In Parts 1, 2, and 3 of this series of articles I explored soundtrack scores by Max Steiner, Franz Waxman, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Bernard Herrmann, Dimitri Tiomkin, and Miklós Rózsa. In this, the last installment (at least for now) I devote the entire article to the prime minister of Hollywood composers, Alfred Newman.
Oddly enough, commentators occasionally shortchange Newman in discussions of great movie composers, not a pretty state of affairs. To judge the man's significance and achievement, let's begin with this — and don't skip clicking the "Play" button; it's only a few seconds long:
Yep — the 20th Century Fox fanfare is Newman's composition. His track record is astonishing:
- 45 Oscar nominations
- 9 Oscar wins
- Nominated for Oscars twenty years in a row.
Newman presided over 20th Century Fox's music department for decades, and developed a synchronization system still in use today. His is a musical dynasty: two brothers (Lionel and Emil), two sons (David and Thomas), and a nephew (Randy) all provided major contributors to film music, and nephew Randy has enjoyed a highly successful career as a singer/songwriter as well.
Most reference sources on Newman restrict themselves to a partial filmography for the simple reason that a listing of his entire output is a bit overwhelming, but here it is anyway. The guy created original scores, pastiches (which combine original work with other materials), and served as music director for almost four decades worth of musical films, beginning with Eddie Cantor's Whoopee of 1930 and ending with the sodden Camelot in 1967.
He came about his abilities as a musical director quite honestly; a Broadway wunderkind in the 1920s, he served as conductor for shows by Gershwin, Berlin, Kern, and Rodgers & Hart.
In Hollywood, he had created a memorable movie score by 1931 (Street Scene), and in 1939 he scored no fewer than three major films — Gunga Din, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Wuthering Heights — the last of which offers what is to my mind the quintessential Hollywood love theme.
How Green Was My Valley is indubitably one of his masterpieces, masterfully combining Welsh folksong with original material with such subtlety that as a rule one is hard put to tell where one ends and the other leaves off. An out-of-print CD of the original soundtrack (offering some interesting stereo remixes) can be found without much difficulty. To my mind, this score is beyond ripe for a new complete recording by McNeely or Stromberg.
Hard to believe, but the wry glitter of All About Eve comes from the same composer, as does weepie Love is a Many-Splendored Thing — although the nauseating hit-parade theme song wasn't Newman's fault: Sammy Fain pockets the blame (and the profits) there.
Newman possessed a happy facility for scoring religious flicks, typically elevating sanctimonious dreck well above the smog layer of its own puerilities. Although the toga-tunes and woo-woo choruses of The Robe and The Greatest Story Ever Told are likely to make for rough sledding nowadays, Newman's ever-so-gentle scoring of The Song of Bernadette remains captivating listening, especially when decoupled from its film, a ludicrous potboiler about a sickly Brave Little Girl who is abducted by aliens in a spaceship experiences a series of gimcrack religious visions.
Trying to identify Newman's ultimate masterpiece poses an exercise in futility, but I'll try anyway. My vote goes to How the West Was Won in all its over-the-top Cinerama glory; Newman was probably the only composer in Hollywood who stood a chance of scoring the gargantuan thing without flaming out into terminal hyperbole. Combining well-known Anglo-American folk tunes (Greensleeves, Shenandoah, etc.) with square-hewn original materials, all wrapped up in opulent orchestrations, Newman's sprawling score not only serves its function admirably, but also provides a compelling listening experience in its own right.
The original soundtrack recording was a mainstay of LP collections in the vinyl days; nowadays a terrific CD remastering refreshes the audio and more than doubles the length. (Trivia note for nitpickers: the remastered CD mistakenly mixes the men's chorus one full beat ahead of the accompaniment during "Shenandoah" in the Overture, tsk tsk. We'll have to wait and see if the forthcoming Blu-Ray version of the film repeats the error.)
Newman's final original score was for the unintentionally campy airplane-disaster Airport, featuring driving, vital music that provides a dramatic force typically lacking in the actual film.
Newman's compositional fecundity guarantees abundant recordings. Links above refer to some of them. However, compilations abound as well.
- Charles Gerhardt and the National Philharmonic bless us with one of the best, which includes Captain from Castile, The Song of Bernadette, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Airport among its well-selected, superbly-played offerings. ArkivMusic offers it as an ArkivCD reprint.
- Paul Bateman and the City of Prague Philharmonic recorded a 2-CD set "Man of Galilee" (also downloadable), another terrific compilation.
- William Stromberg and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra give us another fine album suites from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, All About Eve, and Beau Geste on a bargain-priced Naxos CD.
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