The Legacy of John Williams

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Table Of Contents

• Film Details
• Music Credits
• Essential Discography
• In Williams’ Words
• Quotes and Commentary
• Videos
• Bibliography and References

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Film Details

Year: 1966
Studio: Warner Bros.
Director/Producer: Norman Panama
Writers: Norman Panama, Larry Delbart, Peter Barnes (screenplay); Norman Panama & Melvin Frank (story)
Main Cast: Tony Curtis, Virna Lisi, George C. Scott, Carroll O’Connor, Richard Eastham, Eddie Ryder, George Tyne, Ann Doran, Donna Danton
Genre: Comedy

For synopsis and full cast and crew credits, visit the IMDb page

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Music Credits

Music Composed and Conducted by John Williams (credited as “Johnny Williams”)

“A Big Beautiful Ball, ” “My Inamorata,” “Not With My Wife, You Don’t”
Music by Johnny Williams
Lyrics by Johnny Mercer

Scoring Mixer: Dan Wallin
Orchestra Manager: Kurt E. Wolff
Orchestrators: Jimmy Bryant, James Harbert
Recording Studio: Warner Bros. Scoring Stage, Burbank, California
Recording Dates: May 11, July 7,8 and 18, 1966

Original Soundtrack Album selections recorded on September 19, 21 and 22, 1966 at Western Recorders Studio, Los Angeles, California
Recording Engineer: Lee Herschberg
Orchestra Contractor: Bobby Helfer

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Essential Discography

Original Soundtrack Album and Expanded Reissues

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Selected Re-recordings

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In Williams’ Words

“That was nice because I wrote songs with Johnny Mercer. Tony Bennett still occasionally sings one of them, ‘Inamorata.’”¹

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Quotes and Commentary

Between late 1964 and early 1967, John (then known as “Johnny”) Williams scored eight feature films: one war drama (None But the Brave), two westerns (The Rare Breed and The Plainsman) and five comedies–John Goldfarb, Please Come Home!, How to Steal a Million, Not With My Wife, You Don’t!, Penelope, and A Guide for the Married Man. Each of these last five pictures from the composer’s “zany comedy” period generated at least one song, but only Wife afforded Wiliams the opportunity to work with a legendary songwriter like Johnny Mercer (1909-1976).
Although their initial professional collaboration took place in 1966, Williams had encountered Mercer two decades previously. “I met him…when I was 13 or 14 years old,” the composer told Clint Eastwood in a 2009 TCM documentary about Mercer, “when he used to sing on the (radio program] Your Hit Parade…in New York City. My father was in the Hit Parade orchestra and I used to go to the rehearsals fie quently because I had piano lessons near the theater. I remember meeting (Mercer) and being impressed with the swing and the idiom and the speech of what he did.”
Williams’s score for Not With My Wife, You Don’t! contains at least a dozen distinct melodies, most of them ripe for exploitation in song form. Williams composed his music first, then the filmmakers designated three tunes on which Mercer would work his magic. While the title song is a mere throwaway number relegated to a brief scene in a London disco, the other two proved more enduring. An effervescent jazz waltz heard over the opening and closing credits (and occasionally referenced in the score) became “A Big Beautiful Ball,” while the film’s primary love theme (really a love triangle theme, as it pertains to Julie’s affections oscillating between Tom and Tank) became the ballad “My Inamorata.”
The composer had originally called the latter melody “Two of Everything” (referencing Julie’s mantra stated throughout the film) and one can clearly hear that phrase outlined by the tune’s opening contour. But Mercer felt no need to tie his words to a screen story at the expense of generating a satisfying lyric. “In a play it’s become almost imperative that you advance the plot and tell a story and have a song at the same time,” he remarked in a television interview. “But in a movie you just…cue a song in…it doesn’t have anything to do with the plot. You want a hit song-that’s the point.”
Williams recorded the bulk of his score at sessions on July 7 and 8, 1966, returning on July 18 to record the vocal selections and other cues involving themes to which Mercer had added lyrics. At its largest, the orchestra totaled 59 musicians: 16 violins, 4 violas, 6 celli, 2 basses, 6 woodwind players (saxophone, flute and clarinet), 1 oboe, 2 bassoons, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, 1 tuba, 4 French horns, 1 piano, 1 harp, 4 percussionists (including Williams’s brother, Jerry), 1 accordion, 3 guitars and electronics.²
-Jeff Eldridge

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In Not with My Wife, You Don’t! the music replicates the movement of butterflies flying out of a chocolate box; it duplicates the scattering of some roses in the wind during a funeral with a fast woodwinds run; it quotes Mendelssohn’s wedding march—as Max Steiner would have done—when we learn of the marriage between Julie and Tom.³
– Emilio Audissino

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Videos

Main Titles and Animated Opening Prologue by Saul Bass from Not With My Wife, You Don’t! | Warner Bros.

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Liza Minnelli and Carol Burnett perform “A Big Beautiful Ball” | The Carol Burnett Show | 1967

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Bibliography and References

. Audissino, Emilio – “Williams’ Early Years: Spotting the First Traces of Neoclassicism,” The Film Music of John Williams, University of Wisconsin Press, 2021
. Audissino, Emilio / Huvet, Chloé – “Irony, Comic, and Humor: The Comedic Side of John Williams,” The Palgrave Handbook of Music in Comedy Cinema, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2023
. Dyer, Richard – “Where Is John Williams Coming From?,” The Boston Globe, July 1980
. Eldridge, Jeff – Not With My Wife, You Don’t! – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Vol.2 liner notes, Film Score Monthly, 2011

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Footnotes

1. Quoted in Dyer, The Boston Globe, 1980 ↩︎
2. Eldridge, Not With My Wife, You Don’t! – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Vol.2 liner notes, Film Score Monthly, 2011 ↩︎
3. Audissino, The Film Music of John Williams, 2021 ↩︎

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