A number of films of Greenwood’s works were fortunate in having scores by some of the leading film-music composers of the time. Richard Addinsell (1904-1977) wrote the score for Love on the Dole and William Alwyn (1905-1985) the music for The Cure for Love (director Robert Donat, British Lion Films, 1949). In fact, though this has not been much-noticed, Alwyn worked on other Greenwood-related films as he also wrote the scores for four of the wartime documentaries made by the author’s film production company, Greenpark, as well as for a non-Greenpark documentary which Greenwood co-wrote ( the Manchester Council commissioned film, A City Speaks, directed by Paul Rotha, Films of Fact / Paul Rotha Productions, 1947).
Film reviews at this period often did not pay much attention to the sound-track and music of films — though there were exceptions. The Monthly Film Bulletin did say briefly in its review of Love on the Dole that ‘the music by Richard Addinsell is worth noting, especially that which preludes the opening of the film’ (Vol. 8, no,88, April 1941, p.43). More remarked though was Addinsell’s music for Dangerous Moonlight (director Brian Desmond Hurst, RKO Radio British Productions, 1941), which attracted much notice for what became Addinsell’s famous hit, the Warsaw Concerto, subsequently often performed in concerts and recorded on a very popular 78 disc released by Columbia (CAX8962, 1941, 8.02 minutes; from Martin Adler’s YouTube site):
The short press review below gives a sense of how reviewers paid attention to the prominence of the Warsaw Concerto theme in the film:
Dangerous Moonlight, the leading attraction at the Queen’s Cinema, Littleborough, to-night, will always be associated with the famous Warsaw Concerto which is the musical theme of the story, illustrating the romance of a Polish airman and musician and an American woman journalist. Brilliant reproduction ensures full enjoyment of the musical contributions by a symphony orchestra. Anton Walbrook gives a moving performance as the Polish airman, who loses his memory as the result of a crash, becomes estranged from his wife, but is reunited to her when the playing of the Warsaw Concerto restores his memory. Sally Gray plays the part of his wife (Rochdale Observer, 8/3/1944, p. 1, unsigned, headed ‘The Queen’s’).
Of course, one reason why the music is emphasized here is that it plays a key part in the plot – and actually there is no comment in the review on the whole of the film’s score, except that the quality of the sound reproduction is helpfully noted. In fact, Addinsell was almost certainly working on the music for Dangerous Moonlight and Love on the Dole more or less simultaneously, since the films were both being made in late 1940 for release in the summer of 1941 (with UK release dates of 26 June and 28 June 1941 respectively). However, Addinsell’s Love on the Dole music did not attract the same explicit attention as that for Dangerous Moonlight, perhaps because it was not a plot element, but fundamentally was pure ‘film music’, designed to work with all the other elements of the film. As a pioneer of the conceptualisation of film music wrote:
From the listener’s point of view, background film music offers some problems. We do not go to the cinema to hear music. We require it to deepen and prolong in us the screen’s visual impressions. When you see a film, you should not be conscious of the music as a separate entity, but if it is a good score, your enjoyment of the film will be greatly increased. It is the old question of teamwork. If the photography is good, the sound recording is good, the film editing is good, you will not be aware of any of these as separate parts, but you will come away saying it was a thundering good film (John Huntley, British Film Music, Skelton Robinson, London, 1947, with a Foreword by Muir Mathieson, p.20).
John Huntley’s study was one of the first books about British film music, which discussed the work of both Addisell and Alwyn. There is a brief specific reference to Love on the Dole as having ‘outstanding music’ by Addinsell (p. 52), and a complete listing of Alwyn’s film music up until 1947, including his Greenpark films (p. 191). However, there is little other analysis anywhere else of the contribution made by their music to films in which Greenwood had a hand, with the notable exception of an excellent book-length study of Alwyn’s film music which does cover his contribution to Greenwood’s film-work: Ian Johnson’s William Alwyn – the Art of Film Music (the Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2005). I have already paid some attention to the music of The Cure for Love and drawn on Johnson’s analysis (see William Alwyn’s The Cure for Love Waltz, from Walter Greenwood & Robert Donat’s Film, The Cure for Love (1949) * ). And since I certainly do consider Love on the Dole as at the very least a ‘thundering good film’, I propose to fill this gap by next discussing the film music of Love on the Dole. I made a brief opening remark about the importance of the film music in my book (Walter Greenwood’s Love on the Dole – Novel, Play, Film, Liverpool University Press, 2018. p.154 ), but this certainly needs greatly expanding. I will certainly in my discussion follow Huntley’s insight that true film-music ‘prolongs and deepens in us the screen’s visual impressions’ and that it is indeed a matter of ‘teamwork’. I would add to that multi-media impact teamwork though the contribution of the film-music (and the whole sound-world of the film) to both the drama of individual scenes and the overall narration of the picture, especially where leitmotifs are used – of which more shortly.
