Theremin Before The Earth Stood Still

From the "weird old romantic mystery movies" file comes a fun theremin fact to know and tell.

Several years before writing the famous film score with theremin for The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Bernard Herrmann used the space controlled instrument in a main theme for the movie Portrait of Jennie (1948).

Besides foreshadowing the theremin in Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945) the combination of spooky, mystery, romance themes was ten years ahead of his Vertigo and other classics of the 1950s as well.

There's a write up on Portrait of Jennie in Jorge Sosa's blog at The Hutchinson Leader and a great article at our sister site ThereminVox on the work of Bernard Herrman.