At the beginning of the film “How to Marry a Millionaire,” there’s a 5-minute “overture,” which consists of an orchestra playing “Street Scene,” by Alfred Newman (and conducted by the composer). You just sit there watching the orchestra, and at the end the titles and credits begin. And at the end of the movie, you see the orchestra briefly playing again, then a stage curtain closes.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s really strange for a movie, especially a comedy. So my question is: Why did they do this, and was this done in any other movie?
Schatze (played by Lauren Bacall): “I always liked older men. Look at Roosevelt. Look at Churchill. Look at old fella what’s-his-name in The African Queen.”
Actually film overtures weren’t uncommon up until the 1970’s. Many films that were intended as spectacles had a orchestral overture before them to play as the audience was being seated. In the early days of films being released for home viewing it was assumed that most people just wanted to watch the movie. It fell out of favor in the 1970’s (I suspect due to guild rules making extended openning credit sequences a requirement) but lately a lot of these overtures are being restored for DVD releases.
Even more extreme would be Lawrence of Arabia. Overture, end music and ('cause it was such a long film) an 11? minute piece of that played to a black screen during the intermission.
as noted, other films had overtures. west Side Story still had its overture intact when I saw it in the theater circa 1970. It does on the DVD. Spartacus has it on DVD (and did on its TCM showings).
You also need to remember that the studios were hysterically responding to the threat of television in the 1950s by including every possible gimmick that worked only in movie theaters and not on a television screen. Color, wide-screen, and stereo were the basics that most mainstream studios used. Superlong epics that combined all three were often money makers. Some majors, along with several smaller studios, used 3-D, smell-o-vision or odorama, chairs wired for electricity (The Tingler), and other nonsense.
Eventually they gave up and tried making better movies, but that took until the 60s.