I should start by noting that in my view this film music is a joint work between Addinsell and probably his long-term collaborator Roy Douglas (1907-2015), for the simple reason that Addinsell never learnt to orchestrate. He gained a place at the Royal College of Music in 1925 but only attended for two terms, since he was perpetually distracted by practical musical commissions in the world of theatre. He did not therefore study harmony or composition or orchestration in any depth. As a result, in all his work for theatre and film he composed just melodies at the piano which he then wrote down as a simple ‘top line’, before handing this over to others for a fuller written score. If perhaps not showing a full range of skills as a composer, this approach by Addinsell nevertheless often produced notable results. He worked with a number of collaborators who produced usable film scores from his melodic and thematic ideas, and his DNB entry (by Andrew Lamb, 2004/ 2013) names Roy Douglas as his usual co-composer between 1937 and 1942. Douglas is named by his Wikipedia entry as having worked with Addinsell on the music for Dangerous Moonlight, and on Love on the Dole, though there is no direct evidence given (ironically Douglas was himself self-taught rather than having been to a music college, but was clearly a skilled arranger: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Douglas).
So, while the themes of Love on the Dole are Adinsell’s I think the final musical composition and effect is completed by (presumably) Douglas’s creative work, though this is nowhere explicitly stated. In the opening credits to Love on the Dole we simply get the statement: ‘Music Composed by Richard Addinsell, Musical Direction Muir Mathieson’. Mathieson’s DNB entry (by Andrew Youdell, 2004 ) says popular reports that he actually composed film music were not true, so it is presumably the case that he did simply direct the orchestra rather than contribute to the arrangement of the full score which plays such a key role in realising Addinsell’s themes in the film-text. It seems important to restore Roy Douglas’ assumed contribution. Certainly, the orchestration of the film’s themes has large effects, as does their repetition and variation of rhythm, harmony and orchestration.
I will give verbal analyses of the themes and orchestration (as best I can – I am not a professional music critic) and then give musical illustrations which show the interaction of musical material, other kinds of sound, dramatic developments, cinematography, lighting, special effects and narrative. I have had to use the colourized version of the film for the musical illustrations since it is now the only one available on Youtube (Cult Cinema Classics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjurc5Mku8s&t=10s). (1) As with all Youtube clips these show on a loop, so do just click back to this site with the back-arrow when you have had enough of each of your musical illustrations! The maximum clip from YouTube is 60 seconds so my illustrations introduce the film’s musical motifs but do not wish or attempt to reproduce the whole of each scene with its music. I think the clips do though show the main themes and how they are varied to create and sustain meaning across the film experience of Love on the Dole.
The music for Love on the Dole does indeed put the device of the leitmotif (a recognisable musical theme or themes which identify with a particular set of extra-musical meanings) at the core of its effects. During the film’s opening credits there is is the first statement of a key leitmotif, perhaps allowing a particular concentration on it for viewers not committed to reading every name in the full cast and crew. The credits are placed over a background of clouds which move gently at first from left to right, as if blown by a slight breeze. The clouds begin as white clouds but turn darker quite quickly. The first leitmotif plays at the same time with prominent brass (horns?) and a timpani roll, the overall effect suggesting foreboding and tragedy. It is then followed by a more optimistic theme with lush strings as well as some less strident brass, suggesting the possibility of happiness, hope and romance, though the clouds in the background remain a mixture of white and black. The two themes stated over the credits are the two most important musical ideas in the film, supporting and articulating the central dynamic of alternating hope and despair, happiness and tragedy, romance and frustration which is at the heart of the narrative.
