Showing posts with label Alfred Newman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alfred Newman. Show all posts

Best Music, 1947

Awards presented March 20, 1948

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)  

This was the second of three Oscars for Rózsa, whom the Academy nominated this time as "Dr. Miklos Rozsa," honorific titles -- Rósza had studied at the University of Leipzig and the Leipzig Conservatory -- apparently mattering more than diacritical marks.

(Scoring of a Musical Picture)

Lobby card for Mother Wore Tights
You can tell from the title that it's yet another of 20th Century-Fox's string of period musicals. The studio apparently had a wardrobe full of bustles and boas and, yes, tights for stars like Alice Faye, June Haver, and in this case Betty Grable to wear while singing antique standards like "Put Your Arms Around Me, Honey" and "Swinging Down the Lane," plus some new songs by Josef Myrow and Mack Gordon. This is one of the better ones, with Grable and Dan Dailey as a vaudeville team trying to raise a family and keep their act together at the same time. It won Newman the fifth of his nine Oscars. Pleasant as the movie is, however, neither it nor the other mostly forgotten musicals among the nominees suggests that Hollywood was on the brink of another great era of musicals.  

 (Song) 
"Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah," from Song of the South. Music by Allie Wrubel, lyrics by Ray Gilbert. 

 This bright and cheery song gives no hint that Song of the South is the most controversial of all the movies Walt Disney produced during his lifetime, one of the few still unreleased in the United States on video. If you want to see it today, you'll have to track down one of the various foreign video releases. It's about young Johnny (Bobby Driscoll), who goes to live on an Old South plantation with his mother (Ruth Warrick) and grandmother (Lucile Watson). He's unhappy and determined to run away until Uncle Remus (James Baskett) tells him the stories of Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Fox, and Br'er Bear. The movie is undeniably executed with finesse: The animated versions of the Joel Chandler Harris tales are wonderful, and the live-action episodes are beautifully filmed by Gregg Toland -- one of his few movies in color. But Disney naïvely failed to anticipate how post-World War II black audiences would react to racial stereotyping and the sugar-coated portrayal of the plantation South. (The setting is supposedly post-Civil War, but the plantation is seemingly unscathed by the war. It's apparently near Atlanta, but Sherman must have marched around it.) One understands the Disney people's reluctance to court controversy today, and the fact that the movie is unsuitable for the young viewers it usually serves, but it would be nice to have a Blu-ray version, perhaps with extras dealing with the controversy and the realities of post-Civil War America. That way we wouldn't be deprived of Baskett's fine performance. He received an honorary award that made him the first African-American male to be honored by the Academy for acting.      

... when it should have gone to ... 
(Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture) 
Bernard Herrmann, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. 
Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
The widowed Lucy Muir (Gene Tierney) moves into a seaside cottage that's haunted by the ghost of Capt. Daniel Gregg (Rex Harrison). This charming sentimental romance could have gone overboard with too much whimsy or too many tears, but it manages a good balance, thanks to the leads, the engaging screenplay by Philip Dunne, the intelligent direction of Joseph L. Mankiewicz, the cinematography by Charles Lang, and most of all the atmospherically romantic score by Bernard Herrmann. The Academy's blind spot to Herrmann's music is once again glaringly apparent.  



 (Song) 
"Time After Time," from It Happened in Brooklyn. Music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Sammy Cahn.
Jimmy Durante and Frank Sinatra in It Happened in Brooklyn
An agreeable little musical with Frank Sinatra as an ex-GI who wants to stop being a shipping clerk and make it as a singer, Peter Lawford as the shy heir to a dukedom, and Kathryn Grayson as a schoolteacher who wants to sing opera. Jimmy Durante is the high school janitor Sinatra shares a room with. Nothing great here except for the byplay between Sinatra and Durante, but the stars are all pleasant, and if you've ever wanted to see Sinatra and Grayson sing the Don Giovanni-Zerlina duet "Là ci darem la mano," this is your chance. Styne and Cahn were unforgivably overlooked for this song, but they shared seven nominations and won once, for "Three Coins in the Fountain." 


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Best Music, 1943

Awards presented March 2, 1944
The nominees were ... 
(Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture)
(Scoring of a Musical Picture) 
... when they should have been ... 
(Scoring of a Musical Picture) 
And the Oscar went to ... 
(Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture) 

Newman's score is reserved and dignified, without relying on "heavenly choir" clichés. While Max Steiner's Casablanca score is more stirring, it leans heavily on other musical sources, such as the "Marseillaise" and Herman Hupfeld's "As Time Goes By." If what you're looking for is originality, Newman probably deserved the award, the third of his record-setting nine Oscars. 



(Scoring of a Musical Picture) 
Ray Heindorf, This Is the Army.

