“Music to Bring Tears”

I recently stumbled across this fascinating article from the Australian newspaper The Daily News (23/Nov/1928) about the production of “The Manxman“.

MUSIC TO BRING TEARS

Stirring Actors’ Emotions

“Please play ‘La Boheme’.”

A tall, handsome young man in the dress of a fisherman addressed these words to the conductor of a little orchestra hidden behind the scenery of a cottage interior at the studios of British International Pictures at Elstree, Hertfordshire, recently. He was playing in the film, “The Manxman.”

The actor was Mr. Carl Brisson, and he had to express the agony of a young husband whose girl wife was in danger of her life. The orchestra started to play one of the popular airs from Puccini’s opera, and the actor, at the bidding of the producer, Mr. Alfred Hitchcock, started to “register” his emotions until the tears coursed down his cheeks.

“To a player like myself who is passionately fond of music,” Mr. Brisson told a Daily Mail reporter, “an orchestra is a tremendous help. Certain tunes are specially helpful in some scenes. For instance, in my love scene in this picture with Miss Anny Ondra, we had the song ‘For You Alone,’ but the tune that impresses me most is ‘Home, Sweet Home.’ It never fails.”

The conductor of one of the orchestras said: “The music has to be chosen with great care, for what affects deeply one player leaves another cold.”

You can search through more Hitchcock articles from Australian newspapers on the National Library of Australia’s Trove site.