UNOFFICIAL
W E B S I T E
HOLLYWOOD GOLDEN AGE COMPOSER
1900 - ALFRED ALAN NEWMAN - 1970
REMEBERING COMPOSER (1900-1970)
AL NEWMAN
ON L'APPELÉ AUSSI
"PAPPY"
UNE GRANDE FAMILLE
A biographical portrait, including
source notes By
N. William Snedden
Preface
The following precise on Alfred Newman’s life and career builds upon, and replicates to a degree, biographical information from two main sources :
1 - Ken Darby “Alfred Newman Biography and Filmography,” Film Music Notebook, vol. 2, no. 2, 1976 (9 pages);
2 - Fred Steiner’s 1981 Ph.D thesis “The Making of an American Film Composer: A Study of Alfred’s Newman’s Music in the First Decade of the Sound Era” (441 pages) which is freely available to read online at
Photo 1 Source Wikipedia - Photographe inconnu — National Magazine, Vol. 41
Photo 2 tirée de l'album Alfred Newman Family - GENI SOURCE
VISITEZ L'ALBUM DE FAMILLE NEWMAN SUR
Composer and musicologist Fred Steiner (no relation to Max Steiner) died aged 88 in 2011 and had been working for a number of years on a biography of Newman based upon research conducted for his doctoral dissertation.(1) Fred points out in his thesis that the Ken Darby article cited above was in fact an earlier “official” studio biography of Alfred Newman prepared ca 1959 by Newman’s secretary at 20th Century-Fox, Jack Tobin.
Responding to a request for biographical information following Newman’s death, Darby updated the Tobin document and sent this in to the magazine editor. The article subsequently published in 1976 under Darby’s name remains one of the most important, containing as it does significant research leads and data, although completely erroneous in places, e.g. Newman’s year of birth is given as 1901, and his year of death as 1967. Hugo Friedhofer’s AFI Oral History from 1974 is another equally important source on Newman,(2) together with a number of his letters in archive at Brigham Young University.
Alfred Newman’s plaque in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Glendale, Los Angeles County, California, gives his year of birth as 1901 which is contradicted by the Twelfth Census of the United States for New Haven City which clearly records his birth date as “March 1900 age 2/12” i.e. age two months as of June 4, 1900. Alfred’s year of birth is also given as 1900 in Musical America, November 11, 1916, 45.
The confusion over his birth year and age at death persists today in many film text books and music dictionaries, and stems all the way back to an article published in The New Haven Sunday Register, May 24, 1908, which reports in advance a music program to be held on June 1 by pupils of the Italian Conservatory of Music featuring “the six year old son of Mr. and Mrs.
Michael Newman of 287 Cedar Street. Master Newman has been under the instruction of the piano teacher of the school, Mr. Guido Hocke Caselotti, but three months and his precocity in music has astonished mature musicians.” Alfred would have been aged 8 at this time. No doubt a few years were deducted in order to promote the precocious child. The present essay attempts to correct such anomalies and wherever possible to provide full source notes substantiating the chronology presented.
He was the inventor of the lush Hollywood string sound, helped to create the modern sound system for synchronising music scores with film, and one of the most eminent music directors. “Alfred Newman. Remember this name; it is probably destined to become an illustrious one.” So opened an article published in Musical America during November 1916 which went on to describe the “Russian-Hebrew” boy from New Haven as a wunderkind who appeared in knickerbockers making his New York professional debut in a joint recital with the soprano Ruth Helen Davis at the Comedy Theater in Manhattan, November 5, 1916(3) , a concert sponsored by the Music League of America.(4) The article also notes that “several years ago John C. Freund, detected the budding genius of the lad, and quietly took practical steps to encourage the talent.” Freund, editor of Musical America, took a very close, almost fatherly, interest in Newman’s early career and a year later wrote to him during a tour in Milwaukee at the Majestic addressing him as “My Dear Little Friend.” In the letter he admonishes Alfred for thinking playing in vaudeville is degrading and counsels: “Pluck up your heart! Go about like a man, and show that you are a man by stopping talking and writing like a fool, for there is nothing more foolish than to carry with one, especially when one is young, an atmosphere of discouragement.”(5) The National Magazine November 1914 provides an equally rare and precious contemporary insight into the boy genius and his parents, as conveyed by Alfred’s benefactress, the American author, poet and amateur harpist, Ella Wheeler Wilcox (6) :
“I am not interested in him, merely because he renders the great masters marvellously and even composes wonderfully, but rather because he has such a rare and interesting nature. His father is a poor Russian fruit dealer, in New Haven, Connecticut, and Alfred is the oldest of eight children. The mother is a very beautiful woman, and both parents show good blood and breeding despite their humble position and lack of means. The family has made every possible sacrifice in order to educate this boy in music, and he has a most deep-seated sense of ‘noblesse oblige.’ His whole desire for success seems based upon his anxiety to make his parents happy and to repay them for what they have done for him. He is a beautiful looking boy, modest, gentle, unassuming, and wholly unspoiled.”
