Best Music, 1944

Awards presented March 15, 1945
The nominees were ...

(Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture) 
(Scoring of a Musical Picture) 
(Song) 
... when they should have been ... 
(Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture)
(Song)  
And the Oscar went to ... 
(Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture)
Max SteinerSince You Went Away.

A highly accomplished homefront drama, produced by David O. Selznick with his usual obsessive attention to detail (and to Jennifer Jones, who plays one of Claudette Colbert's daughters; the other is the teenage Shirley Temple). This was the thirteenth nomination and the  third Oscar for Steiner, who would receive eleven more nominations. 

(Scoring of a Musical Picture)
Morris StoloffCarmen DragonCover Girl.

If this colorful musical had a better story and more chemistry between its leads, Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth, it might have been a classic, considering that it has songs by Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin. The truth is, only the nominated "Long Ago and Far Away" is one of their top-drawer songs. After making his debut in For Me and My Gal in 1942, this was Kelly's first musical, made on a loanout to Columbia, which gave him free rein on the choreography, on which he was assisted by Stanley Donen. Kelly and Donen then returned to MGM and glory. Dragon achieved his greatest fame as a conductor and arranger at the Hollywood Bowl, and as a recording artist with the Bowl's symphony orchestra. His son, Daryl Dragon, was the Captain of the Captain and Tennille, stars of a hit TV variety show in the 1970s. This was his only Oscar. It was the first of three wins for Stoloff, who accumulated nineteen nominations. 

(Song)  
"Swinging on a Star" from Going My Way. Music by James Van Heusen; Lyrics by Johnny Burke.

Van Heusen changed his name from Edward Chester Babcock when he was in his teens and working as a radio announcer. He teamed with Burke in 1939, and their hit song for Tommy Dorsey, "Polka Dots and Moonbeams," launched Van Heusen's long association with Frank Sinatra. Paramount hired the team to write songs for Bob Hope and Bing Crosby's Road films. This was the first of four Oscars for Van Heusen -- the other three were for songs written with Sammy Cahn. It was Burke's only Oscar, although he was nominated two more times for songs written with Van Heusen, and once each for the lyrics to melodies by James V. Monaco and Arthur Johnston. 

... when it should have gone to ... 
(Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture)
David RaksinLaura

Once again, Darryl F. Zanuck's obsession with promoting Wilson led to a nomination for Alfred Newman's score, when the real hit of the year was Raksin's Laura theme and the variations on it that constitute his film score. The theme became a hit song, one of the most-recorded of all time, when Johnny Mercer's lyrics were added to it, but because the song wasn't actually in the film, it was ineligible for an Oscar. Raksin would receive two nominations, for Forever Amber and Separate Tables, but never won an Oscar. After a stint with Benny Goodman, Raksin went to Hollywood in 1935, where his first assignment was the score for Charles Chaplin's Modern Times. His work as a composer and orchestrator led to Newman's hiring him at 20th Century-Fox, and when Newman passed on the score for Laura, Raksin took on the job.   



(Scoring of a Musical Picture) 
Georgie StollMeet Me in St. Louis

Stoll, a former child prodigy on the violin, began working in Hollywood in 1935 and joined the MGM music department in 1937. He became a favorite conductor of Judy Garland's after working with her on The Wizard of Oz. He received nine nominations, but his only Oscar win was for scoring Anchors Aweigh.  



(Song) 
"Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year" from Christmas Holiday. Music and Lyrics by Frank Loesser.

Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly in Christmas Holiday. Sounds like a cheerful musical treat, doesn't it? But it's a dark melodrama about a woman who escapes from a miserable marriage and becomes a nightclub "hostess" (the Production Code's word for prostitute). It was produced by Durbin's husband-to-be, Felix Jackson, as a way of changing her image from the well-scrubbed girl next door of her earlier musicals. Robert Siodmak directs from a screenplay by Herman Mankiewicz loosely based on a novel by Somerset Maugham. The song is one of the best of Loesser's earlier works, before he went on to fame as a Broadway composer. The failure to nominate it is understandable: Durbin sings it with little expression -- she has other things on her mind -- in the sleazy nightclub setting. But she later recorded it in a more romantic mode, and it has since become a standard. 

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