A Word about Tonight’s Show:  Tonight we listen to two distinguished scores from two of the greatest films ever made. The last time the American Film Institute updated their of the 100 greatest American films of all time,  Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane still ranked number 1, and Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times number 78. Welles always claimed that Bernard Herrmann’s score for Kane, which was the composer’s first movie score in a long and illustrious career, was half the reason why the picture worked so well.

Charlie Chaplin composed the score for Modern Times with the help of  three key figures,  conductor/composer Alfred Newman, arranger Edward Powell, and the then 23-year-old David Raskin, who would later compose the theme music for Laura, and nearly hundred more films.

When lyrics were added by Geoffrey Parsons to Chaplin’s Love Theme for Modern Times, it became a song called Smile, which subsequently became a Top Ten hit for Nat King Cole in 1954, and you can look that up!

Join me next week for a show called Anything Goes (and I mean it!)