Alfred Newman
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| Alfred Newman | |||||||
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| Born | March 17, 1900 New Haven, Connecticut, USA  |
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| Died | February 17, 1970 (aged 69) Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA |
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| Years active | 1930-1970 | ||||||
| Spouse(s) | Martha Montgomery (1947-1970) | ||||||
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Alfred Newman (March 17, 1900[1]– February 17, 1970) was a major American composer of music for films.
He received 45 Academy Award nominations making him (currently) the second most nominated person in the history of the Academy Awards, tied with John Williams, and behind Walt Disney (Newman's scores for The Hurricane and The Prisoner of Zenda were also nominated at a time when composers were not eligible to be nominated in the score category). He won the Oscar 9 times; in 1940 he was nominated for 4 different films. Between 1938 and 1957, he was nominated an incredible twenty years in a row.
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[edit] Early life
The eldest of ten children, Newman was born in New Haven, Connecticut. A musical prodigy, he began studying piano at the age of five, with Sigismund Stojowski. He was able to supplement his poor family's income by playing in theaters and restaurants. He traveled the vaudeville circuit with performer Grace LaRue, billed as "The Marvelous Boy Pianist". He also studied composition with Rubin Goldmark. By the age of twenty he was in New York, beginning a ten-year career on Broadway as the conductor of musicals by composers such as George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, and Jerome Kern. Then, in 1930, he accompanied Irving Berlin to Hollywood.[1] In Los Angeles, he had private lessons from Arnold Schoenberg.
[edit] Movie career
After completing his work on Berlin's project, a movie called Reaching for the Moon, Newman found work with Samuel Goldwyn and United Artists, writing his first full movie score for Goldwyn's 1931 production, Street Scene. The title song he wrote for this movie became a theme to which he returned on several occasions, including the opening of the 1953 movie How to Marry a Millionaire, in which Newman is seen conducting the studio orchestra.
In 1940, Newman began a 20-year career as music director for 20th Century-Fox Studios. He composed the familiar fanfare which accompanies the studio logo at the beginning of Fox's productions. In 1953, Newman wrote the "Cinemascope extension" for his fanfare. At Fox, he also developed what came to be known as the Newman System, a means of synchronising the performance and recording of a musical score with the film. The system is still in use today. Newman's final musical score under his Fox contract was The Best of Everything (1959).
After leaving Fox in 1960, Newman freelanced for the remainder of his career, writing the scores for such films as MGM's How the West Was Won and The Greatest Story Ever Told, among others.
After reportedly paying to have his score for Captain from Castile recorded with the Fox orchestra, Newman conducted a series of albums for Capitol Records, including a recording of George Gershwin's Variations on "I Got Rhythm". He was active until the end of his life, scoring Universal Pictures' Airport shortly before his death.
After his death, George Korngold produced an RCA Victor album honoring Newman, Captain from Castile, with the National Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Charles Gerhardt. The discrete quadraphonic recording was later reissued by RCA on CD with compatible Dolby surround sound.
[edit] Newman family
He married Martha Louis née Montgomery (1920-2005), a former actress and Goldwyn Girl, and they had five children.
He was the head of a family of major Hollywood film composers:
- His brother Lionel Newman scored three dozen films and several TV series, adapting and conducting scores for hundreds of other films.
- His brother Emil Newman scored over 50 films.
- His son David Newman has scored over 70 films, including Hoffa, Galaxy Quest, The Nutty Professor, The War of the Roses, and Ice Age.
- His son Thomas Newman has scored over 50 films, including Finding Nemo, The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption, Fried Green Tomatoes, Road to Perdition, and American Beauty.
- His daughter Maria Newman is an eminent musician and composer.
- His nephew Randy Newman is noted not only for his film work but also for a series of popular albums as a singer/songwriter.
[edit] Partial filmography
Between 1930 and 1970, Alfred Newman wrote music for over 200 films of every imaginable type, including a score for the newsreel made from the World War II footage of the Battle of Midway. In addition, he acted as musical director of dozens of other movies. Among his major film scores (and adaptations of other composers' scores) are:
- 1930 - Whoopee! (adaptation) (songs by Walter Donaldson and Gus Kahn)
- 1931 - City Lights (musical director) (music by Charlie Chaplin)
- 1931 - Indiscreet (musical director)
- 1931 - Street Scene
- 1933 - State Fair (non-musical version)
- 1936 - Dodsworth
- 1937 - You Only Live Once
- 1937 - The Prisoner of Zenda (Academy Award nomination for Best Musical Score)
- 1938 - Alexander's Ragtime Band (Academy Award) (adaptation, the songs were by Irving Berlin)
- 1939 - Gunga Din
- 1939 - Wuthering Heights (Academy Award nomination for best musical score)
- 1939 - The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Academy Award nomination for Best Musical Score)
- 1940 - Vigil in the Night
- 1940 - The Mark of Zorro (Academy Award nomination for Best Musical Score)
- 1940 - Tin Pan Alley (Academy Award) (adaptation)
- 1941 - How Green Was My Valley
- 1942 - Roxie Hart
- 1943 - The Song of Bernadette (Academy Award)
- 1943 - My Friend Flicka
- 1944 - The Keys of the Kingdom (Academy Award nomination for Best Musical Score)
- 1945 - State Fair (adaptation only; this was the musical version by Rodgers and Hammerstein) (Academy Award nomination for Best Adaptation of a Musical Score)
- 1947 - Captain from Castile (Academy Award nomination for Best Musical Score)
- 1947 - Mother Wore Tights (adaptation) (Academy Award)
- 1947 - Gentleman's Agreement
- 1949 - Twelve O'Clock High
- 1950 - All About Eve
- 1950 - Panic In The Streets
- 1950 - The Big Lift
- 1952 - The Prisoner of Zenda
- 1952 - The Snows of Kilimanjaro
- 1952 - With a Song in My Heart (adaptation only; this musical contained songs by several composers, but Newman was not one of them) (Academy Award)
- 1953 - How to Marry a Millionaire (Alfred Newman appears conducting an orchestra in the prologue. The music is from Street Scene.)
- 1953 - The Robe
- 1953 - Call Me Madam (adaptation; the songs were by Irving Berlin) (Academy Award)
- 1954 - Demetrius and the Gladiators
- 1955 - A Man Called Peter
- 1955 - Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (Academy Award)
- 1956 - Anastasia
- 1956 - Carousel (adaptation, the songs were by Rodgers and Hammerstein)
- 1956 - The King and I (adaptation; the songs were by Rodgers and Hammerstein) (Academy Award)
- 1957 - April Love (adaptation)
- 1958 - A Certain Smile
- 1959 - The Diary of Anne Frank (Academy Award nomination for Best Musical Score)
- 1962 - State Fair (remake of musical version) (adaptation only; the songs were by Rodgers and Hammerstein, with additional songs by Richard Rodgers only)
- 1962 - How the West Was Won (Academy Award nomination for Best Musical Score)
- 1965 - The Greatest Story Ever Told (Academy Award nomination for Best Musical Score)
- 1967 - Camelot (adaptation; the songs were by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe) (Academy Award)
- 1968 - Firecreek
- 1970 - Airport
[edit] External links
- Alfred Newman at the Internet Movie Database
- Alfred Newman at Soundtrackguide.net
[edit] Notes
- ^ His birth year is commonly mistakenly given as 1901.
