Hedy's Folly by Richard Rhodes Read Free Book Online Page B

arrived in Paris in 1923 an accomplished director with one feature and numerous short art films to his credit.
    Who precisely was responsible for the now-classic art film Ballet mécanique has been a subject of debate for more than eighty years. Murphy and Man Ray evidently contributed more mise-en-scène and footage than the French artist Fernand Léger, to whom the film is usually credited. What no one disputes is that Antheil signed on later in 1923 to write the film score and produced a score that was twice as long as the film and never cut or synced to fit. Boski’s recollection of the informality of the film’s production is probably asaccurate as any. “Even though the idea of the film and music called Ballet mécanique was to be a joint conception of Léger, Dudley Murphy and George,” she writes, “it seems to me everyone, in their individual manner, went their own way. George got so enthused about composing the music that any synchronization between objects of the film and tone clusters and tempo of music must be considered purely coincidental. But this was nothing that bothered us in those days, things didn’t have to ‘fit’ as they do in commercial pictures, as long as essentially they had an esthetic connection.”
    Before Antheil could begin work on the film music, he wrote Rudge’s two sonatas and practiced them extensively with her. Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap’s partner and the editor of the Little Review , invited him to perform on the opening program of the Ballets Suédois—the Swedish Ballet company—on 4 October 1923. Antheil knew the occasion was second in importance only to the Ballets Russes as an annual Parisian cultural event. He signed on to play several of his recent compositions: the Sonata Sauvage , his Airplane Sonata, a two-minute, four-movement sonatina called Death of Machines , and his Mechanisms , composed for the player piano. (“George was writing his Mechanisms for a hard new age,” Boski recalled of its composition the previous year, “and I still remember his talking about the future when one central recording station would be blasting talks [and] music over a whole city.”)
    In his memoirs Antheil would present the riot that brokeout during his Ballets Suédois concert as spontaneous, but in fact it had been set up by another Parisian filmmaker, Marcel L’Herbier, to create a scene for a film he was making, L’inhumaine , which showcased the French opera singerGeorgette Leblanc. Sylvia Beach’s partner, Adrienne Monnier, confirms that Antheil had not been informed in advance that he was intended to bait a riot: “Georgette Leblanc, back from America, knew through her friend Margaret Anderson that Antheil’s music always caused a scandal; and if it caused a scandal in New York, what was it going to be like in Paris! … Antheil had believed that they had seriously asked him to play his most ‘advanced’ music; when he saw the trick, he was not angry, he had a lot of fun.” L’Herbier had sent out several thousand concert invitations to notable Parisians. As a result, Antheil writes, “the theater, the famous Champs Elysees Theater, was crowded with the most famous personages of the day, among others Picasso, Stravinsky, [the French composer Georges] Auric, Milhaud, James Joyce, Erik Satie, Man Ray, Diaghileff, Miró, Arthur Rubenstein, Ford Madox Ford, and unnumbered others. They had not come to hear me, but to see the opening of the ballets.”
    They heard very little. “The uproar was such,” Boski said, “that after [George] started to play one of his ‘mechanisms’ nobody could really hear very much.… The riot was tremendous. Not being George’s wife officially, I was seated way up in the balcony and was really scared, when people started to throw things and screaming and yelling, that theymight hurt George. But he was used to this and kept on playing as cool as can be. He seemed too slight and almost childlike, calmly playing the piano, not