• Genre: Soundtrack
• Active: '30s - '60s
• Instrument: Composer

Biography

Alfred Newman (1901-1970) was, for much of his career, the most influential and respected composer and music director in Hollywood. His 44 Oscar nominations and nine Academy Awards are both records that are unlikely ever to be broken. The first-born of ten children to an impoverished produce seller in New Haven, Connecticut, Newman manifested his musical interests very early, and by the age of eight was well known locally as a piano prodigy. He played for virtuoso Jan Ignace Paderewski, who arranged a New York recital for the boy, and a performing career seemed in the offing, until he was forced to begin earning a living for his family. Newman worked his way up from vaudeville to the orchestra pit of the Broadway theaters, and eventually became an established conductor and arranger known and respected by all of the best composers, including Irving Berlin. When Berlin was brought to Hollywood at the dawn of the sound era, he arranged for Newman to come with him. There he was taken on by movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn and United Artists, and established himself as one of the movie capital's two undisputed masters of music (the other was Max Steiner). Soon, he also began working for 20th Century-Fox.

Newman spent the 1930s scoring some of the most prestigious movies of the decade, including Street Scene, Dodsworth, Stella Dallas, Dead End, The Prisoner of Zenda, Gunga Din, and Young Mr. Lincoln, among many others. Even when he wasn't working on a particular movie, he was often approached by studio production heads in need of advice when the scoring of a movie ran into trouble. Following his installation as Fox's music director in 1940, Newman worked on How Green Was My Valley, Heaven Can Wait, Song of Bernadette, The Razor's Edge, Captain from Castille, The Robe, and Love Is a Many Splendored Thing, among numerous other films; and, equally telling in his capacity as head of the studio's music department, he assigned the scoring of Laura to David Raksin, who wrote an immortal piece of movie music, and Jane Eyre, Hangover Square, and The Day the Earth Stood Still to Bernard Herrmann. In 1959, he left Fox for a career as an independent artist, and in 1961 conducted the Oscar-nominated score to Flower Drum Song. The next year, he wrote what may be his most familiar film score, How the West Was Won, with lyricist Ken Darby.

Ironically, for all of his accumulated honors, Newman remains viewed as a far greater arranger and conductor than composer. He could assimilate folk tunes or pseudo-folk tunes, as in How Green Was My Valley and How the West Was Won, and transform them into orchestral/choral works of tremendous power, and take a good original melody or two and turn them into something haunting and memorable, as in The Razor's Edge or The Robe. His compositions, however, lacked the boldness or adventurousness of Bernard Herrmann or Miklos Rozsa's most inspired work--his was tonal and accessible music that didn't demand too much of the viewer. But it was the palatable nature of Newman's music, coupled with his diplomatic skills, that helped him achieve his success. His scores were accessible without being trite, original in execution as film music without being jarring or troubling, and his affable nature, in contrast the the volatile, neurotic Herrmann or the seemingly aloof Rozsa, made him a favorite of studio executives. And all of that made his word about music the law in Hollywood for close to 30 years. He died in 1970, and his final soundtrack, for George Seaton's mega-hit Airport, became the last of Newman's 44 Oscar nominations. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide

How the West Was Won [Rhino] Buy this CD

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Captain from Castile Buy this CD

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• Born: Mar 17, 1901 in New Haven, Connecticut
• Died: Feb 17, 1970 in Los Angeles, California
• Active: '30s-'50s
• Major Genres: Drama, Musical
• Career Highlights: The King and I, All About Eve, My Darling Clementine
• First Major Screen Credit: Whoopee! (1930)

Biography

American film composer/conductor/adaptor Alfred Newman was a child prodigy -- and none too modest about the fact. Making his professional debut at seven (after taking private lessons from the great Arnold Schoenberg), Newman was billed as "the Marvelous Boy Pianist." He was later known variously as "the Boy Conductor" and "the Youngest Conductor in the United States." By the time he entered films with the 1930 Goldwyn production Whoopee!, Newman had a decade's worth of experience conducting symphonies and Broadway orchestras. His first important film composition was the Gershwyn-esque title theme for Goldwyn's Street Scene (1931) which he later expanded into a suite and utilized as the credit music for several 20th Century Fox films, notably I Wake up Screaming (1941) and Cry of the City (1948); in the prologue to 1953's How to Marry a Millionaire, Newman can be seen conducting this classic piece. Newman's association with 20th Century Fox began in 1933, when the company was still merely 20th Century Pictures. It was he who composed Fox's fabled "Fanfare," which is still utilized to herald the studio's movie and TV projects (including the Sunday afternoon pro football games). Nominated for 45 Academy awards, Newman won the award nine times, for Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938), Tin Pan Alley (1940), The Song of Bernadette (1943), Mother Wore Tights (1947), With a Song in My Heart (1952), Call Me Madam (1953), Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), The King and I (1956), and -- at Warners Bros. -- Camelot (1967). His last composition was the driving, intensely up-to-date main theme for Universal's Airport (1970). Alfred Newman was the brother of Lionel Newman, the father of David Newman and Thomas Newman, and the uncle of Randy Newman -- composers all. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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