Before there was John Williams there was Alfred Newman ...

Before there was John Williams there was Alfred Newman ... Dec 9, 2018 1:41:59 GMT jervistetch and spiderwort like this

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Post by petrolino on Dec 9, 2018 1:41:59 GMT

Alfred Newman (March 17, 1901 – February 17, 1970)

John Williams now has a staggering 51 Oscar nominations and he's still composing music for film. The American musical genius whose record he broke at the Academy is Alfred Newman, one of the most extraordinarily gifted figures in Hollywood history and a true pioneer. He was definitely the big dog.

'Alfred Newman (March 17, 1901 – February 17, 1970) was an American composer, arranger, and conductor of film music. From his start as a music prodigy, he came to be regarded as a respected figure in the history of film music. He won nine Academy Awards and was nominated forty-three times. In a career spanning more than four decades, Newman composed the scores for over 200 motion pictures. Some of his most famous scores include 'Wuthering Heights', 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame', 'The Mark of Zorro', 'How Green Was My Valley', 'The Song of Bernadette', 'Captain from Castile', 'All About Eve', 'Love is a Many Splendored Thing', 'Anastasia', 'The Diary of Anne Frank', 'How The West Was Won', 'The Greatest Story Ever Told', and his final score, 'Airport', all of which were nominated for or won Academy Awards. He is perhaps best known for composing the fanfare which accompanies the studio logo at the beginning of 20th Century Fox's productions.

Newman was also highly regarded as a conductor, and arranged and conducted many scores by other composers, including George Gershwin, Charlie Chaplin, and Irving Berlin. He also conducted the music for many film adaptations of Broadway musicals (having worked on Broadway for ten years before coming to Hollywood), as well as many original Hollywood musicals.

He was among the first musicians to compose and conduct original music during Hollywood's Golden Age of movies, later becoming a respected and powerful music director in the history of Hollywood. Newman and two of his fellow composers, Max Steiner (tagged "the father of film music" with eighteen Academy Award nominations) and Dimitri Tiomkin (nicknamed "dimi" with twenty-two Academy Award nominations), were considered the "three godfathers of film music".'

- Wikipedia

Captain From Castile (1947 - concert suite from his film music)

Dir : Alfred Newman

1- Prelude (2.55)
2- Catana, The Young Pleasant Girl (3.01)
3- Lady Luisa/Juan the Adventurer/Wonders of the New World (3.08)
4- Magic Ring/Fears of Persecution/Compassionate Priest (3.01)
5- Catalina's Love (3.07)
6- Conquest (3.05)

Alfred Newman was pictured on one of six 33¢ USA commemorative postage stamps in the Legends of American Music series, honoring Hollywood Composers, issued 21 September 1999. Issued in panes of 20 stamps. Others honored in the set were Dimitri Tiomkin, Max Steiner, Bernard Herrmann, Franz Waxman and Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

"I sought John Williams out after admiring two of his scores, 'The Reivers' and 'The Cowboys'. Throughout my childhood, even before I began making 8mm movies, I collected soundtrack albums. My heroes were Dimitri Tiomkin and Franz Waxman and Miklos Rozsa and Bernard Herrmann and on and on and on. I was a film score addict.
I knew he had done those great scores, and there were some others... like 'Fitzwilly', I think it kind of amazed him that I whistled the main theme from 'Fitzwilly', a film that most people haven't heard about, let alone the score. So John and I embarked on a great odyssey together."

- Steven Spielberg, The Film Music Society

"The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra will present the world premiere of David Newman's Songs of My Father tonight. Emmanuel Villaume, music director of the Spoleto Festival USA, will conduct, and pianist Stephen Hough will join the orchestra for Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor. Ravel's score for the ballet Mother Goose is also on the program, which will be reprised tomorrow night. Newman's work is an orchestral tribute to his father, composer Alfred Newman, who wrote more than 300 film scores: for films such as All About Eve and Love is a Many-Splendored Thing: over the course of his lifetime.
Newman is also known for his film scores, among them for the films The War of the Roses, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, The Nutty Professor, and 102 Dalmatians. His score for the animated film Anastasia received an Oscar nomination. In addition to his famous father, Newman has other composers in the family: his brother Thomas, his cousin Randy, and his uncles Lionel and Emil."

- Emily Quinn, Playbill

Alfred Newman at the piano

'Shock Treatment' - Alfred Newman \ namweN derflA - 'lautiR hsA'

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For context, here's a list of people with the most Oscar nominations in history, some of whom are still active, some of whom are not. It puts in perspective just how difficult it would be to even approach the figures set by some of the leaders in their respective fields.

Artists with the most Oscar nominations in history

Walt Disney (59) - producer
John Williams (51) - composer
Alfred Newman (43) - composer
Cedric Gibbons (39) - production designer
Edith Head (35) - costume designer
Sammy Cahn (26) - songwriter
Max Steiner (25) - composer
Woody Allen (23) - filmmaker
Victor Young (22) - composer
Kevin O'Connell (21) - sound mixer
Meryl Streep (21) - performer
Billy Wilder (21) - filmmaker

'Cedric Gibbons (March 23, 1890 – July 26, 1960) was an Irish-American art director and production designer for the film industry. He also made a significant contribution to motion picture theater architecture from the 1930s to 1950s. He is credited as the designer of the Oscar statuette in 1928. He was nominated 38 times for the Academy Award for Best Production Design and won the Oscar 11 times.'

- Wikipedia

'Edith Head (October 28, 1897 – October 24, 1981) was an American costume designer who won a record eight Academy Awards for Best Costume Design, starting with 'The Heiress' (1949) and ending with 'The Sting' (1973). Born and raised in California, Head managed to get a job as a costume sketch artist at Paramount Pictures, without any relevant training. She first acquired notability for Dorothy Lamour’s trademark sarong dress, and then became a household name after the Academy Awards created a new category of Costume Designer in 1948. Head was considered exceptional for her close working relationships with her subjects, with whom she consulted extensively, and these included virtually every top female star in Hollywood. After 43 years, she left Paramount for Universal, possibly because of her successful partnership with Alfred Hitchcock, and also adapted her skills for television.'

- Wikipedia

Disney does Edith Head