Showing posts with label George Gershwin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George Gershwin. Show all posts

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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Best Music, 1937

Awards presented March 10, 1938

The nominees were ... 
(Scoring) 
(Song) 
... when they should have been ... 
(Scoring) 
(Song) 
And the Oscar went to ... 
(Scoring) 
One Hundred Men and a Girl, Universal Studio Music Department, Charles Previn, head of department (no composer credit). Determined to find work for her unemployed musician father, Adolphe Menjou, and ninety-nine of his closest friends, Deanna Durbin persuades conductor Leopold Stokowski to hire them for a concert. It seems improbable today, when even Durbin's brand of light-classical music is caviar to the general, but this kind of improbable but enjoyable nonsense made her a star -- and in doing so helped rescue her studio, Universal, from financial disaster. Previn had been a theater orchestra conductor in New York before coming to Hollywood in 1936. He helped bring his cousin, André Previn, to Hollywood after his family was forced by the rise of the Nazis to leave Germany.

(Song) 
"Sweet Leilani" from Waikiki Wedding. Music and Lyrics by Harry Owens.
Bandleader and songwriter Owens, though born in Nebraska, began to specialize in Hawaiian music when he played the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu in 1934. "Sweet Leilani" was written for the birth of his daughter, and Bing Crosby insisted that it be included in Waikiki Wedding -- wisely, as it became a huge hit for Crosby. But the song's Oscar win set off something of a mini-scandal when it defeated George and Ira Gershwin's "They Can't Take That Away From Me," not only a much better song but also one that many considered, because it's a song about parting from a loved one, a kind of memorial to George Gershwin, who had died in 1937. The blame for the win by Owens's song fell on the voting participation, for the first time in the history of the awards, of all members of the film industry's guilds and unions -- an expansion of the potential electorate from a handful to twelve thousand people. The idea for the enfranchisement of so many people came from Frank Capra, the Academy's president, who was trying to erase the stigma of the Academy's early role as an anti-union organization. The participation of the members of the Screen Extras Guild in particular was blamed for the win by "Sweet Leilani," and the extras were henceforth excluded from voting for the best song, though they were allowed to vote in other categories until 1944, when voting was restricted to Academy members.  

... when it should have gone to ... 
(Scoring) 
Shall We Dance, RKO Radio Studio Music Department, Nathaniel Shilkret, musical director (score by George Gershwin).
Under the Academy rules, each studio or production company was allowed to nominate a film score for the award, and RKO chose as its nominee music director Roy Webb's score for Quality Street. But Gershwin's score was obviously superior, including not only his songs but also some incidental music, such as the promenade that became known as "Walking the Dog," which segued nicely into the song "Beginner's Luck." Shilkret, a composer and arranger under contract to RKO and later to MGM, is listed as the film's musical director, with Robert Russell Bennett, a celebrated arranger of Broadway musicals, as one of the score's arrangers.    


(Song)
"They Can't Take That Away From Me" from Shall We Dance. Music by George Gershwin; Lyrics by Ira Gershwin.
The Gershwins were relative latecomers to Hollywood -- Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, and Harold Arlen had already established themselves there. But with a Pulitzer Prize for Of Thee I Sing and the immense prestige of works like Porgy and Bess and "Rhapsody in Blue" behind them, they were eagerly sought after. George liked California, and might have settled there if he hadn't been struck down by a brain tumor in 1937. The brothers composed song scores for two other films, A Damsel in Distress and The Goldwyn Follies, but the one for Shall We Dance, perhaps because it featured Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, is the best. In a way, this song about parting lovers is appropriate: Astaire and Rogers had already begun to go their separate ways, with Astaire making A Damsel in Distress and Rogers starring in Stage Door. They would make three more films together: Carefree and The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle for RKO, and, several years later, The Barkleys of Broadway at MGM. It's worth noting that they don't dance to "They Can't Take That Away From Me" in Shall We Dance, but they remedy that in their reunion movie, The Barkleys of Broadway.    

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