Alfred Newman was without question a rare talent and, as can be deduced from the above citations, his career was launched thanks largely to women of the League of America and philanthropists such as Mrs. Wilcox.
Born March 17 1900, into a poor family, Alfred Alan Newman was the eldest of ten children, six other boys and three girls:
Robert Vivian Newman (1903-1982)
George (“Yale”) Newman (1904-1987) (8)
Stella Newman (1906-1990) married Irving Fingerhart from Hungary
Marcus Lester Newman (1908-1980)
Emil Newman (1909-1984)
Sylvia (“Tibby”) Newman (1912-2015) married Buford Malcolm Tune from Texas
Irving George (“Doc”) Newman (1913-1990)
Lionel Newman (1916-1989)
Sydell Newman (1917-) married Ernest D. Epstein from Iowa
Reuven Kosakoff, Isadore Israel Koskoff, Luba Newman, Alice Alderman (Koskoff), Rossa (Shapiro)
Koskoff, Robert Vivian Newman, Michael Newman, Jr, Stella Nahum, Yale Lewis Koskoff,
Bella Ferber (Koskoff), Alfred Newman, Hattie Koskoff (Tachs)
Tirée de l'album Alan Bruce Newman's photos
The New Haven Township Census, dated April 18, 1910, lists seven members of the Newman family residing at 287 Cedar Street, including Alfred’s father Michael Newman (original name Nemorofsky [sic]), born Elisavetgrad (Elizabethgrad) in central Ukraine, Russia ca 1874.
He was a fruit dealer for a local produce company, and his wife Luba Kosakoff, a Cantor’s daughter, also from Elisavetgrad, born ca 1883. Alfred’s grandmother had been witness to a pogrom in Russia, according to Hugo Friedhofer, and because of that, later in life, Alfred deliberately avoided writing music that in any way sounded Jewish.(9) Luba’s father Lewis Kosakoff and her older brother Isadore Israel Kosakoff were in the fruit business along with Michael.
The 1920 Population Census for New York City, shows the entire Newman family of twelve people, (10) including Alfred’s youngest sister Sydell (spelled ‘Sadel’ on the census), aged 2 years and 6 months. Michael’s year of immigration is given as 1890, with Luba following five years later.(11)
All siblings were from New Haven, Connecticut, with the exception of Sydell who was born in New York State, after the family moved to New York City at the end of 1916. (12) Luba’s sister Belle Kosakoff (1884-1935), who appears with the Newman family on the 1900 New Haven City Census, was a soprano and pupil of the New York vocal teacher Giorgio M. Sulli. She performed at concerts in New Haven,(13) on one occasion assisted on piano by Alfred.(14)
Luba also had a niece Stella Nahum née Kosakoff, a piano teacher and sister of the composer and pianist Reuven Kosakoff whose name commonly features in music dictionaries and composition catalogs from 1929 till 1941. (15) Reuven changed his name from Ivan R. Koskoff [sic] to Reuven V. Kosakoff and was a music graduate from Yale in 1915.
