Friml–Rose marie, RRB orchestration Indian Love Call

After WWI ended, Robert Russell Bennett made his way to New York City and was hired by T. B. Harms as an orchestrator. When Frank Saddler passed in 1921, Jerome Kern chose Bennett as Saddler’s successor. As we said earlier, Robert Russell Bennett became the third great orchestrator to work on Broadway, after Victor Herbert and Frank Saddler. He worked on the great Jerome Kern musicals and movies and orchestrated most the great Rodgers and Hammerstein shows. His crowning achievement came as he orchestrated and composed the fantastic score for Victory at Sea with Richard Rodgers.

We have a wonderful anecdote to share with you. Bennett worked with Rudolf Friml and orchestrated the score for Friml’s first hit show, Rose-Marie. Rose-Marie opened on Broadway on May 2, 1924 and ran for 557 performances.

Some orchestrators work out every line of the music on a piano, as Bennett recalls:

“You hear someone [an orchestrator] who plays everything on the piano ‘to see how it sounds’ slaving away through the night over two or three bars and you wonder how gay and spontaneous it can possibly sound when finished. Yet somehow when it gets to the audience the passage sounds as if it came with the original inspiration [of the composer].”

Luckily, Bennett didn’t work that way. In 1924, as the orchestrators were working with Vincent Youmans to get Rose Marie ready to open, Arthur Hammerstein refused to move forward with Rose Marie unless he had a new orchestration for “Indian Love Call” from Bennett. The problem was that Bennett had injured himself playing handball at a YMCA tournament. Hammerstein was undeterred.

“With a nurse at his side to keep remolding the pentagon of pillows supporting him, Bennett [in the presence of Hammerstein in the hospital room] dashed off a memorable orchestration of ‘Indian Love Call’ on a scratch pad.”

What do you think of the result?