Before this morning’s Bedford Playhouse screening of Invaders From Mars, I’ll be sharing a few words with the audience about the composer of the eerie musical score — the unsung Mort Glickman, an under-valued, under-the-radar guy if there ever was one.

In Laurent Bouzereau‘s two-hour Making of ‘Jaws’ doc, director Steven Spielberg says that John Williams‘ creepy leviathan score is responsible for half of the film’s effectiveness. Same deal with Invaders From Mars, which is chiefly distinguished by William Cameron Menzies‘ production design but would still amount to very little without Glickman’s input.

Glickman’s Martian choir music injects a profoundly creepy vibe…a sense of hovering otherworldliness…”a bleak acapella that conjures visions of a dying Martian landscape or the wailing of frightened minds in hell,” to quote from a 1986 Cinemascore article by William Rosar.

And poor Glickman, sub-contracted by Raoul Kraushar, didn’t even get screen credit — Kraushar claimed that honor. On top of which Glickman died of a heart attack two months before Invaders From Mars opened in April 1953. He passed on 2.27.53 at age 54.

Posted on 4.2.22: Yeah, I know…Mort who?

It’s been asserted for years by people seemingly in the know that the actual composer of the famously eerie Invaders From Mars score is not Raoul Kraushar, as I’ve stated a few times on HE, but longtime Republic Pictures composer Mort Glickman.

Reporting has it that Kraushar was a Hans Zimmer-like operator and compiler who would hire guys to ghost-write scores, which Kraushar would then take credit for.

I’ve been persuaded that the claims about Glickman may have merit. Okay, that they’re probably legit.

I am therefore apologizing if in fact (as it appears) I have passed along bad intel. Kraushar was apparently not the Invaders From Mars composer, and I apologize for previously failing to report that Glickman, a stocky, bespectacled guy who looked like a 1950s grocery-store clerk and could have played a behind-the-counter colleague of Ernest Borgnine‘s in Marty…Glickman was the maestro!

Three people have made the case — (1) David Schecter, co-producer of Monstrous Movie Music, a “series of re-recordings which feature a wealth of classic music from many of everyone’s favorite science fiction, horror and fantasy films”, (2) Janne Wass in a 2016 article for scifist.wordpress.com, and (3) William H. Rosar, author of a 1986 CinemaScore article titled “The Music for Invaders From Mars.”