Alfred was exposed to a family with a love of music, in particular from the Kosakoff side as intimated, and grew up in a city rich in music and tradition, New Haven, home to the Ivy League Yale University. His mother would sing to him Russian folk songs and popular arias which she learned by ear and played on her mandolin (Figure 2). Luba decided her children should learn music, starting with the oldest boy.
Most published sources state that she arranged for Alfred to take $0.25 weekly piano lessons from about the age of six from a house painter acquaintance in New Haven who had previously studied piano in Russia. Luba also prevailed upon a lady friend living just outside town to allow Alfred to practice piano away from home for one-and-a-half hours daily after school. The woman in question was most probably Mrs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, cited above, who lived at “The Breakers”, a bungalow in Short Beach, Branford to the east of New Haven.(17)
Alfred and his mother had to walk a 10 mile roundtrip to these practice sessions. Renting a piano eventually became affordable, and Alfred could practice at home on an Emerson Victorian Oak upright. Alfred’s earliest known music teacher was, as stated in the opening preface, Guido Hocke-Caselotti, (18) a pianist at the Italian Conservatory of Music in New Haven run by Giorgio M. Sulli, Belle Kosakoff’s vocal teacher. Caselotti, formerly an organist and choir master in New Haven, who had succeeded Sulli at St. Michael’s Roman Catholic Church ca 1909, taught Alfred piano for about 3 years (ca 1908-11).
During April 1911 Alfred played Beethoven’s Pathétique sonata at Harmonie Hall in New Haven, and in the same program Caselotti accompanied his pupil in Mozart’s C minor concerto (KV 491). Around 1913 Alfred secured a scholarship thanks to the pianist and composer Professor Edward A. Parsons, (19) formerly director of the New Haven Conservatory of Music, (20) who at the turn of the century had teaching studios in both New Haven and New York. (21) Guided by Parsons, and over the course of the next three years (1911-13), Alfred played many concerts throughout Connecticut, in New Haven, Waterbury, Bridgeport, Wallingford, Hartford, Stratford, New London, saving for his musical education which advanced to a higher level in New York City commencing during the winter of 1914 thanks to the patronage of Mrs. Wilcox and several other people of note.
Everard Judson Thompson, a graduate of Yale, who had heard Alfred play at a special recital to help raise funds for his continued musical education, arranged for the boy to audition for the Polish teacher Sigismond Stojowski, composer and pedagogue and a former pupil of Ignacy Jan Paderewski. Straight away he was offered a scholarship at the Von Ende School of Music “The Foremost Musical Institution of America.”(22) Alfred commuted for two years from New Haven to 44 West 85th St. on what was colloquially called the “Banker’s Limited”, the train conductor allowing the boy to make two round trips weekly to New York without punching his ticket (so the legend goes).
There Alfred won the school’s silver medal in 1915.(23) In New York his teachers in sight-reading, harmony, counterpoint and composition were divided between George Wedge and the American composer Rubin Goldmark, nephew of the Hungarian born Viennese composer Karl Goldmark.(24) Musical America reports the annual school concert held on June 7, 1915 at the Astor Gallery of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York organised by the school’s director and patron Herwegh Von Ende. Alfred played Mendelssohn’s Scherzo in E minor and Beethoven’s Six Variations in G major Wo O77, both works receiving a “storm of applause.”(25) Paderewski, present on this occasion, joined in the clapping, acknowledging the boy’s virtuoso playing. One year later, Alfred won the coveted gold medal for the most gifted student at the Von Ende School.
