Elmer Bernstein’s The Magnificent Seven (1960):
Defining an American Soundscape for the Sixties
On October 21, 2001, National Public Radio (NPR) aired a segment of their series “Present at the Creation” about the successful Marlboro Man advertising campaign that started in the 1950s. It featured historical perspective along with quotes from Leo Burnett, the head of the agency that created it. The main title theme from Elmer Bernstein’s score for The Magnificent Seven (directed by John Sturges and released in October 1960) was a significant feature of these advertisements starting in the early 1960s, yet this music (which also provided the musical introduction and underscoring for the story) was not mentioned in the program. For admirers of this score, this can only be considered a mind-boggling oversight since the music was so integral to the evocation of the cowboy that was the Marlboro Man.
Bernstein’s music carried with it the message of invincibility personified by the gunfighters in the movie, and superimposed those characteristics on the rugged cowboys in the ads. Consumers hearing that music, particularly the male white-collar workers who were targeted for the ad campaign, longed to be the strong and untethered individual that Bernstein’s music helped define.
This essay will overview how Bernstein’s score for The Magnificent Seven strengthened the film’s political message and focus on the manner in which the main theme’s dissemination into the world of advertising provided a soundtrack (one of many) for the U.S. heading into the war in Vietnam.
The Magnificent Seven is an adaptation of Akiro Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (from 1954), a film that was inspired by the Westerns of John Ford and proved to be exceptionally popular and critically successful in the U.S.
With geographic, temporal, and societal alterations, Sturges’ film explores the changing relationship between the United States and other countries in the 1950s, particularly third world or developing nations.
The Magnificent Seven was one of the first so-called Mexico-Westerns, re-locating the genre’s mandatory confrontation to foreign soil to represent these shifting attitudes. An early review noted, “Without giving the appearance of sermonizing [Sturges] eloquently gets across the themes that man must take a strong stand against evil and that there are varieties of courage and fear.”[1] Thus neatly summing up the film’s implied narrative as well as the era’s political climate.
Cultural historian Richard Slotkin develops this perspective on the film and notes parallel themes in John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, when the new President called for a world “where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.” Slotkin characterizes The Magnificent Seven as a “thought experiment,” reflecting on the political stance of the U.S. in the late 50s, and describes it as “nearly an allegory of American policy in Vietnam.”[2]
Yet that policy was only in its formative stages when the film was released, Slotkin cautions, so we should temper this assessment with an understanding that “Movie and policy [simply] address the same ideologically loaded images of heroism and savagery, . . . [and] the same hope that all problems can be solved by a burst of action and a spectacular display of massive yet miraculously selective firepower.”
Stanley Corkin in his study Cowboys as Cold Warriors is less equivocal in his assessment, “A film that is so explicitly about military intervention in regional conflict as The Magnificent Seven must have at its core some vision of an incipient conflict, such as Cuba or even Vietnam.” [3]
John Sturges and Elmer Bernstein, who have been paired as a director-composer team likened to Hitchcock and Herrmann or Spielberg and Williams, probably first worked together in early 1958. At that time Sturges was asked to repair (uncredited) Robert Parrish’s Western Saddle the Wind, while Bernstein, possibly in tandem or shortly thereafter, replaced Jeff Alexander’s now unusable original score with his own. Their collaboration was simple.
Bernstein recalled that Sturges was a wonderful storyteller, and this was the only conversation the composer would have with the director. “You didn’t read the script; he would tell you the story. And then you went off and wrote the music.”[4] Unimpeded. Bernstein loved working that way.
We don’t know what kind of story Sturges related to Bernstein, but the composer crafted the music to strengthen the film’s underlying political narrative, primarily through its musical evocation of the good and evil personalities in the film.
While the Magnificent Seven are heralded with consonant, uplifting melodies, Calvera and his gang of bandits ride accompanied by dissonant chords with a menacing declarative tune. Meanwhile, Bernstein’s music for the oppressed Mexican villagers, which is based on ethnic models, is simple and exudes innocence, emphasized by its setting in triple meter.
Thus, the score fortifies the impact of the strong characters in the film, while positioning the villagers at the center of the dramatic maelstrom. Bernstein musically differentiates the good guys, the bad guys, and the villagers, but even further distinguishes the heroic Anglos with their distinctive main title music.
As Slotkin notes, “the Americans are a white aristocracy or elite, whose caste-mark is their capacity for effective violence; the Mexicans are non-white peasants, technologically and militarily incompetent.”[5] Bernstein’s music, particularly the main theme, emphasizes the gunfighters’ superiority.
