Content starts here
CLOSE ×

Search

Trivia Countdown! One Day to Movies for Grownups on Turner Classic Movies

I'm counting down the days until May 15, the night I get to introduce four great Movies for Grownups with Robert Osborne on TCM. Here's today's trivia bit about one of the movies we're showing:

020829-spellbound
Spellbound lobby card



Besides its eerie dream sequence designed by Salvador Dali, Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound is noted for its unforgettable, Oscar-winning musical score by Miklos Rozsa. He makes great use of the theramin, that haunting device that makes the spooky "whoo -OOO!" sound that later became popular in science fiction movies. In fact, the theramin plays an important audio role in The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Thing-plus, of all things, The Ten Commandments. For a long time I thought the theramin was used to create the musical score of another film we're featuring on Turner Classic Movies, Forbidden Planet. But although the sound is similar, Planet utilizes a different electronic device created by Greenwich Village performance artists Louis and Bebe Barron.

Search AARP Blogs