement District’ and ‘The Doctor/Forgive Me’ when Shadwell
discovers that he is desperately (Doctor) ill contrasted with
lighter amusing material for the scenes (Forgive) in which Miss
Frances gets thoroughly plastered. The ‘Finale’ as all three
couples are happily reunited, has a choir singing that song.
A sparkling score, even without ‘Old Blue Eyes’,
and a lovely souvenir of a film that must be an endearing memory
for so many couples, cinemagoing in the 1950s.
Ian Lace