John Wooldridge, bomber-composer

The British actor Dirk Bogarde made two famous film appearances as composers: as Liszt in Song Without End and as a musicalized version of Gustav von Aschenbach in Visconti's Death in Venice. One might add to the list, with an asterisk, Bogarde's performance as Wing Commander Tim Mason in the 1953 war picture Appointment in London, about the exploits of RAF bomber crews. True, Bogarde's character is not seen to have anything to do with music. But John Wooldridge, who came up with the film's story and co-wrote the screenplay, was a working composer, and the script is based on his experiences. Wooldridge also wrote the film's score — a rather unusual case of a composer evoking himself on film.

The best account of Wooldridge's life available is a Music Web International essay by his son, Hugh Wooldridge. During the war, he flew ninety-seven missions, an extraordinarily high number. He continued to compose while serving in the RAF. Hugh Wooldridge writes: "During the first three years of the war, and in between flying, he wrote his first and most notable musical work — a symphonic poem The Constellations (1944) working alternately on borrowed pianos and the local padre’s organ. Much of this was sketched during the long bombing missions over occupied mainland Europe." In 1944, Artur Rodzinski and the New York Philharmonic read The Constellations at a rehearsal, and Rodzinski promised that he would play a new work if Wooldridge downed five German planes. When Wooldridge achieved that number, Rodzinski led the composer's A Solemn Hymn to Victory, in late 1944. He received rather tepid reviews from the New York critics: Olin Downes, in the Times, said the piece was "noble in intention" but "technically not mature." Be that as it may, Wooldridge broke the Atlantic speed record while flying home.

After the war, Wooldridge produced a large quantity of film scores, as well as a number of concert pieces. The music for Appointment in London shows no lack of craftsmanship, although it can't be described as subtle. The film makes for uneasy viewing today, given what we know about the Allied campaign of area bombing. But it does capture the extraordinary psychic strain placed upon the likes of Wooldridge. "A crew member on a British bomber had a shorter life expectancy than an infantryman in the trenches of World War I," Ben McIntyre has written. Sadly, having survived all that, Wooldridge died in a car accident in 1958.