May 2021 The Hermitage: Tiomkin’s proposed television spectacular

by Warren Sherk

During Dimitri Tiomkin’s decades long friendship with broadcaster Lowell Thomas, one of the more unusual projects he pitched was a television spectacular on the Hermitage Museum in Russia.

Dimitri Tiomkin with Lowell Thomas

The first discussion of Tiomkin’s proposed television spectacular on the world-famous Russian museum known as the Hermitage takes place at Thomas’s home in Pauling, New York, on August 28, 1965.

That meeting was followed by two long conversations in mid-September between Tiomkin and Milton A. Fruchtman, president of Odyssey Productions. On September 21, 1965, Tiomkin continues to pitch the project by phone to Fruchtman, who produced High Adventure with Lowell Thomas and at one time was the chief producer at Capital Cities Broadcasting, a network of television stations partially owned by Thomas. Fruchtman is tasked with approaching executives at CBS with Tiomkin’s proposal for Thomas to film the story of the Winter Palace and Hermitage in Leningrad.

Hermitage Hall of the Winter Palace

The State Hermitage Museum is a museum of art and culture—the second-largest in the world—located in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Tiomkin envisioned the film as a cinematic biography of the building in the style of director Sacha Guitry’s Royal Affairs in Versailles, a 1954 French-Italian historical drama. Tiomkin’s Hermitage would cover the years from its founding by Catherine the Great in 1764 to 1917, the year of Revolution. The story would be told through paintings and prints and through historical film footage. When footage did not exist, authentic recreations of pertinent historical moments would be staged. The art treasures of the museum would provide color as would a recreation of the Winter Palace Ball.

At the end of September Fruchtman speaks with Michael Burke, the vice president of development at CBS, and follows up with phone calls in October. Unfortunately, Fruchtman then reports that Burke informed him that CBS News was already negotiating with the Soviet Union about a Hermitage project so that ended the discussions with CBS, even though the sentiment, “CBS reaction excellent,” in an undated telegram from Fruchtman that may have been from a previous meeting seems at odds.

Tiomkin was already in conversation with Soviet government and U.S. State Department officials for his film in production on Tchaikovsky. For that film negotiations were underway with the Soviet cultural attache in London, V. Sofinsky, and the Soviet export film representative, B. Yakoviev.

Tiomkin traveled to Moscow in October 1965 with a delegation from the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) to gain an impression of the Russian film industry. The delegates toured Mosfilm Studios along with Russian film laboratories and film schools and visited with workers at the USSR Association of Film Workers. Tiomkin hosted a reception for the delegation on October 15, 1965.

Dimitri Tiomkin outside the Kremlin, 1966

Back in the U.S., in June 1966, Jack Gordean of the Gordean Friedman Agency sends feelers on behalf of Tiomkin to Elmer Lowell and Hubbell Robinson, both with ABC television in New York.

Meanwhile, Tiomkin enters into an agreement with Gregori Ivanovich Britikoff, director of the Studio Central de Cinema, or Gorky Film Studio, in Moscow.

Before Tiomkin’s project gets off the ground, in late 1969, Norman Felton a British-born American television producer and director at Arena Productions based at Universal Studios, begins pitching, “Heroes and Hermitage,” and starts discussions for Sovinfilm to provide services in the USSR. The Norman Felton Papers housed at the University of Iowa Special Collections contain a file on “Heroes and Hermitage,” covering the years 1968 to 1971.

It turns out that both Tiomkin and Felton independently spoke about their respective projects with Leonard “Buzz” Blair, a writer and television director-producer. The lawyers for Tiomkin and Felton each asked for more information of the other on the proposed films. In the end, after reviewing Felton’s proposal, Tiomkin decided the two projects were not that similar and to reserve his rights.

Neither project ever came to fruition; however, Tiomkin did film a scene for Tchaikovsky at the Hermitage Museum in 1970.

Dimitri Tiomkin during production of Tchaikovsky. Image number: A1128 (publicity photograph).

Carbon copy typescript of the three-page proposal by Dimitri Tiomkin for “The Hermitage.”

Sources

Based on correspondence courtesy of Olivia Tiomkin.

“Dimitri Tiomkin Invited to Moscow for Tchaikovsky Film Conference,” Boxoffice, October 4, 1965.

“Snow Trucked To Leningrad For Filming Of Tchaikovsky,” Calgary Herald, February 26, 1970. Related to a location scene filmed at the Hermitage Museum.