From On the Waterfront to West Side Story, or There's Nowhere Like Somewhere

Three years before the world witnessed what was arguably Leonard Bernstein's finest synthesis of musical and dramatic elements in West Side Story, he composed his first and only film score for Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront. Several scholars and critics have commented on the separate historical and artistic significance of these dramatic works, but virtually no one has made connections between these Bernstein contributions beyond noting similarities in orchestral timbre, rhythmic intensity, and overlapping thematic material. For instance, some have pointed out the shared melodic contour between the Love theme in On the Waterfront and Something's Coming, yet neglected to suggest why this might be significant. This paper addresses this question; it also demonstrates that in each work Bernstein employs similar techniques to comment effectively on narratives that emphasize what it means to be an individual in the 1950s.