Andre Previn was all of 16 the day in 1946 he first reported for work at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. By the time he left Hollywood a little more than two decades later, he had picked up four Academy Awards and 14 Oscar nominations and had scored and/or conducted the music for everything from a couple of Lassie pictures to "Elmer Gantry" and "My Fair Lady."
Those are the years the above memoir focuses on, before he established himself as a major force on the international concert scene. Still to come were the directorships of the London Symphony, the Pittsburgh Symphony and the Royal and Los Angeles philharmonics (the last of which he exited stormily in 1989).Turning his back on Los Angeles for the second time, however, has apparently enabled Previn to come to terms with his first sojourn. For despite the deprecatory tone, it is with affection that he writes of his years in the movie business.
"I used to soothe myself with the reminder that my decision had been tempered by necessities," he says of that early Faustian alliance. "I had to make a living, I had to help my family, and I did continue to study and learn serious music during the time I spent fashioning harp glissandos for Esther Williams' high dives. But actually, these are all cop-outs, lame excuses. I was 18 years old when Isigned my contract at MGM, and suddenly, there within my grasp, was all the tawdry glamour I longed for. I was making quite a bit of money, the work was not seriously daunting, my co-workers were generous and kind, and the chorus girls gleaming in the California sun fit easily into my blue convertible . . . . Let's face it, I had fun."
Accordingly, encounters with Errol Flynn and Ava Gardner are mixed in with recollections of the bizarre auctions Jascha Heifetz used to preside over at home and of beating Arnold Schoenberg at Ping-Pong ("a dumb move," the author reflects).
The title, "No Minor Chords," comes from an edict sent down to the MGM music department by Irving Thalberg, of all people. Other examples of musical Philistinism range from a supposedly knowledgeable reference in an Elizabeth Taylor film to the Sibelius Piano Concerto (there is no such work) to the producer who wanted Previn to orchestrate the Schumann Piano Quintet (his refusal earned him a suspension).
Ironically, Previn's own mistakes sometimes involve his colleagues. For instance, his Bernard Herrmann chronology is wrong and Miklos Rozsa did not write the music for "Barabbas." (He also mixes up the songwriters played by Fred Astaire and Red Skelton in "Three Little Words.") But I suspect we can trust his memory on such entries as the male star who showed up at a studio premiere in high heels and a dress or having a collection of Mozart's letters personally stolen for him by Lenny Bruce.
As Previn points out, it is a different world he inhabits today. And the gap is nowhere more apparent than in the story he tells toward the end, about when the producer-director Norman Jewison and another film composer attended a concert of his with the LSO.
Wasn't it nice, Jewison mused afterward, "to see Andre here in London, at the Festival Hall, with his own orchestra, getting cheered because of his performance of Beethoven's Ninth."
"Sure, Norman," the friend nodded, "but you have to admit it's a shame how completely he screwed up his career!"