There are two outstanding components of the main theme for The Magnificent Seven: the melody and the syncopated rhythm of the accompaniment.
Bernstein had a difficult time initially conceiving the melody and later revealed that he had been inspired by the word “seven” to compose at least the opening of the tune: “Curiously enough I got desperate and I was thinking of the word seven, what can I get out of the word seven. Of course, if you think of the very first two notes, you’d easily say seven and that’s how that started.” After the opening credits, this theme is heard sporadically during the beginning of the film and not completely with full orchestration until the seven are assembled and begin their journey to the Mexican village. After this point Bernstein offers a nearly complete statement of the theme only once, as the gunfighters leave the village to sneak up on Calvera, and then not again until the end of the film. And even then it is stated quietly without the full orchestration and its characteristic accompanying rhythm. Throughout the film it is the initial ascending third (sometimes followed by the subsequent ascending fifth) that becomes an instant identifier for the seven gunfighters.
The rhythmic component introduces the melody with strong, syncopated chords that grab the audience’s attention and add intensity to the melody.
Bernstein felt that certain scenes in the film needed a “push” to increase the tempo of the action; these rhythms accomplished that goal.
Bernstein conceived and developed this distinctive rhythm in another score, the main title for the TV series Riverboat, which he scored from 1959 to 1960. Not quite a Western, it takes place on the Mississippi River in the late nineteenth century, starring Darren McGavin as a kind-hearted yet firm riverboat captain who regularly dispenses justice and resolves conflict aboard his vessel. Burt Reynolds co-stars as his engineer and a variety of well-known actors make guest appearances. Bernstein’s main title easily captures the valiant tone of the amiable riverboat crew, particularly through the catchy (and vaguely familiar) syncopated rhythm that accompanies the main melody.
A clearer connection between the rhythmic nuances of Riverboat and The Magnificent Seven is particularly evident in the opening scene from the first episode of the series. (Pay close attention to the very opening.)
The syncopated, insistent, driving nature of this rhythm that propelled the riverboat adventures was exceptionally appropriate for pacing the action, especially the riding scenes, in The Magnificent Seven.
Bernstein’s score to The Magnificent Seven was immensely influential both inside and outside the film industry. Nominated for an Academy Award, it not only set the standard for Bernstein’s subsequent Westerns, its style influenced many Hollywood composers. Until Ennio Morricone and the “spaghetti Westerns” altered the Western soundscape, The Magnificent Seven was the score to emulate, particularly its strong main title theme.
It is not surprising therefore that the staff of the Leo Burnett Agency in Chicago decided to utilize the theme from The Magnificent Seven to help sell cigarettes. Westerns were incredibly popular at the time and had become a conduit for a variety of popular conversations, whether social, political, cultural, or literary.
Advertisers were quick to take advantage of the genre’s success. In his article on magazine advertising and the Western, Colin McArthur notes, “In the 30s, 40s and 50s especially, as the Western established itself as Hollywood’s dominant genre, advertising made full use of its familiar iconography and its ready acceptability to the American public.”[6]
From Coca-Cola, to cereal, to whiskey, to bras, Westerns provided an abundance of ad imagery, which inspired the Marlboro campaign as well.
Leo Burnett, the head of the agency that managed the Marlboro ads from 1954 to 1999, was famous for his groundbreaking approach to advertising. Shunning the popular trend towards market research, Burnett depended on his creative department to hone in on the “inherent drama” of the product and offer it to the public using imagery, rather than a lot of descriptive text. Often these were drawn from American history and folklore, such as the Jolly Green Giant, suggestive of American icon Paul Bunyan, and other likeable characters, including the Pillsbury Doughboy and Tony the Tiger.
Originally the Marlboro cigarette was marketed exclusively to women, emphasizing the feminine preference for the filter, a feature unique to this brand. With the increasing health concerns associated with smoking in the 1950s, however, Philip Morris decided to market Marlboro to men, particularly those men who might be concerned about lung cancer since the filtered cigarettes were seen as safer. Since men would not want to be seen smoking a women’s cigarette, it became essential that they emphasize the manliness of the cigarette. Leo Burnett recalled a brainstorming session where he asked, “What’s the most masculine symbol you can think of?” and his creative staff responded almost immediately with “the cowboy.”[7]
The first ad featuring the cowboy was aired in January 1955. In addition to the cowboy, the original campaign consisted of a series of other masculine figures representing a variety of occupations and sporting a tattoo to hint at toughness and a “romantic past.” It bears noting that these original ads were also accompanied by music, but it featured the soft, sultry voice of Julie London (who also starred in several Westerns) singing, “Why don’t you settle back, and have a full-flavored smoke.” But these were not the times for delicacy and sexual innuendos, and the cowboy emerged as the most popular of the images.
