The Private Life of Hitler
Added on Monday, October 22, 2018 Posted by Philippe Mouchon
Disques Cinémusique release digitally the complete soundtrack album to the 1962 movie Hitler, composed and conducted by Hans J. Salter. This is one of the few original Hans J. Salter recordings that was released on vinyl, in this case thanks to the film historian and producer Tony Thomas. Better known for his horror movie scores Slater was actually a master of every genre. As a common practice at the beginning of his career, much of output was used as stock music.c
Disques Cinémusique release digitally the complete soundtrack album to the 1962 movie Hitler, composed and conducted by Hans J. Salter. This is one of the few original Hans J. Salter recordings that was released on vinyl, in this case thanks to the film historian and producer Tony Thomas. Better known for his horror movie scores Slater was actually a master of every genre. As a common practice at the beginning of his career, much of output was used as stock music.c
Please note that in order to comply with the requirements of most online music stores, we had to soften the original title HITLER into The Private Life of Hitler and avoid any pictural reference to the Nazis on the cover.
Excerpts from the LP album liner notes by Tony Thomas:
There have been a number of attempts to portray Adolf Hitler in films but all have fallen short of genuine effectiveness, partly because the monstruous enormity of the man defies any actor hoping to give a balanced interpretation but mostly because Hitler himself is so well documented in newsreel and litterature. The actual image remains strong and repellent. (…) The 1962 film Hitler offers an interesting but flawed account of the Austrian ex-caporal’s rise to awesome power, with Richard Basehart giving an intelligent insight into the lonely, manic-depressive whose fanatic drive to avenge Germany’s defeat and humiliation following the first World War gradually developed into a maelstrom of madness and the deaths of millions. (…)
The music score of Hitler is of particular interest , since it is not only the work of a master film composer but of a man who observed the early years of the Nazi regime at first hand. Hans J. Slater was born in Vienna just before the turn of the century and began to make a living as a musician right after completing his education at the university of the great city. His first jobs were those of conducting in small theatres in Vienna and nearby towns.
At the age of twenty-three, Salter was hired by a film company to conduct accompaniment to filmed operettas. A few years before the coming of sound he found himself in Berlin, in the employ of the prestigous UFA company, with a stream of musical films.
The rise of the Nazis gradually convinced him to return to Vienna and when the political climate there became similarly tainted, Salter made his way to the United States. Arriving in California in 1937, he managed to get a position with Universal Pictures, which quickly led to arranging, conducting an composing assignments, and a long-term association with that studio. He would be involved in providing music for more than a hundred films and he would become a specialist in scoring horror movies. Most of Universal’s popular Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolf Man and Mummy pictures benefited from the atmosphere created by Salter’s music. It might well be said that providing the scores for those many fanciful horror items served the composer well in writing music for an absolute real horror – Hitler.