Maestro behind a Bowie classic
QUESTION
The David Bowie song Wild Is The Wind was written by a Dimitri Tiomkin. What was his story? WILD Is The Wind is a 1957 film telling the story of Bene (Anthony Franciosa), a widowed rancher who marries an Italian woman Gioia (Anna Magnani), but he neglects her and she falls for ranch hand Gino (Anthony Quinn).
The title song, performed by Johnny Mathis, was written by lyricist Ned Washington and Dimitri Tiomkin, one of Hollywood’s greatest composers. It was memorably recorded by Nina simone before Bowie’s version.
Tiomkin was born in Kremenchuk, Ukraine, on May 10, 1894, and educated at the st Petersburg Conservatory, Russia.
Tiomkin left for Berlin in 1921, and arrived in New York in 1925. In 1927, he became musical arranger for Austrian- born dancer and choreographer Albertina Rasch and her American Ballet.
They married later that year. In 1929, Rasch was hired to work on MGM films.
Tiomkin’s first major score was for Paramount’s Alice In Wonderland in 1933. Columbia director Frank Capra hired him to provide the score for Lost Horizon in 1937 and he worked on several Capra films including Mr smith Goes To Washington (1939) and It’s A Wonderful Life (1946).
He also scored Alfred Hitchcock’s shadow Of A Doubt (1943), strangers On A Train (1951), I Confess (1953) and Dial M For Murder (1954) and Howard Hawks’ Red River (1948), The Big sky (1952) and Rio Bravo (1959).
Tiomkin won four Oscars, three for best Original score — High Noon (1952), The High And Mighty (1954) and The Old Man And The sea ( 1958), and one for Best Original song for The Ballad Of High Noon. He also wrote the Rawhide TV series theme tune.
Rasch died in 1967. In 1972, Tiomkin married British aristocrat Olivia Cynthia Patch, and settled in London, where he died in 1979.
Craig Baines, Hartlepool.
QUESTION
Are there any horse troughs left? I last saw one in Hadleigh, Essex, many years ago. FURTHER to earlier answers, driving home through stepney, London, early one sunday morning in the sixties my van broke down. The radiator hose had split and drenched the spark plugs. I mended the hose with insulating tape and dried the plugs, but needed to top up the water.
Luckily, I spotted a horse trough nearby full of water, which I used to fill the radiator and arrived home only half-an-hour late. Harry Matthews, Herne Bay, Kent.