 Originally a hit Broadway revue, entirely performed by soldiers, that also toured military bases, the film version supplies a frame story about Jerry Jones (George Murphy), who writes a World War I revue called Yip, Yip, Yaphank, which was an actual show written, like This Is the Army, by Irving Berlin. Comes the next war, and it's the turn of his son, Johnny (Ronald Reagan), to write his own show. The spectacle of two future California Republican politicians playing father and son is probably enough to get some people's attention, but there's also Berlin himself singing "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning" and Kate Smith doing (what else?) "God Bless America." This was the second of Heindorf's three scoring awards.   

(Song) 
"You'll Never Know," from Hello, Frisco, Hello. Music by Harry Warren; Lyrics by Mack Gordon. 

 Social-climbing Barbary Coast saloon keeper John Payne and rising star singer Alice Faye fall in love in this stale musical trifle. The Oscar-winning song, performed by Faye in her most misty-eyed fashion, was a big hit because it expressed the sentiments of couples separated by the war. This was the second of Warren's three Oscars, but the only win out of nine nominations for Gordon. 

... when it should have gone to ... 
(Scoring of a Musical Picture) 
George Bassman, Roger Edens, Hall Johnson, Georgie Stoll, Cabin in the Sky. 

 We should know enough by now not to complain about the Academy's choices, especially when it comes to music, but how the hell it passed over this extraordinary musical in the nominations remains a mystery equal to the ones it later raised, when it failed to nominate any of the songs from A Hard Day's Night and Saturday Night Fever. At least it did take note of the great Arlen-Harburg song "Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe." The original Broadway version had songs by Vernon Duke and John Latouche, including the title song as well as "Taking a Chance on Love" and "Honey in the Honeycomb," though they were ineligible for the Oscars. But the film also had music performed by Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and His Orchestra, and John Bubbles. And the film had to be scored by someone. Looking at the IMDb credits, I've singled out Bassman, the orchestrator; Edens, the musical adapter; Johnson, the choral arranger; and Stoll, the musical director, as the likely overlooked nominees. 



(Song) 
"That Old Black Magic," from Star Spangled Rhythm. Music by Harold Arlen; Lyrics by Johnny Mercer.

 Part commercial for Paramount, part flag-waving "salute to the boys in blue," this all-star revue on a story about a studio gatekeeper (Victor Mature) pretending to be head of Paramount. Switchboard operator Betty Hutton tries to keep Moore's son, a sailor played by Eddie Bracken, from learning the truth. Meanwhile, the studio musters its resources to put on a show for the Navy. Those resources include Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and dozens of other stars, as well as directors Cecil B. DeMille and Preston Sturges, all playing themselves. With that much talent it's a wonder that they chose the bland Johnny Johnston to sing Arlen and Mercer's hit song. This was the year that Arlen had three Oscar nominees for best song, two of them with lyrics by Mercer. Arlen, though he racked up nine nominations, won only once, for "Over the Rainbow." Mercer, on the other hand, won four Oscars and was nominated nineteen times.
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Best Music, 1940

Awards presented February 27, 1941

The nominees were ... 
(Original Score) 
(Scoring) 
(Song) 
... when they should have been ... 
(Original Score) 
(Scoring) 
(Song) 
And the Oscar went to ... 
(Original Score) 

Out of place in its division, the music for Pinocchio should have been nominated and won for Scoring instead, as below.

(Scoring) 
Alfred Newman, Tin Pan Alley. 

 This Alice Faye-Betty Grable-John Payne musical was typical of 20th Century-Fox's 1940s musicals: handsome production values, pleasantly nostalgic early-20th century songs, second-rank stars. The sensational dancing of the Nicholas Brothers helps make up from the dullness of the story and the top-billed performers. It's a little hard to know what Newman did, exactly, to earn this, the second of his nine Oscars. The songs were arranged by Fletcher Henderson and the additional music was composed by Urban Thielmann. If Pinocchio had been properly placed in this category instead of "Original Score," Newman might have had one less statuette. But the work by Edens and Stoll on Strike Up the Band strikes me as a better choice among the actual nominees.  

(Song) 
"When You Wish Upon a Star," from Pinocchio; music by Leigh Harline, lyrics by Ned Washington.

Leigh Harline, Walt Disney
Ned Washington
Only the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals of the 1930s produced more memorable songs than the Disney animated films have, and they did it by hiring the finest songwriters of the day: Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, and George and Ira Gershwin. Disney did it with less-celebrated songwriters such as Harline and Washington. Pinocchio's song score was the first from Disney to be recognized by the Academy. Harline was a studio veteran, having joined Disney in 1932 as an arranger and moved up to head the music department. As a lyricist, Washington also has to his credits a string of nominated songs, and won another Oscar for the lyrics to Dimitri Tiomkin's High Noon theme song. But Harline and Washington are best remembered for what has become, via Cliff Edwards's ethereal falsetto, the Disney studios' theme song.  
Jiminy Cricket (voiced by Cliff Edwards) sings "When You Wish Upon a Star" in Pinocchio



