Showing posts with label Georgie Stoll. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Georgie Stoll. Show all posts

Best Music, 1945

Awards presented March 7, 1946
The nominees were ... 
(Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture) 
(Scoring of a Musical Picture) 
And the Oscar went to ...  
(Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture) 

Miklos Rozsa with Oscar presenter Ginger Rogers
One of Alfred Hitchcock's less-successful films, marred by the meddling of producer David O. Selznick and his fascination with psychoanalysis: His own shrink, May Romm, receives screen credit as "psychiatric advisor." Among the mistakes was having Salvador Dalí design dream sequences that in the end had to be cut to about two minutes of screen time. Even Selznick's wife, Irene, called it "a terrible piece of junk." It's not quite as bad as that, since Hitchcock didn't take it nearly as seriously as the producer did, and it has eminently watchable stars, Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman. This was the first of three wins out of sixteen nominations for Rozsa, who began his career as a screen composer with fellow Hungarian Alexander Korda in London in 1935, and moved to Hollywood in 1940. Selznick and Hitchcock wanted Bernard Herrmann to score Spellbound, but he was unavailable. Rozsa made use of the theremin, an early electronic instrument, in his score, and for the one he did for The Lost Weekend.   



(Scoring of a Musical Picture)
Georgie Stoll, Anchors Aweigh. 

 Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra play sailors who fall for the same woman, Kathryn Grayson, with predictable consequences for their friendship. Grayson's nephew is played by nine-year-old Dean Stockwell. The songs by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn are pleasant, and Kelly and Sinatra make an enormously appealing team. The choreography is by Kelly, and Sinatra proves to be a surprisingly good dancer. The movie, directed by George Sidney, was Kelly's first big hit for MGM. After his 1942 debut in For Me and My Gal, the studio seemed to be unable to find anything for him to do, so it loaned him out to Columbia for Cover Girl, in which he displayed his ingratiating athletic style of dancing for the first time on screen. Anchors Aweigh is lightweight stuff compared to later Kelly films such as An American in Paris and Singin' in the Rain, and it features MGM's usual tedious appearance by pianist Jose Iturbi, but its highlight is the wonderful sequence that was suggested by Stanley Donen, in which Kelly dances with Jerry, the mouse from MGM's Tom and Jerry cartoons. This was the only Oscar for Stoll, who had been a music director and conductor for MGM   
since 1937. 


(Song)
"It Might As Well Be Spring," from State Fair. Music by Richard Rodgers; Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II.

A musical remake of the 1933 film version of the novel by Phil Stong, directed by Walter Lang from a screenplay by Hammerstein, starring Jeanne Crain, Dana Andrews, Dick Haymes, and Vivian Blaine. This is the only original film musical written by Rodgers and Hammerstein, though each had collaborated with other lyricists or composers on other films. In addition to the Oscar-winning song, the score also included "It's a Grand Night for Singing" and "That's for Me." Crain's voice was dubbed by Louanne Hogan, and although Andrews had a trained voice and once thought of becoming an opera singer, he is dubbed in his only brief vocal moment by Ben Gage. This was Rodgers's only Oscar nomination and win; Hammerstein had already won for "The Last Time I Saw Paris" from Lady Be Good and received three more nominations.  

... when it should have gone to ... 
(Song) 
"Accentuate the Positive," from Here Come the Waves. Music by Harold Arlen; Lyrics by Johnny Mercer.

 Betty Hutton plays twins -- one smart, one silly -- who have a nightclub act but decide to do their part during the war by joining the Waves. The smart twin falls in love with Bing Crosby, and the silly twin tries to break them up by pretending to be her sister. Goofy nonsense, directed by Mark Sandrich, that is now remembered almost solely for Arlen and Mercer's classic, introduced by Crosby and Sonny Tufts in a blackface number. The minstrelsy is kind of unforgivable, but if you can tolerate it, just listen to Crosby demonstrate why he was one of the greatest jazz singers of all time. The accompanying dance number, choreographed by Danny Dare, is pretty good too. 

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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 Steiner, Since 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 Stoloff, Carmen Dragon, Cover 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 Raksin, Laura. 

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 Stoll, Meet 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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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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