Musical Illustration 1 (alternating foreboding leitmotif and romance leitmotif under credits). https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxUilGOmCl5kb3727r48WeqCobyHdbt2Q5?si=Vdu3TKk1GMYIGf2U
As the credits continue to roll on to the opening final caption about ‘the darker days of our industrial history’ and about the film in itself as a war-time testament to the ‘freedom of expression in the great British Commonwealth of Nations’, there is a modulation to a theme of sad nostalgia before a more imperial, martial tune with trumpets, and perhaps an echo of Elgar’s ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, which might evoke pride in wartime Britain despite the grim topic of the story about to begin
Musical Illustration 2 (sad yet nostalgic leitmotif and then the national pride theme under the rolling caption). https://www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxmZvPgnXo7PcthVEVqSiljfX92z22FPsd
The foreboding theme continues (though with a quieter orchestration of strings and woodwind) as Mrs Hardcastle brings a shovelful of coal in from her back-yard to her kitchen-fire. This theme continues till the point where the newspaper she is holding before the fire bursts into flames at which point the music ends on a cymbal clash, clearly also suggesting further upcoming crisis. There is then no music at all for the scene between Mrs and Mr Hardcastle as he returns from work and wakes their adult children by banging on the ceiling with a broom (indeed the whole film is quite austere in its use of music, with many scenes of dialogue without any music). However, as the film cuts to Harry and Sally’s bedroom upstairs, and an initial focus on Sally waking up, the romantic theme on strings returns, presumably suggesting her hopes and dreams, and possibly those of Harry too, who is now also brought into the camera eye. The music ceases again when for the second time Mr Hardcastle bangs on the ceiling with a broom to make sure Harry and Sally are up. We cut to the family space of the kitchen below, and the works hooter sounds to call people to work.
The next scene of the women at the pawnshop also has no music (and has an ample sound-world provided by the hub-bub of the women competing to raise much-needed money on their pledges). A fresh and distinctly comic theme suggesting perhaps circus-music or clowning, though with a certain melancholy underneath, begins as Mrs Nattle and Mrs Dorbell go to Mrs Nattle’s house to take a drop of something together (whisky, provided by Mrs Nattle at thrippence a nip).
Musical Illustration 3. (comic theme – used just this once in the film). https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxERVkZklV8_gwjRamcQcJVJfCuv9kgUZd?si=SX9TvilrNhSk18Fv
The next scene, dialogue between the three older women and Mrs Hardcastle about paying for Harry’s suit and about whether Sally is going out with anyone, has no music. The next music is a tune on a pub piano as we cut to Ned being refused credit for a second pint. I think this is probably a popular tune of the day, but I have not yet identified it. There is no music while Larry finishes his political speech in the street outside, but once he and Sally have talked and he has asked her to come on a Sunday ramble, a version of the romance theme on strings enters and plays while Sally silently anticipates the future. However, this hopeful theme then modulates into the foreboding theme with more prominent brass as we cut to an industrial scene at the local pit – where a three-day week is just about to be declared. The foreboding theme continues for a considerable period, but also has a new agitated passage for strings and woodwind and brass twice repeated and embodying the agitation and unrest the miners feel at what is surely only the first of a series of blows.
Musical Illustration 4 (romance, then foreboding then agitated themes). https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxMxAG6lApS–RRQ5QjUZyg0Dz8fSJi3YY?si=DT3HFRSSkg9VDFh6
Next we move back to the Hardcastle kitchen, and as usual there is no theme music for this location. We see Harry coming downstairs in his new suit to be admired by his mother and sister and then father (who supresses the terrible news of his three day week, which will make paying for the suit even more of a burden). Harry goes out to show off his new suit to Helen Hawkins at their usual meeting place, Dawney’s Hill, a rare surviving green space in Hanky Park. As soon as the edit to Dawney’s Hill takes place, music begins again, pastoral in character, with a clarinet passage and then a romance theme but one different from that associated with Sally at first, though it does then change to her romance and longing theme.
Musical Illustration 5 (pastoral theme turning into a version of Sally’s romance theme). . https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxkNUwG4cwU-H5lOPu4gT5AKgLnr9LVQ4n?si=AJa0CMMtsB4S0_g_
Then for the first time in the film, we have two scenes with music directly following each other. The Dawney Hill scene ends with the couple looking down at a train below and a few seconds of ‘train music’ which act as a link between this scene and the only other scene set in a green space – Larry and Sally’s Sunday ramble on the moors above Hanky Park. The two scenes echo each other in both their pastoral and romance modes and this is true of the music too.
