NRR Project: “A Streetcar Named Desire” film soundtrack
Composed by Alex North
Recorded 1951
46:46
No one could do more justice to this subject than Jonathan Rhodes Lee, a musicologist whose insights are informed and comprehensive. You shouldread him at the National Recording Registry.
I can only add that I find it odd that this was the first film to really incorporate jazz into its soundtrack. But I guess that it is so. Early jazz in sound film was overwhelmingly diegetic – that is, it came from a source you could see on the screen. Alex North took it and shaped it into the narrative quite elegantly – so much so that the Catholic Legion of Decency censored the film, as a passage of his music in the score was deemed lascivious. North had to rewrite the cue.
The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: the National League tiebreaker, Oct. 3, 1951.
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