Young Bess

Miklós Rózsa excelled in many film genres, including film noir (“Double Indemnity”) and biblical spectacle (“King of Kings”), but in the 1950s he scored a number of historical romances for M-G-M. This 1953 costume drama, featuring Jean Simmons as a young woman soon to be crowned Queen Elizabeth I, is one of his “period” best. The album is Vol. 5 (FMC-5) of Elmer Bernstein's Film Music Collection, a series of classic film scores composed between 1939 and 1966, all lovingly restored and re-recorded in stereo during the 1970s. In addition to Rózsa , the series included the work of such Golden-Age masters as Franz Waxman, Bernard Herrmann, Alex North, Max Steiner, Alfred Newman, Dimitri Tiomkin and Bernstein himself. The original LPs were only available in limited editions and are now quite rare, but Film Score Monthly reissued the complete set in 2006—12 CDs in a beautiful cardboard slipcase, including a 136-page hardcover book with copious notes, illustrations and musical examples. Please visit either the Film Score Monthly or Screen Archives Entertainment website to purchase the physical box set (while supplies last).