Musical Illustration 6 (disruptive mechanical train music link between scenes and then Sally’s romance theme which continues throughout the couple’s reflections on life in Hanky Park and other kinds of life which might be possible). https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxgNdwZI5Y13dlUAVWubDlGTQiQJzJlcWF?si=9GaHnFKCX76xymbJ
The romance theme switches to the foreboding theme as the film cuts to an industrial chimney in Hanky Park and as Larry and Sally return to North Street, when the music ends. Sally talks to her mother about how much she has enjoyed the ramble, and then we cut to Mrs Jike’s house for fortune telling and a séance: for neither scene is there any music (though actually in the play there was some music for the séance scene: see Two Songs (and a Hymn) in the Play of Love on the Dole: Act I and Act III, Scene 2 (1934/1935) (and a Coda on a Song in the Film, 1941) * ).
Next follow the scenes where Harry finds out he has won the unbelievable threepenny treble, is given in a very public way his twenty-two pounds of winnings by Sam Grundy, and reports back to his family who say he should spend it on taking Helen on holiday to Blackpool. As soon as Harry dreamily repeats this suggestion, a substantial section of ‘Blackpool music’ begins. At first, this is something like the romance theme but quickly switches to a jolly fairground/holiday style over a train shot before returning to the romance theme as Helen and Harry see with wonder the luxury (to them) of their boarding-house bedrooms. The music briefly stops while they look in wonder at the bathroom in the corridor with a bath and hot and cold taps, and then resumes with the fairground/holiday theme as they go out to explore the wonders of Blackpool. This theme becomes more exuberant as they actually do go to the fairground and ride a rollercoaster and try their hands at target-shooting. Next the music switches to ballroom dancing music as the couple in the evening enjoy dancing at the Blackpool Tower Ballroom, and then to a theme featuring harp glissandi as they look at the illuminations, before returning to the romance theme as they sadly reflect that their fortnight’s holiday is nearly over, and that they must return to Hanky Park. They briefly fantasise about making a living in Blackpool from fishing and gardening, but know there is no reality in it. Thus concludes the longest continuous passage of music in the film, lasting for just under six minutes. There is an immediate cut at the end to Marlowe’s Works and the unmusical sound of a clanking crane.
Musical Illustration 7.1. (Blackpool music: romance as Helen and Harry explore their boarding house rooms – part of the point is that just to have a decent rooms to sleep and wash in IS like a wild romantic dream for them). https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxQ6guDSCU7pgE2DWAzNcyuR1ZghxayexM?si=r-GHOq6raehyn_fi
Musical Illustration 7.2 (Blackpool music: funfair/holiday theme). https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx-r-4XuYTZIEFmeKdu3pX5gIhOzOI5jNt?si=-mNButS0pXTWNO4M
Musical Illustration 7.3. https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkxze3V8rFnMAEMsfz49XiUtcr9pB-gyv_G?si=MNS9lZy5AtLej8zB (part 3 of Blackpool music: ballroom and illuminations music, romance theme over their reflections that they must return to reality).
Next we cut to Helen and Harry back in Hanky Park. There is the romance theme again but as Harry lets his saved Blackpool Tower Ballroom ticket blow away along the gutter it is clear that their belief in the possibility of happiness is diminishing. As the ticket also blows past Sally and Larry the romance theme continues but with some sadder sections suggesting their very mixed hopes: they are discussing the possibility, or in his view the impossibility, of marriage under current circumstances.
Musical Illustration 8 (a more hesitant version of the romance theme). https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxaDiujtOya1GBzSs85OjJ9Xf3O2vUzKpB?si=WcEW_d0LvyWrvnC6
Then there enters an agitated machinery theme and again the foreboding theme over footage of industrial chimneys and mill machinery and newspaper headlines announcing more works closures. Harry’s apprenticeship ends and he is sacked.
Musical Illustration 9 (agitated theme and foreboding theme over footage of industrial machinery and newspaper headlines about job losses). https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxeOkqWPjYmr6h_Dri48cG7IgkwfAzcoCz?si=LRVU1kXCB01T10st
Next we cut to Harry and Helen again meeting on Dawney’s Hill. The romance theme plays, but they have mixed feelings: Helen is more hopeful than Harry, who says he’s already been out of work for three weeks and no one is taking anyone on. The scene cuts to more montage footage of industrial processes, but now includes a superimposed Harry being turned away everywhere he enquires: under this footage is the agitated and foreboding theme, now becoming increasingly foreboding with additional brass and a timpani pulse which also marks time passing as the months flick by as captions and Harry remains jobless.