Many articles detail Newman’s progress with the piano during 1916. On May 19 at the Aeolian Hall, Alfred was again among the group of Stojowksi’s pupils performing in front of Paderewksi at a benefit concert in aid of the Polish Victims Relief Fund. (26) Reports make note of the bravura and display of power evident in his playing of Moszkowski’s virtuoso piece En Automne. At the school’s year end concert, June 5, 1916, Alfred’s performance of Chopin’s Scherzo in B minor and the Liszt Paraphrase on Verdi’s ‘Rigolletto’ “astonished the audience.”(27)
Among the listeners were Georges Barrère,(28) founder of the Barrère Ensemble, Dr. Karl Muck, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Count and Countess Rittberg, and Baroness Rottenthal, who at this time was a dancer associated with the Metropolitan Opera. During July 1916 Alfred performed in a musicale at the residence of Ella Wheeler Wilcox in Short Beach, a recital arranged by her friend, the upcoming playwright and soprano, Ruth Helen Davis.(29) As noted above, Davis shared Newman’s professional debut in New York a few months later during November. In her autobiography The Worlds and I, published ca 1918, Ella Wheeler Wilcox describes Ruth Helen Davis of New York thus: “Endowed with beauty and musical talents, she was then [1916] devoting her time to French translations and dramatic literature, with the hope of becoming a playwright. In all my experience with humanity, I have never encountered another human being who possessed so much ambition for achievement and so much energy and determination to succeed.”(30) Both ladies collaborated on a play titled “The Victory”, Davis supplying the plot and Wheeler the poetic dialogue.
Ruth Helen Davis also authored the play “The Guilty Man” from Francois Coppee’s novel which ran at the Astor Theatre in New York during 1916. Both women were no doubt very busy at this time planning for the year ahead given New Haven had been selected for the National Convention of Musicians in 1917.(31)
Figure 2 :
Left Alfred Newman’s mother Luba aka Silia Newman née Kosakoff (1883-195480) playing her mandolin. She and other women such as the poet, philanthropist and harpist Ella Wheeler Wilcox 81 (right) nurtured Alfred’s musical talent and ambitions. (Acknowledgements: https://www.geni.com/people/Luba-Newman-Koskoff/276726 & The Musician, vol. XXI, no. 6, June 1916, Oliver Ditson Co., Boston, Mass.)
While still attending school in New York, and from about April 1916,(32) Alfred started to earn a living employed as a pianist at the Strand picture theatre on Broadway run by B. A. Wolfe whose program commonly entailed solo acts, a silent feature by the Famous Player’s Company, a comedy cartoon and subsidiary features such as the ‘Strand Topical Review’, ‘Strand Fashion Pictorial’ and ‘Zoological Series’.(33) Alfred accompanied vaudeville stars on stage such as Grace La Rue and the Corsican born American actress and singer Irène Bordoni, wife of the songwriter E. Ray Goetz who wrote the music for Hitchy-Koo.
Miss La Rue engaged Alfred after hearing him play piano on January 26, 1917 at one of Manhattan’s best restaurants, Reisenweber’s on Columbus Circle 56th Street. She toured the Keith Circuit with him as her accompanist, for example, performing at B. F. Keith’s Providence, Rhode Island, where the likes of Houdini performed.(34) Alfred next joined the cast of the Raymond Hitchcock revue Hitchy-Koo which tried out in Atlantic City and Wilmington, Delaware during May 1917.(35) The show, in which Miss La Rue played a leading role as “Gladys Brown” and Alfred was billed as “Handel Keys”,(36) finally opened on Broadway June 7 after a delay of 3 days. It is worth noting here Hitchcock was supposedly acquainted with the poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox cited above and had promised her years before that if he ever owned a show he would give the wonder boy from New Haven a position.(37) Alfred first learned the rudiments of conducting during the second season of Hitchy-Koo from the music director William M. Daly Jr. (1888-1936), a Harvard graduate, later a close friend of George Gershwin who would give the composer his ideas for scoring Rhapsody in Blue.
Alfred conducted many shows in and around New York, honing his conducting skill during matinees and on tour with the company, before being re-engaged for Hitchy-Koo of 1918. His movements during the Spring of 1919 can be traced from membership records of the American Federation of Musicians and reports published in The International Musician. For example, Alfred, billed as “The Boy Pianist”, accompanied the Broadway cafe ballroom dancer Joan Sawyer, formerly hostess in the Paradise room at Reisenweber’s restaurant. The Palace act closed at the end of February. (38) May Irwin’s Raising the Aunty, aka The Water’s Fine, was Alfred’s first experience in full command of the pit (Poughkeepsie NY, March 17, 1919). This engagement followed a recommendation from Maurice de Packh, Harms’ co-orchestrator of Hitchy-Koo (1918) with Frank Saddler. Alfred next conducted Sunshine in Chicago, followed by The Sweetheart Shop,(39) and Dere Mabel,(40) whose assistant stage manager, 20 year-old George Cukor, was fired for incompetence. These shows were unsuccessful and most failed to reach Broadway. As Newman himself spoke of this period: “I didn’t get paid for weeks.
