Dark City: Suite (1950)

Movements
1. Prelude
2. Stroll in the Dark
3. Finale

Note
Franz Waxman had a long association with producer Hal B. Wallis at Warner Brothers so when he began composing scores at Paramount Pictures one of his first assignments, (contemporaneous with Sunset Boulevard) was Dark City (1950). A bookmaker (Charlton Heston in his first Hollywood appearance) finds himself on the run from a revenge-seeking psychopath. Jack Webb and Harry Morgan – of Dragnet fame – are on the wrong side of the law in this film noir classic, directed by William Dieterle. Viveca Lindfors, Ed Begley, Don Defoe, and Dean Jagger also star in this underworld thriller. The second movement of the suite, which Christopher Palmer prepared from Waxman’s original score, is a variation on the Frank Loesser-Julie Styne song “I Don’t Want to Walk Without You” which is the musical signature for Heston’s on screen girlfriend Lizabeth Scott.