Musical Illustration 10 (agitated and increasingly foreboding theme as Harry fails to find a job). https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx1mn0mArK3BfPyIcEuhGOTodmNQ5wlFcY?si=wxwvyAPPz3GYZdnR
There is then a scene in Mrs Nattle’s house and one at the lunch-break at Marlowe’s works, both without music. The next scene is at a billiard-hall, where the unemployed lads, including Harry spend some of their day in the hope of picking up fag-ends and to keep warm. The music here is of a honky-tonk piano, no doubt with a popular tune, though again not one I have identified. In the next scene Harry meets Helen as her day’s work at the mill ends. The romance theme begins quietly but Helen’s news while in one way the fulfilment of romance is in another way highly unromantic: she is pregnant, Harry is unemployed and they are not married. The theme is in no way modified – the ironies are left to speak for themselves.
As on some previous occasions, a Helen-Harry scene is echoed by a Sally-Larry scene: in this case Larry tells Sally they can’t marry as planned because he was laid off the day before. She believes they will manage, but Larry looks down at a newspaper on his table with the headline: ‘Dole to be Cut’. At that point the foreboding theme begins, but louder and more insistent than on any previous appearance. The theme continues over Larry speaking to crowds in the streets, but stops as there is a cut to the inside of the Employment Exchange where a clerk explains that the dole will be reduced and that there is nothing he can do about it and that he has to follow the new Means Test rules. As Harry in his turn is told that under the new rules his dole has been stopped (his father is drawing the dole and Sally is working), a quieter version of the foreboding theme begins again before building in volume and with insistent chords as Harry goes out into the street to hear the outrage being voiced by all the men struck off the dole. The music is then replaced by the hubbub of the crowd and the speeches of their (various) leaders, including Larry. The theme begins again with a marked pulse as the protesters begin marching and continues until the marchers and the mounted police clash, when voices and footsteps and the sounds of struggle and fighting again replace music. The scene is brought to an end as Larry is knocked down by a police-horse and there is a peal of thunder and a flash of lightning (picking up the initial image during the credits of a mixture of lighter and darker clouds).
The next scene is in the Esperance Infirmary, where, as Sally sits by the fatally ill Larry’s bedside, a subdued version of the romance/hope theme begins, and ends as he dies. The next time there is any music – and it is again the romance theme, though again in a deeply ironic context – is when Sally hears Mrs Dorbell telling the near destitute Harry that his sister could get him a job if she would just agree to Sam Grundy’s propositions. The theme continues till Sally gets into Sam’s car outside Mrs Dorbell’s house. The final piece of music in the film is a return of the elegaic and national pride theme which accompanied the rolling caption of the opening credits, but is here stated with a final boldness of brass as the final caption signed by A.V. Alexander (the first Labour First Lord of the Admiralty) promises that when the War is over the working people will never again be forgotten.
Final Musical Illustration, number 11 (romance theme suggesting hope for the future then the elegaic and hopeful /national pride theme).
https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx8dndk1hCFiNnDxkxWi1Xxt2Gc5pLJFli?si=338BKbszCt5dCSVo
Conclusion.
While Addinsell and Douglas’s music for the film depends essentially on two main leitmotifs – one encoding foreboding and tragedy, the other evoking romance and hope – these are brilliantly repeated and varied to underpin the immediate drama of individual themes in the film as well as its overall dynamic which is indeed about the alternation between hope and the utter disappointment of all dreams, however ambitious or however modest. (2) One of the most striking aspects of Baxter and Greenwood’s genius in realising their adaptation was in re-contextualising the despair of the thirties against the hope which, against the odds, the war seemed to promise, once victory and peace had been achieved (though the film’s final caption from 1941 did indeed show extraordinary faith and hope that these, and then a better Britain, would be the outcome).
NOTES
Note 1. I think the colorisation has been very nicely done, but prefer John Baxter’s original and consciously chosen sepia rather than black and white.
Note 2. A core dynamic excellently analysed by Collette Colligan in her article, ‘“Hope on, hope ever. One of these fine days my ship will come in:” The Politics of Hope in Walter Greenwood’s Love on the Dole (1933)’, Postgraduate English: A Journal and Forum for Postgraduates in English in the UK and Europe, Vol. 3. March 2001. See https://waltergreenwoodnotjustloveonthedole.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/collette-colligan-article-on-hope-in-lod-2001-1.pdf.
Walter Greenwood: Not Just Love on the Dole 