This evening we went to the Home Page, a coffee and sandwich shop in Bozeman, for a light dinner. They had a classical music show on the speakers at a volume conducive to conversation.
What caught my attention was two different versions of "The Flight of the Bumblebee" by Rimsky-Korsakov. I said to my wife that has to have been in couple of cartoons in which someone was chased by a bee. That lead me to think about all the classical pieces that have been in movies, TV, and radio.
I complimented one of the baristas on the choice of music and we started mentioning other films and their themes. He mentioned Pachelbel's Canon in D as one but he didn't know the movie.
I pulled out my iPod and looked up a few terms on Google. One of the hits was Media: Theme Songs. Pachelbel's Canon was used for Ordinary People, a film based on Judith Guest's novel of the same name.
This same site had "The Flight of the Bumblebee" as the theme song of the radio show "The Green Hornet".
Many people will associate Rossini's "William Tell" with "The Lone Ranger" and Prokofiev's "The Love of Three Oranges" with "The FBI in Peace and War".
Elmer Fudd sings "Kill the Wabbit" to the turn of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries"
"2001: A Space Odyssey" brings to mind Richard Straus' "Also Sprach Zarathusta".
But few can link Ottorino Respighi's "The Appian Way" of the "The Pines of Rome" to two films that I'm sure it was used in. One was a western in which the Indians on their ponies come over a rise with a red sky behind them. The other was a World War II naval movie that was in black and white as the Navy had one setback after another. Then the Navy assembles a humongous fleet and as it sails forth the movie changes to Technicolor and "The Appian Way" plays triumphantly. Even a film professor friend didn't have an answer. I think I'll try "Ask Mr. Smithee" by the syndicated Alan Smithee film columnist at alansmithee@ajc.com.
