ALFRED NEWMAN

summaries by Jack McCutcheon

Anytime you watch a 20th Century Fox film and see those searchlights and hear the drum roll and the blare of trumpets with the flim company's logo, you are hearing the music of Alfred Newman, one of the most prolific contributors to film scores.

His scores ranged from adaptations of Broadway musicals that 20th Century Fox produced with great success, notably "The King and I" and "Oklahoma," to original music scores for dramatic films.

Those orginal scores are memorable as well and varied. He took on the Biblical epic of "The Robe," its music stirring the grandeur of ancient Rome as well as the underplaying themes of the threat of Christianity to the sometimes brutal society of Rome. Newman's score captures the last moments of Christ's crucifixion while a centurian and his slave watch the death, and here are dramatic crashes of timpani and cymbol to represent thunder. Also, he creates a motif for most of the major characters, as well as a love theme for the Roman centurian and his lover, Diana.

In contrast to "The Robe," Newman wrote the score for "Anatasia," starring Ingrid Bergman and Yul Brynner in 1956. In this adaptation, Newman creates tunes that underscore the lost person searching for her identity as well as a lost era of Czarist Russia. Is she the heir to the Russian dynasty or is she an impostor? The score includes wonderful waltzes that reflect on the late 19th Century and the early 20th Century as characters swirl around the dance floor trying to regain the opulence of a time forever in the past.

For a stark departure from martial music of Newman's "The Robe" and his melancholic "Anastasia" in his film score for "The Dairy of Anne Frank," Newman writes music to depict the tension of a trapped group of Jews hiding in Amsterdam during the days of World War II. Often included in his music, the film goer can hear the blaring, frightening sounds of distant sirens of the authorities, local and Gestapo, coming to apprehend those in hiding. Newman's music evokes the terror and dread associated with these sirens, as we all know those people will soon be loaded onto trains for transport to concentration camps. He contrasts this with a lilting melody representing the innocence of Anne Frank and her discovery that she is an individual in a time of fear and chaos.

Known as Pappy to his contemporaries in Hollywood, Newman's nickname is well deserved. He fathered three children who also became contributors to film scores, Thomas Newman being the most prolific and contemporary. As well as his children, Alfred's brothers Lionel and Emil Newman were also film composers, and his nephew Randy Newman is known both for film composition and popular music. Alfred Newman died in 1970 in California. 

MAX STEINER

Max Steiner definitely placed his signature on films by Warner Brothers which spanned many decades.

Born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary in 1885, he came to the United States and was soon on his way to Hollywood enticed by RKO Radio Pictures to give his gift of music to movies. But all of his winners were while he worked for Warners.

Of course, his most memorable work would be for the epic "Gone With the Wind." Every character has a motif: the O'Hara plantation of Tara, and Margaret Mitchell's characters: Scarlett, Rhett, Ashley, Melanie, even the memorable Mammy. Steiner uses music to portray the dying South with a few haunting bars of "Dixie" mingled with the sounds of military sadness of "Taps." I would bet almost anyone who has seen "Gone With the Wind" can hum a bit of Steiner's score years later or, if not, recognize a few bars.

While not as much an epic as "GWTW," his score of the 1940s "Casablanca" is just as haunting with his weaving the "As Time Goes By" melody to enhance the on-screen love that cannot be for Rick and Ilsa. Steiner also uses La Marseillaise, pitting it up against the warring German fighting songs in a musical battle of good versus evil at Rick's Cafe.

My third choice for Steiner's film soundtracks would be "Dark Victory," a Bette Davis film from Warner Brothers. Here again, Steiner creates themes for his characters. And at the end of the film, when Davis knows she has little time to live, she peacefully walks up to her bedroom to lie down for the last time. It is rumored that Davis told the director that Steiner should not use music as she ascended those stairs, but the composer did regardless of her protests, and the sound of the violins as the film fades to black is memorable and worthy of at least one hanky (or these days a Kleenex).

Steiner died in 1971 in Hollywood.

FRANZ WAXMAN

For my third choice of favorite film composers, Franz Waxman. He composed the music for three of my favorite films.

Born in Germany in 1906, he is just one of many artists who fled the impending doom of Germany to the shores of the United States.

One of my favorite films from the early 1940s, "Rebecca" has the Waxman score to add to the tensions and emotions of the Alfred Hitchcock film. He uses innocent themes for the unnamed heroine who is to replace the haunting Rebecca, who is dead but still commands a presence of Manderley, the great English estate of Maxim, who has married a less sophisticated woman who will replace Rebecca. This does not sit well with the house keeper, Mrs. Danvers, and Waxman uses ominous strains of music whenever Danvers walks onto the screen. Set on the cliffs near the menancing sea coast, Manderley is a home of mystery and the former mistress's figurative ghost. And film goer can hear the undulating waves as they crash upon the shore. The final view has Manderley in flames when Waxman uses swirling violins to create the panic of Mrs. Danvers, who has set the estate on fire so that Max and Rebecca's replacement will not be able to live where Rebecca once ruled. And the sound of those violins grows as she is consumed by flames.

Nearly ten years passed after "Rebecca" before Waxman caught my ear with his score of "Sunset Boulevard," the Billy Wilder satire on Hollywood's cynicism. It's the story of a writer who mistakenly drives in to the estate of Norma Desmond, a fading beauty from the days of silent film. With the introduction of Desmond, Waxman uses music that seems something from the past, full of cobwebs for an undisturbed Desmond's estate. Waxman even uses the Paramount News theme as the writer meets up with a young, aspiring script editor as they walk and talk about their futures on the lot of a film studio. Of course, the fading Desmond has hopes of making a comeback with the help of her writer, now turned gigolo. But in a jealous rage, she shoots the writer. At the end of the film, the insane Desmond is to be taken away from her estate's refuge for arrest. She hears that film cameras are downstairs and thinks those cameras will film her movie, and so the police allow the dedicated butler, Max, a former film director, to entice Desmond to descend the stairsteps. Here, Waxman reintroduces the earlier strains of Desmond's theme adding dissonance as the deluded ex-star makes her entrance. Of course, most memorable is that Waxman stops the the music as Norma stares into the film cameras and delivers her memorable line: "I am ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille!" As she approaches the camera, Waxman, again repeats the theme which becomes louder with pounding percussions as the star goes out of focus and fades. "Sunset Boulevard" won Waxman his first academy award in 1950.

And then in 1951, he was the first composer up to that time to win back-to-back Oscars for his "A Place in the Sun." A retelling of Theodore Dreiser's novel, American Tragedy, the film tells a tale of the haves and the have nots. And Waxman has themes to depict for those levels of society as well as the two major characters, memorably portrayed by two young, handsome stars: Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift. Clift's theme in music is that of a common guy desperately hoping to be successful so he can attain the status to win the beautiful Taylor, a woman who lives in a world of wealth. Waxman's use of music when the two meet for the first time and then waltz together is melodic and hauntingly memorable. Their love affair comes to a crashing end, as Clift's character is found guilty of drowning his girlfriend who is pregnant with their baby (Shelley Winters), but the couple's love endures as he and Taylor meet one final time before he is to be executed. Waxman reintroduces that love theme as they say goodbye. His score is lush and was awarded the Oscar for Waxman.

Waxman continued to write film scores until his death in Los Angeles, CA in 1967.