First, the statistics, so beloved of publicity departments: 50 guest stars, 68,894 people on screen (don’t trust me, count’em), eight different countries four million air-passenger miles travelled, 112 exterior locations, 140 sets in six Hollywood studios plus studios in England, Hong Kong and Japan, 34 species of animal and 33 assistant directors (interesting juxtaposition).
#Around the world in 80 days 1956 movie#
Of course, it was all in fun, just like the movie it accompanied, and the music was a major element in maintaining the light mood over the hours and continents.Ah, the great old days before digital imagery, when all those extras and sets existed in the physical world. This is not to say that Young didn't write plenty of his own music, and that much of it wasn't engaging, but even when he was being original, he was drawing on standard notions of what the music of a country or ethnic group sounded like. "La Cucaracha" heard in a Southwestern sequence the Cavalry arriving to "The William Tell Overture" and so on. And so it went, with "Yankee Doodle Dandy" accompanying the movement to the U.S. No sooner were the heroes in Paris than a bit of the "Maxixe" would be heard. On the contrary, his score reveled in them. It suggested that Young, viewing the movie properly as one big entertainment, wasn't going to be worried about indulging in clichés. Fogg's own theme, not surprisingly, was "Rule, Britannia," and it turned up repeatedly in many different guises. Around the World in 80 Days offered extensive opportunities for this tendency, as the main character, Phileas Fogg, and his valet, Passepartout, travel from country to country. He was also known for using existing material and weaving it into his own writing, to the point that he sometimes seemed as much an arranger as a composer.
Young had an unusual gift for melody and was known for scoring pop hits with his tunes, among them "Stella by Starlight" and "Sweet Sue (Just You)." That gift certainly hadn't abandoned him at the end the lilting "Around the World" was one of his most memorable themes. Its popularity was aided by the release of the film's main theme, a waltz called "Around the World," as a single that reached the Top 20 in the soundtrack version, with competing chart renditions by Mantovani and (with lyrics set by Harold Adamson) Bing Crosby and the McGuire Sisters.ĭoes all this mean that Young's score for Around the World in 80 Days was his best? No, but it may be his most characteristic. In the aftermath of the Academy Awards ceremony on March 27, 1957, the Decca Records soundtrack album for Around the World in 80 Days became a massive hit, entering the Billboard chart for the week ending April 13 and rising to number one for the first of ten weeks on July 22, which made it second only to the Elvis Presley soundtrack Loving You as the most successful LP of 1957. In fact, it won five Oscars, one of them for Young, a sentimental favorite given his recent demise, since the composer had never won previously despite having been nominated 21 times before. It was also a considerable success, winning the Academy Award for best picture and out-grossing every movie of 1957 except the similarly epic The Ten Commandments. The 167-minute epic film version of Jules Verne's 1873 novel about a man who wagers he can accomplish the journey suggested in the title was a cinematic extravaganza mounted by brash producer Michael Todd in a widescreen process he had immodestly dubbed Todd-A-O. Veteran Hollywood composer Victor Young died of a heart attack at age 56 on November 11, 1956, three-and-a-half weeks after the premiere of Around the World in 80 Days, one of the last of hundreds of movies for which he wrote music.
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