Original composition[edit]
While working on the soundtrack for
Doctor Zhivago,
Maurice Jarre was asked by director
David Lean to come up with a theme for the character of Lara, played by
Julie Christie. Initially Lean had desired to use a well-known Russian song but could not locate the rights to it, and delegated responsibility to Jarre. After several unsuccessful attempts at writing it, Lean suggested to Jarre that he go to the mountains with his girlfriend and write a piece of music for her. Jarre says that the resultant piece was "Lara's Theme", and Lean liked it well enough to use it in numerous tracks for the film. In editing
Zhivago, Lean and producer
Carlo Ponti reduced or outright deleted many of the themes composed by Jarre; Jarre was angry because he felt that an over-reliance on "Lara's Theme" would ruin the soundtrack.
Jarre's esthetic fears proved unfounded commercially, however, as the theme became an instant success and gained fame throughout the world. By special request of
Connie Francis,
Paul Francis Webster later took the theme and added lyrics to it to create "Somewhere My Love". Francis, however, retired from the project when the lyrics were presented to her because she thought of them as too "corny". A few weeks later, Francis reconsidered her position and recorded the song nonetheless, but by then
Ray Conniff had also recorded a version of his own, reaching #9 on the
Billboard Hot 100 chart in
1966. Conniff's version of the song also topped the "
Easy listening" chart in the U.S. for four weeks. Despite Conniff's success, Francis also had her version released as a single, and although it failed to chart in the US, it became one of her biggest successes internationally, becoming one of the "Top 5" in territories such as
Scandinavia and
Asia. In Italy, her Italian version of the song, "Dove non so", became her last #1 success.
Various other versions of it have since been released. Italio-American tenor,
Sergio Franchi covered the song as "Somewhere, My Love" in his 1967 RCA Victor album
From Sergio – With Love.
[2] Harry James recorded a version on his 1976 album
The King James Version (Sheffield Lab LAB 3). "Lara's Theme" remains to this day one of the most recognizable movie themes ever written. A music box plays Lara's Theme at the beginning of the film
The Spy Who Loved Me.