All I ever got was enough to pay my hotel bill and move on with the company to the next town.”(41) However, Alfred was by now the country’s youngest ever musical director whose heart was set on becoming “a serious symphonic conductor.”(42) During May 1920 he was hired to conduct The George White Scandals revue (modelled after the Ziegfeld Follies) on the recommendation of the show’s composer George Gershwin whom Newman had first met sometime around 1916 when Gershwin was a song-plugger at the music publisher’s Jerome H. Remick.(43) Throughout the ‘Roaring Twenties’ Alfred worked as musical director with all of the great Broadway composers: Jerome Kern, Harry Ruby and Bert Kalmer, the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, Vincent Youmans, Sigmund Romberg, and with many of the biggest show stars of the time, including Al Jolson (Big Boy, 1925), and Fred & Adele Astaire (Funny Face, 1927). Newman’s principal Broadway credits are summarised in Figure 3.
Alfred’s first film as music director was the Rudy Vallee two-reel comedy short Campus Sweethearts (formerly a vaudeville act written and produced by Charles Levison) made at the Gramercy RCA studios in New York between July and August 1929. Ginger Rogers is credited on the cast with an ensemble called together “under the leadership of Alfred Newman, conductor of the ‘Hold Everything’ orchestra.”(44) At the beginning of 1930, whilst conducting Heads-Up, Alfred received an invitation from Irving Berlin to go to Hollywood to arrange and direct Berlin’s first musical-comedy film Reaching for the Moon for Joseph M. Schenck at United Artists,(45) originally titled Lucky Break. Reluctant to leave New York, Alfred obtained a leave of absence from his employer’s, Alex Aarons & Vinton Freedley, before heading west February 12, 1930.(46) Meantime his brother Emil took over the baton for Heads-Up.(47) Work on Reaching for the Moon was heavily delayed and in order to keep Alfred on salary producer Joseph Schenck loaned him out to Sam Goldwyn.
After conducting the Ziegfeld & Goldwyn production Whoopee (starring Eddie Cantor), Friml’s music for Arthur Hammerstein’s The Lottery Bride (aka Bride 66), and the romantic comedy One Heavenly Night, United Artists exercised its option whereby Alfred took over as their head of music from Hugo Riesenfeld whose contract expired in September 1930.(48) Alfred’s next task was to conduct and supervise what was left of Berlin’s music in Reaching for the Moon.(49)
Alfred’s first successful film as composer came the following year, Street Scene. The main title was later adapted into an orchestral show piece titled “Sentimental Rhapsody”, the curtain raiser to How to Marry a Millionaire, starring Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall, and which he conducted on-screen in order to promote the four-track stereo splendour of 20th Century Fox’s wide screen process CinemaScope. Alfred also composed the Selznick International Pictures Fanfare and, in 1933, whilst he was general musical director for Sam Goldwyn, the 20th Century Pictures Trademark Fanfare to mark the formation of Darryl F. Zanuck’s production company which shared the United Artists Studios with Goldwyn. In 1935, following the merger between 20th Century Pictures and Fox films, he made a new recording, famous today as the Trademark 20th Century-Fox Fanfare.
