American composer Richard Hazard: Some Call It Loving, etc.

Some of the most beautiful music I've ever heard appeared on the score of an unknown 1972 movie called "Some Call it Loving," aka "Sleeping Beauty" made by a director who subsequently became known for sensual soft-core called Zalman King (e.g. Red Shoe Diaries).  I was entranced by the movie when I saw it because of the bizarre poetry of the story, where a rich dude discovers a permanently sleeping woman at a carnival or circus (those ancient places where you could see freaks and animals performing tricks-- in real life, not youtube, who remembers?) he falls in love with her at first sight, she wakes up and he has to bring her home as his girlfriend.  Because of his obstinate and weird moodiness the relationship doesn't quite work out, this part of the movie could've been developed more given she was asleep presumably for years without human contact, so then he drugs her back to sleep and returns her to the circus for the next guy to possess.  Obviously in today's world many people would have a problem with that storyline including possibly me.  Also memorable was the cameo by Richard Pryor playing a drug addict, esp. given that time later in real-life when he set himself on fire in some kind of crack-induced hallucination.  And the actress who played the titled role of the sleeping beauty is Tisa Farrow, sister of course of Mia.  Rotten Tomatos gave it a perhaps appropriate rating of 1.9 out of 5 with 13 % of people saying they enjoyed the movie.  Ouch.  For this reason perhaps, it can't be found on youtube.

From imdb: A woman who's been asleep for years is part of a carnival that sells her kisses for a buck. A lonely jazz musician buys her. Once awake, the two of them and his two girlfriends hook up. But sometimes, dreams are better than reality.  

Amazingly, wikipedia has a more complete description of the plot, if you're interested.

The theme song:





The pathos and emotion in some of the melodies is stunning:





Note that only half the soundtrack seems to be available, disappointingly, and so far I haven't been able to locate the rest.  Sorry about that chief.  Hopefully someday.

And now, from discogs:

Richard Hazard (March 2, 1921 – December 20, 2000) was an American television composer, orchestrator, conductor and writer. He was born in Trenton, New Jersey, and died in Los Angeles, California, of cancer. He was married to Jeanne Taylor from 1950 until his death, and had two children.

I threw in a couple more albums from him that I found, the OST of Heroes with Henry Winkler the Fonz and another spoken word album with his orchestral backing.