The World’s Greatest Sinner (The Film)

Timothy Carey

Scene from the film.

The World's Greatest Sinner is a 1962 film, written, starring and directed by Tim Carey. Zappa wrote and recorded the score for the film.

Carey had worked in a number of films and TV shows notably with Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick and Marlon Brando. Like Zappa he also had a cameo part In Head.

In 1956 Carey set up his own studio and production company Frenzy, which, initially, was to be the title, to make the film. Carey described the plot:

"I play an atheist who gets people's attention by playing music. I graduated from a rock and roller to a politician. Then he ran for president with God written on his cuffs. I played the part of God Hilliard. I had this cult. We shot at this cathedral in San Gabriel. I was living there by now. The end scene I take the communion from the church and take it home. I hold it up in one hand and hold a pin in the other and I say, 'If you're really a god, show me if there's something mightier than man.' Then I start stabbing it and nothing happens. The wafer breaks and I start laughing, 'Nothing but a piece of bread! Mother you're dead forever', and walk outside and then all of a sudden blood starts dripping out fast downstairs. Out the house and I'm scared, but go back into the room and this light hits me. We shot it in black and white, but at that point we change to color. And I yell, 'Oh my god', and get thrown up against the wall and it cuts now to the wafer and the credits come on.

And Zappa summarised it:

The premise of the film was: a man believes he's God, doubts himself, breaks into a church, steals the communion bread, sticks a pin in it to find out whether or not it will in fact bleed, it bleeds, and he realizes he's not God. How's that for a great plot?

A chance meeting resulted in Zappa working on the score:

A fellow came up to me and complemented me on my acting. He said he was a composer and the guy he came with, his next door neighbor, played the guitar. I said, 'What's your name?'. He said, Frank Zappa'. So I said, 'OK, I have something for you. We have no music for The World's Greatest Sinner. If you can supply the orchestra and a place to tape it, you have the job'. And that's what he did.

Zappa started composing the score in June 1961. "The score is unique," he said, "in that it uses every type of music." In November he recorded a section for a small rock-n-roll group with eight musicians which was followed by a recording session with a 20 piece chamber orchestra in early December and a full 55 piece orchestra at Chaffey Auditorium on 17 December 1961, conducted by the music teacher from Pomona High School Fred E. Graff. The orchestra included members of Zappa's band at the time, The Boogie Men, Kenny Burgen performed saxophone, Doug Rost rhythm guitar and Al Surratt drums. Zappa referred to the orchestra as the Pomona Valley Symphony Orchestra augmented by other instrumentalists. The recording was done with a single microphone. Zappa described the session as 'rancid'. Several motifs and themes that Zappa would reuse or rework can be heard within the score; these can later be found in works such as Oh No, Dog Breath, In The Year Of The Plague, Overture To A Holiday In Berlin and Holiday In Berlin, Full Blown and elsewhere. Also from these sessions came the piece that would become known as 'Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance', which was later included on The Lost Episodes, but it was not used for the film's soundtrack.

The initial 1962 edit was re-edited for a 1964 release which included a title track recorded by Zappa, Ray Collins and Paul Buff at the PAL studio around February/March 1963. The title track for the film was released as the B-side to How's Your Bird? and credited as Baby Ray & The Ferns (Donna 1378) in 1963.

Zappa and Carey

At a showing for the Director's Guild, Carey recalls Zappa being in awe:

He walked into the window and banged himself in the head. He didn't even know there was a window there.

At the premiere at the Vista Continental Theater, a 400 seat Art House/soft porn cinema, on 30th January 1963 Carey appeared in his silver lamé suit and fired a pistol over the heads of the audience. But the press was less than enthused by the film:

The press said I was the world's greatest ham, and that The World's Greatest Sinner was a travesty of the arts.

In March 14th 1963 Zappa recorded a section for The Steve Allen Show during which he played a bicycle and discussed the film:

Flyer for film

Steve Allen: ... tell us about that.
FZ: That's the name of the film. It's the world's worst movie, and I did the music for it.
Steve Allen: The World's Greatest Sinner?
FZ: Yes. It's a Tim Carey production, Frenzy Productions.
Steve Allen: FRENZY Productions . . . (laughter)
FZ: It's an, it's an independent company. (laughter)
Steve Allen: Well they all are these days, the way things are going. But, uh . . .
FZ: They shot it in El Monte.
Steve Allen: So they shot my agent in El Monte, ya know . . . that can happen to anybody. Ah, who is in it?
FZ: Uh, Tim Carey and a cast of a thousand people that he found down on Main St. someplace (laughter).
Steve Allen: The World's Greatest Sinner. Does Tim play the title role?
FZ: Uh, yes.
Steve Allen: And you, you wrote the score for that. What instrumentation did you use, three harmonicas and a bicycle or what? (laughter)
FZ: Well uh, we have a 55-piece orchestra and we had a very unusual reed section, we had . . .
Steve Allen: They couldn't read. (laughter)
FZ: We had a contrabass clarinet, uh, two bassoons . . . no, four bassoons, uh, two oboes, English horn, four flutes and piccolo, uh . . . four trumpets, four horns, and four trombones and a tuba, and uh, I forget, there's a bunch of . . .
Steve Allen: And a partridge in a pear tree. Well that's a very interesting uh, inventory.
FZ: We recorded it, we recorded it in the Chaffey High School, no, the Chaffey College Little Theater in uh, Alta Loma, California . . .
Steve Allen: It was a runaway production then, wasn't it?
FZ: For twelve hours we recorded it.

Carey felt Zappa had started to distance himself from the film:

Around the same time he was on the Steve Allen Show. That's where our friendship stopped. Steve asked him what films he did. He said: 'The World's Greatest Sinner, the world's worst film and all the actors were from skid row.' It wasn't true.

Although Zappa discusses his other early film score for Run Home Slow he does not mention The World's Greatest Sinner in The Real Frank Zappa Book

The film was only shown a few times on it's release but it has since achieved cult status. After the premiere John Cassavetes said it had "the emotional brilliance of Eisenstein". Martin Scorsese includes it in his list of favourite films as does Will Oldham. Whilst filming together Johnny Depp recommended the film to fellow actor Ian McShane:

Johnny’s got quite quirky, eclectic musical tastes and so do I. I’m a huge fan of Zappa and Beefheart. Johnny’s very versed in that time. We were talking about a very brilliant but erratic American actor called Timothy Carey. He was in Stanley Kubrick’s "The Killing" but he was clearly off his trolley. And he made this film, The World’s Greatest Sinner. I’d never seen it. Johnny said,”I’ve got to get you this movie.” And he sent it to me. It’s a wacko film. And who did the music for it? Frank Zappa. I just started his biography again, "Zappa". I was reading it and it was one of those funny things that came out of nowhere. He wrote the music for The World’s Greatest Sinner.

Some years later Zappa was given a copy of the film as a birthday present by Gerald Fialka.

Wikipedia

• The World's Greatest Sinner
• Tim Carey

Soundtrack Streams

• Apple Music
• Spotify