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Now Rozsa was ALWAYS ... in every note he wrote, an ordered 'linear' composer, even when dealing with 'spiritual' subjects. Look at the melodic line in 'To Everything There is a Season'... it dips and climbs and is descriptive of the opposites in the text. He was in THAT sense as 'Hebrew' as it's possible to be, Mickey-Mousing through events and emotions. So Huston would no doubt have liked him for part 2 but to use him on part 1 would be an unknown quantity. Huston is indeed usually unerring. We also see how Mayuzumi had the sheer brass to use a WALTZ as the main theme. This is a Hindu idea (and Buddhism developed from Hindu principles) that 'God' DANCED his way through the Creation.


This points up what's probably obvious to all of us here: that Rózsa would never have consented to share duties with another composer, something he assidulously avoided, and had written expressly into his MGM contract (the "collaboration" with Frank Skinner on THE NAKED CITY at Universal the one conspicuous exception, necessitated by the film's hirried production schedule). Whether Huston and DeLaurentiis knew this or not is probably unascertainable by now, but if they had proffered a firm offer to Rózsa he would surely have withdrawn when the director's two-composer scheme revealed itself.