A 'Warning Shot' from Si Zentner

My previous post from Si Zentner's big band showed him as a interpreter of the pop songs of the day, including his own hit version of "Up a Lazy River."

Today his band takes on Jerry Goldsmith's music from the 1966 thriller Warning Shot, along with other themes from the same brilliant composer.

Jerry Goldsmith

Warning Shot was a return to the big screen (and they were big back then) for David Janssen, who had just completed a highly successful run on television's The Fugitive. The actor had been in Hollywood since the mid-50s, and would continue to star both in films and on TV until his early death in 1980.

Warning Shot was one of those Hollywood productions where the supporting actors were primarily famous faces - Steve Allen, Ed Begley, Joan Collins, Lillian Gish, George Sanders, Keenan Wynn - all that were missing were Jonathan Winters and the Three Stooges.

The story did inspire a taut and entirely characteristic score from Goldsmith, done ample justice by a extraordinary studio band led by Zentner. Let me acknowledge here the important contribution by arranger Bob Florence, who often worked with Si as a lead arranger for Liberty records.

Bob Florence

Music from Warning Shot takes up one side of the record. The second side is a recap of some of Goldsmith's other themes. This is with the odd exception of Livingston and Evans' oldie "Mona Lisa," apparently included because Goldsmith used it as source music in one Warning Shot scene.

The first number on side two is the "Von Ryan March" from Von Ryan's Express, which is oddly reminiscent of the theme song from the television show Hogan's Heroes, which had premiered in 1965. Then again, both are descendants of the Kenneth Alford's "Colonel Bogey March" as whistled by the prisoners in 1957's The Bridge on the River Kwai, in the memorable Malcolm Arnold arrangement.

Si Zentner

The three remaining cuts are varied, but all played well by Zentner's band. First is Goldsmith's theme from The Prize, which was billed as "the bold new look in love and suspense," taking place in the unlikely setting of the Nobel Prize awards.

Much different is the theme from A Patch of Blue, a film with Sidney Poitier and Elizabeth Hartman, with Shelley Winters as the meanie.

Finally, we have the theme from the popular television program The Man from U.N.C.L.E., one of a spate of spy-themed shows then in vogue.

The arrangements on side two are by big-band veteran Don Dimick. This side has its charms, but the best music is on side one.

There was no soundtrack LP from Warning Shot; this is one of those "music from" albums, but highly effective in its own right. The sound is excellent.

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