With the introduction of CinemaScope in 1953 (The Robe),(50) the fanfare was extended, and added, for the first time, to River of No Return (release date April 29, 1954). Newman resigned from Goldwyn’s music department in December 1938, and thereafter freelanced for a number of years (Gunga Din, Wuthering Heights, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Bluebird). At the end of 1939 he succeeded Louis Silvers as musical director of 20th Century-Fox studios,(51) where he assembled a virtuoso orchestra, including highly accomplished soloists such as Louis Kaufman.(52)
He retained this position until his resignation in 1960 forced largely by illness.(53) It would be a gross understatement to say the job of overseeing all musical arrangements for the studio’s film releases was demanding. Alfred worked fervidly as musical director, conductor, composer, executive, and mentor, nurturing and furthering the careers of many composers: David Raksin, Bernard Herrmann, Alex North, Jerry Goldsmith, and John Williams. Hugo Friedhofer was another whom Newman assigned his first complete score and on-screen credit: The Adventures of Marco Polo in 1938: “God bless him, everybody in the business owes something to Alfred.”(54) Newman was involved with 254 films during his career(55) - “many too many” he once said.(56)
At Twentieth Century-Fox he was also involved in a collaborative capacity, preparing themes, composing key sequences, and delegating scores to the studio’s prodigious musical staff, such as Cyril Mockridge, David Buttolph, and David Raksin. He was the recipient of nine Academy Awards, being nominated a total of 45 times (43 for best original score).
This distinction was second only to Walt Disney’s achievement of 26 Oscars, until finally surpassed in 2005 by one of Alfred’s young apprentices at 20th Century-Fox, John Williams (his nominations/awards now pass 50). Alfred Newman’s Oscar tally includes: Alexander’s Ragtime Band (1938), Tin Pan Alley (1940), The Song of Bernadette (1943), Mother Wore Tights (1947), With a Song in My Heart (1952), Call Me Madam (1953), Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), The King and I (1956) and Camelot (1967).
Alfred was so nervous collecting his fifth Academy Award in 1952 that he walked off stage leaving Oscar behind! When working in the confines of the sound stage or with children (e.g. conducting the Merenblum Orchestra with Heifetz in They Shall Have Music aka Melody of Youth, 1939 (57)) he was perfectly at ease, but in public he got extremely nervous, according to Hugo Friedhofer.
Lawrence Morton describes Newman’s style of film composition as “essentially operatic - lyrical, dramatic and highly expressive ... His romantic melodies are typified by leaps – sixths, sevenths and ninths – and they are frequently harmonized in thirds and sixths.”(58) This, coupled with Louis Kaufman’s playing as concertmaster, was the source of much of the lushness of his style. Alfred was particularly renowned for his sensitive and distinctive use of high strings (vibrato and portamento), such as can be heard in the main theme of The Song of Bernadette.
His most celebrated film scores include: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), Wuthering Heights (1939), How Green Was My Valley (1941), Captain from Castile (1947), The Robe (1953), The Diary of Anne Frank (1958-(59)) and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1964-65), the latter two films directed by George C. Stevens Senior. Alfred visited the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam during pre-production and at lunch with Anne Frank’s father told him that what touched him most about the diary of the thirteen-year old girl was its “spirituality” and that was exactly what he wanted to convey in the music.59 For The Greatest Story Ever Told, Alfred spent about 8 months composing the music against the script, without seeing much of the film, of which about one-third had to be re-written because Stevens changed the continuity and re-shot sequences.(60)
Editing allegedly went on and on, and Stevens also advanced the scoring date. Finishing the music on time proved a physical impossibility so Alfred requested some assistance from Hugo Friedhofer and his long-time associate and collaborator Ken Darby. Fred Steiner was also enlisted. David Raksin, who joined Newman’s team at 20th Century-Fox in 1935, collaborating with Charlie Chaplin on the music for Modern Times, once remarked jokingly about Newman’s religious epic films: “After a while, Al was heard to complain that when he was dressing for work his collar automatically went on backwards, like that of a cleric.”(61) Despite his great success and achievements, composing never came easily. When out driving one day Alfred confessed to his friend Ken Darby: “I’m terrified every time I undertake a new film score. I sit and stare at the blank manuscript paper, pondering the unfathomable depth of my dry well. Finally, in pure desperation, before I can run and hide, I reach out and jab a quarter-note onto the page. It is not that necessity is the mother of invention – it’s more like insecurity being the father of action!”(62) David Raksin’s observation that Alfred was “more instinctive than profound musically” is reinforced by authors William Darby and Jack Du Bois who say on the negative side: “at his worst, he is guilty of overusing a main theme so that it loses dramatic precision and becomes simply a general signature for an entire film”.(63) These are hard-hearted words for a man who had to deal with the pressure of supplying music for up to fifty-four feature films in a given year! Edward B. Powell, Newman’s orchestral arranger for 26 years (1934-60), recollects when there were in total twenty-seven orchestrators engaged over one weekend working in parallel on three major musicals and four dramatic scores for Twentieth Century-Fox, including The Blue Bird (1940) scored jointly by Newman, David Raksin and Ray Heindorf.(64) Late in life Alfred lectured in Los Angeles (October 1968) on the many technical challenges involved adapting stage musicals for the big screen. For example, finding suitable voice doubles was a recurring problem he had to deal with. Marni Nixon doubled for Deborah Kerr in The King and I, Gene Merlino dubbed Franco Nero in Camelot, and Bill Lee was the singing voice for John Kerr in South Pacific.
