WELLESNET MESSAGE BOARD

Yes, that's curious that Giazotto's only known composition would be a masterpiece and one of the most famous classical pieces of the post-war era. Did he really write it, or are we looking at a hoax within a hoax? He did a biography of Albinoni just before most of Albinoni's work was destroyed in the attack on Dresden, and the Adagio itself sounds like it could possibly be an elegy for the victims of that bombing (which the Allies received worldwide condemnation for), or for the victims of WWII in general. Welles later said that the Holocaust was the dividing line between Kafka's book and his film of it, which might explain his attraction to the piece. Who knows?

Jean Ledrut has only ten credits on imdb, which end with WHITE COMANCHE in 1968, but one of those scores was for THE BATTLE OF AUSTERLITZ (1961), where Welles had a cameo as Robert Fulton, explaining his latest invention to Napoleon (that scene may still be on YouTube). I couldn't find any pictures of Ledrut on the internet either, and there is no Wikipedia entry on him.

As this article
https://sdtom.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/ ... an-ledrut/
on his Trial score points out:

If Jean Ledrut, composer of The Trial, is remembered at all it will be for his lawsuit against rock and roll British star Joe Meek (1929-1967) for plagiarism and his use of a 4 note motif allegedly taken from La March d’Austerlitz (1960) in his 5 million copy hit Telstar.

Was Telstar a hit? I don't remember it. The melody is similar to that of La Marche d'Austerlitz, so maybe there was some borrowing there.

Telstar:
https://youtu.be/HKeahEBgSSA?t=21

La Marche d'Austerlitz:
https://youtu.be/MSdvNN8nGps?t=9

Yuck. Meek should have stolen a better melody before murdering his landlady.

Ledrut isn't on the French Wikipedia either, so he's just forgotten now. Good heavens, his White Comanche score is hilariously inappropriate. It should have been used for a Jerry Lewis movie instead:

http://www.stretch.site/?videoUrl=https ... ctor=1.000

Nice that both tunes are on Youtube for direct comparison. I was familiar with TELSTAR, but I'd never heard the Austerlitz march. They do sound similar, but IMO not quite enough to prove plagiarism. I'm afraid I probably wouldn't have voted in Ludrut's favor either.

Wow, so Meek murdered his landlady and then killed himself just before winning the case and finally getting all those Telstar royalties in the clear. Tragic case. Meek's Wiki page indicates that not too long before the murder, he had an argument about plagiarism with another iconic pop music producer, Phil Spector, who many years later also turned out to be a murderer.

Watched the first few minutes of WHITE COMANCHE; looks like good cheesy fun. It's listed on imdb as the first producing credit of the notorious Andre Vicente Gomez, who (allegedly) screwed Welles out of money during the TOSOTW shoot. Another Welles connection to go with Joe Cotton and Ludrut, although Gomez is not mentioned on the credits of the film itself.