Total Time: 63:37 - Chelsea Rialto Studios

dmund Goulding, already famous as
the director of Grand Hotel and Dark
Victory before he received the assignment
to helm The Razor’s Edge, was also an
accomplished tunesmith.
Goulding was what the music business call
s a “hummer” - in the same sense as Charles
Chaplin - when it came to music for their films.
Chaplin would hum, whistle, sometimes plunk
out a tune on the piano for his composers, who
would then translate these simple melodies into
a score by creating harmonies and countermelodies
and fully orchestrating them for
performance in the movie. Goulding actually
preferred to whistle his tunes.
“Ever since I was a youngster I wanted to be
a composer,” Goulding told a Fox publicist for the
Razor’s Edge pressbook. “Someday, when and
if I ever stop directing films, I’m going to do
nothing else but sit at my piano from morning
until night writing all the music inside of me and
giving expression to the hundeds of tunes that
I’ve been carrying around in my head.”
According to a 1947 profile in Time magazine,
it began when Goulding was unhappy with a
line reading Gloria Swanson gave in his early
talkie The Trespasser and decided to “divert the
audience’s attention with background music,”
specifically a tune of his own. “Love, Your Spell
Is Everywhere,” with lyrics by Elsie Janis, was
played in the film and later recorded by
bandleader Ben Selvin, who had a top-10 hit
with it in late 1929.
Other songs followed: “You Are a Song,” with
lyrics by the great Leo Robin, for The Devil’s
Holiday (1930), and which Goulding actually
sang on a CBS radio broadcast; music for
Blondie of the Follies (1932) and Riptide (1934);
and “Oh Give Me Time for Tenderness,” again
with lyrics by Janis, for the Bette Davis classic
Dark Victory (1939).
For The Razor’s Edge, Goulding wrote three
songs, two of them ephemeral source tunes –
“Night Was So Dark” for the Russian singers in
a Parisian nightspot, “The Miner’s Song” for
laborers emerging from underground – and one,
“J’aime ta Pomme,” that was not only more
prominent in the film but, in a later incarnation
as “Mam’selle,” destined to become a pop hit.
Goulding’s first two songs in Razor’s Edge
are functional and used only once as on-screen
source pieces. “Night Was So Dark” appears about
35 minutes into the film, as Larry and Isabel are
enjoying a final night together in Paris. They visit
a Russian café where a nine-man ensemble –
three on stage, six strolling through the room – is
playing traditional Russian folk instruments,
including balalaikas and domras, and serenading
diners. The lyrics, written by famed Russian
soprano Nina Koshetz, who was now living in
Southern California and had worked with Newman
as chorus leader on the 1934 Goldwyn film We
Live Again. Their English translation:
Night was so dark
Not a trace of stars
No, never could I forget that night
In that dark night