... when it should have gone to ... 
(Original Score) 
Aaron Copland
There are many things wrong with the film version of Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, but Copland's score is not one of them. The play had freshness and immediacy: Performed without scenery and with only a few props, it draws a theater audience into creating Grovers Corners for itself, which is why it has not only become a staple of amateur companies and high schools but also receives frequent professional revivals. The movie, however, has conventionally realistic scenery, and an awful cop-out Hollywood ending undermines the poetry of the play's last act. Copland's harmonics evoke his music for the ballets Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, and Rodeo, all of which lend an atmosphere of "Americana"entirely appropriate to Wilder's play, restoring some of the freshness lost by the film version. Although it failed to receive an Oscar in either of the categories in which it was nominated, the score is still performed in an orchestral version, and recordings of it are frequently used as intermission music for theater productions.
William Holden as George and Martha Scott as Emily in Our Town



(Scoring) 
Leigh Harline, Paul J. Smith, Ned Washington, Pinocchio. 
Paul J. Smith
Though Harline, Smith, and Washington won for Original Score, their achievement was more properly for arranging and integrating the songs with the musical motifs of the film, which is what the music branch of the Academy presumably intended when they decided to divide the category. The confusion was about to be eliminated, however: Starting with the 1941 awards, the categories became "Musical Score of a Dramatic Picture" and "Scoring of a Musical Picture." But even that demanded further clarification, and with the 1942 awards, the former category became "Musical Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture." This was the sole Oscar for Smith, who had begun working as a composer at Disney on the Silly Symphonies in 1930 and remained with the studio for half a century.    


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Best Music, 1938

Awards presented February 23, 1939

 Some significant changes this year: First, the Oscar no longer went to the head of the studio music department, but to the composer or arranger. And the scoring Oscar was divided into "Original Score," meaning music composed specifically for a film, and "Scoring," meaning arrangement and orchestration of music from other sources -- but usually meaning the arrangement and coordination of the songs in a musical. This division will be renamed and revised for years to come. And then there was the song category, which remained much the same, except that, like the original score and scoring categories, nominations were submitted by the studios and the larger producing companies (e.g., Hal Roach, Selznick, Goldwyn). In each case, the studios were allowed only one nominee per category, which meant that, even if a studio produced several films with half a dozen great songs, it could nominate only one of them. That's why so many memorable songs of the 1940s received no Oscar nominations. The Goldwyn Follies, for example, included two classics by George and Ira Gershwin, "Love Walked In" and "Our Love Is Here to Stay," but the studio chose to nominate the forgettable (and forgotten) title song from The Cowboy and the Lady.   

 The nominees were ... 
(Original Score) 
(Scoring) 
... when they should have been ... 

(Song) 
And the Oscar went to ... 

This was Korngold's first win in his own right, the studio music department having carried off the Oscar for his score for Anthony Adverse. He would go on to be nominated two more times, for The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex and The Sea Hawk. 



(Scoring)
Alfred Newman, Alexander's Ragtime Band.

Alfred Newman
Newman received forty-five nominations and won nine Oscars, the most for a composer (though John Williams has him beat on nominations, with forty-eight). Newman was also the most-nominated member of the family with the most Oscar nominations: His brother Emil received one nomination, and his brother Lionel received eleven; his son David has one nomination and his son Thomas has eleven, and his nephew Randy has twenty. It's appropriate that Alfred's first Oscar was for a movie based on the music of Irving Berlin -- it has more than twenty of his songs in the score -- because Newman, who had been a Broadway conductor starting at seventeen, was brought to Hollywood by Berlin in 1930 to be musical director for the film Reaching for the Moon, for which Berlin had written the title song. Newman was snapped up by Sam Goldwyn, his primary employer until 1939, when he became music director for 20th Century-Fox. Among Newman's many compositions is one of the most familiar: the fanfare that accompanies the searchlights and art deco rooftops of the 20th Century-Fox logo.
Irving Berlin with the stars of Alexander's Ragtime Band: Alice Faye, Tyrone Power, and Don Ameche
(Song)
"Thanks for the Memory," from The Big Broadcast of 1938; music by Ralph Rainger, lyrics by Leo Robin.

 Bob Hope makes his feature film debut in this musical revue, set on an ocean liner, and, with Shirley Ross, sings the song that would become his theme song. Rainger was a staff composer at Paramount from 1930 until his death in a plane crash in 1942. Robin, also under contract to Paramount, often worked with Rainger, but also supplied the lyrics for other composers, including Jule Styne, with whom he wrote the songs for the Broadway hit Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, including "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend." 

 ... when it should have gone to ... 
(Song) 
"Our Love Is Here to Stay," from The Goldwyn Follies; music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin. 

 It was George Gershwin's last song, and the lyrics were added posthumously by Ira Gershwin, which would seem to make it a natural as a best-song nominee, especially after the controversy the previous year over the snubbing of Gershwin's "They Can't Take That Away From Me" in favor of "Sweet Leilani." In the film, Kenny Baker sings it on the radio as Adolphe Menjou puts the moves on Andrea Leeds. But for some reason the Goldwyn studio decided to nominate the title song from The Cowboy and the Lady, which nobody remembers. 
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