Only in the crucible of collaboration did his talents manifest themselves completely.
Does this diminish the significance of his achievement? Must he necessarily be considered a lesser artist than a writer who works exclusively on his own? To make such a claim, after all, is by extension to relegate all forms of collaborative art to a lower level of excellence simply because of the process by which they came into being. Is Citizen Kane an inferior work because Orson Welles created it in collaboration with Herrmann, the screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, and the cinematographer Gregg Toland? Conversely, is Irving Berlin's "How Deep Is the Ocean?" a better song than "Days of Wine and Roses" simply by virtue of the fact that Berlin wrote both words and music?
For me, the answer to all these questions is an unequivocal no ...
For me, too. I got turned on to Johnny Mercer very early in life - during the '40s, when I was a little kid, and you could hear him on the radio all the time.
No comments:
Post a Comment