The cowboy not only prevailed, but he brought with him a mythical home. “Come to where the flavor is. Come to Marlboro Country.” To reinforce the imagery of the rough masculine cowboy and position him unmistakably in the legendary and unattainable West (where the men are magnificent), the agency connected it with Bernstein’s music from The Magnificent Seven. Studies of music in advertising clarify this important relationship. David Huron notes that advertisers have an uncanny ability to “relate images and music to social and psychological motivations.” He continues, “musical style may be used as a very effective nonverbal identifier,” used to establish authority and in the world of mass advertising, align particular groups with a specific product.[8] In our case, Bernstein’s theme represents the authority of all the cowboys who unanimously endorse Marlboro cigarettes.
In 1984 Sidney Hecker delineated a framework for understanding how and why music can further a commercial message. Amongst the various signifiers for using particular musical styles that he described, imagery is the one most relative to this study. Hecker posits that imagery makes more of a long-lasting impact (as Leo Burnett has demonstrated), and when paired with the right music it can establish a unique “brand personality.” “Music,” he concludes, “when used appropriately, is the catalyst of advertising. It augments pictures and colors words, and often adds a form of energy available through no other source.”[9]
When the Leo Burnett advertising agency adopted Bernstein’s music for their new masculine cowboy campaign, it carried with it the energy of the film. And it also audibly recalled the imagery of the gunfighter, re-defined or re-imagined as a cowboy. In writing about the campaign, Joseph F. Cullman former CEO of Philip Morris Company, described Bernstein’s score as “very exciting music, evocative of the cowboy life and the American West.” Here is a short clip from one exemplary commercial.
Evidently, audiences viewing or listening to these commercials forgot that this music was originally composed to accompany violent men (albeit with kind and heroic intentions) and not cowboys. Yet the music eventually became synonymous with cowboys and the West, and along with it the implied heroism and invincibility of the American spirit. Throughout the 1960s as the country fought both in Vietnam and on the streets and campuses of the U.S., Bernstein’s music reminded us that we were (or possibly could be?) strong and heroic. And possibly even liberators to threatened third world countries.
Until the TV and radio ads were pulled in the early 1970s, the Marlboro Man was the quintessential male, formed by the combination of the visual imagery of the cowboy and the music from The Magnificent Seven. Whether or not they saw the film, Americans became aware of Bernstein’s music through this advertising campaign and many consider it to be emblematic of a genre, of a lifestyle, and of an era. The music, perpetuated not only in the Marlboro ads but also in the sequels to the film and a short-lived television series, became a part of the American cultural landscape. Even audiences too young to recognize the original source of the music or even its commercial adaptation acknowledge its familiarity and appeal.
During his 2012 “Badlands Tour” Bruce Springsteen featured this music as an introduction, connecting the gunfighter (or cowboy) sensibility presented by the music with the lyrics of his opening song.
[1] Richard Gertner, Motion Picture Daily (October 5, 1960)
[2] Gunfighter Nation, p. 485
[3] Stanley Corkin, Cowboys as Cold Warriors: The Western and U.S. History (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2004), 166. While this is an interesting and helpful perspective on the film, there are factual errors throughout the book. For more about these see Abraham Hoffman’s review in Pacific Historical Review, 74:2 (May 2005), 321–322. Richard Slotkin subsequently offered a more positive review in Film Quarterly, 59:4 (Summer 2006), 54–55.
[4] This quote is transcribed from an unidentified audio-cassette of Bernstein conducting a master class (presumably at USC). I am grateful to William H. Rosar, founder of the Society for the Preservation of Film Music (now the Film Music Society) and an acquaintance of Bernstein, for sharing this recording with me.
[5] Slotkin, Gunfighters and Green Berets
[6] McArthur, 170.
[7] Quoted in NPR story.
[8] Huron, David (1989). Music in Advertising: An Analytic Paradigm. The Musical Quarterly 73(4), 557–574.
[9] Hecker, Sidney (1984). Music for Advertising Effect. Psychology and Marketing 1 (3/4), 3–8.
For more information and detailed analysis of Bernstein’s score for The Magnificent Seven, I refer you to Elmer Bernstein’s The Magnificent Seven: A Film Score Guide (Scarecrow Press, 2017.