In addition to my weekly drama column, I have a book review in today’s Wall Street Journal. It’s of Daniel Goldmark’s Tunes for ‘Toons: Music and the Hollywood Cartoon:
“Tunes for ‘Toons,” says Mr. Goldmark, an assistant professor of music history at Case Western Reserve University, is “a set of case studies rather than an all-encompassing history,” for which reason he devotes whole chapters to Carl Stalling of Warner Bros. and Scott Bradley of MGM, who between them scored most of the major non-Disney animated shorts and thereby “helped establish the public’s notion of what cartoon scores should sound like.” Their sharply contrasting styles are described with well- informed clarity: Stalling used recycled pop songs in the collage-like manner of a silent-movie accompanist, while Bradley preferred through-composed scores with unmistakable touches of modernism….
As usual, no link. You know what to do.