He also recounts in the lecture how three sound stages at Fox were used simultaneously for recording a Rita Moreno number with chorus on The King and I, all linked by closed circuit TV.(65) There were sixteen percussionists playing vibraphones, marimbas, drums, etc. on one stage, a chorus of eight Siamese women on another, and Jerome Robbins’ cast of dancers in a third studio across the street with Rita narrating the ballet story “The Small House of Uncle Thomas.”
Alfred Newman’s original 20th Century-Fox Trademark Fanfare © Fox Music, Inc.
Group photo taken in 1935 during the recording sessions for Modern Times at United Artists studio. Left to right: Charles Dunworth, Alfred Newman, Charlie Chaplin, David Raksin, Paul Neal (recording engineer) and Edward B. Powell. Dunworth, a violist in the studio orchestra, helped devise a visual cue synchronisation method for film soundtrack recording at 20th Century-Fox, known today as the ‘Newman system’. A vertical line swept across the screen. When this intersected the right hand border a light would flash indicating the cue.93
(Photo by Autrey in “Life with Charlie” by David Raksin, The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, Summer 1983, 239.)94
However, as a conductor, there is no question Alfred Newman was greatly admired and highly esteemed. Ladies sitting in the front row during his early years working on Broadway were reported to sigh as he directed.(66) In 1926, during the run of Criss-Cross, Fritz Reiner was so impressed by Newman’s conducting that he invited him to guest conduct the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in a concert which included Dukas’ Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, plus other popular classics by Wagner, Weber, Chabrier, Rimsky-Korsakov and Johann Strauss I. The debut concert took place in the Cincinnati Music Hall, December 12, 1926, and was well received by critics.(67)
After moving to Los Angeles he was a guest conductor (one of seven conductors) at the Hollywood Bowl in 1932,(68) and the following year conducted for the first time at the Philharmonic Auditorium.(69) He later conducted at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus in the annual Los Angeles International Music Festival (founded in 1947 by Franz Waxman). Composer and conductor John Williams, who began his film career playing piano during the late fifties in Newman’s 20th Century- Fox orchestra, spoke of the pre-eminence of Newman to Page Cook: “he was a natural autocrat, correcting musicians in an almost fatherly way, stern but full of compassion, not cutting as many conductors do.”(70) And to music writer and broadcaster Christopher Palmer, Williams recalled: “he had a wonderfully expressive technique, a great feeling for nuance and shading. To watch him in action was often to be reminded of Sir John Barbirolli.
He could easily have made a career as a concert conductor if he’d wanted to, but on the other hand his brand of musicianship was much needed in Hollywood. He was especially adept at shaping music to the rhythm of a picture, moulding and mixing it in with the grain and texture of a sequence.”(71) David Raksin too recollects: “There was in his conducting style a mixture of sentiment and romantic turbulence, of precision and passionate intensity that is next to impossible to duplicate.”(72)
Alfred loved chamber music and whenever possible would ask the violinist Louis Kaufman to help arrange quartet evenings at his Beverly Hills home. Alfred joined Kaufman’s short-lived California String Quartet in a performance of a Mozart piano quartet and played one of the Dohnányi Piano Quintets at a Pro Music Los Angeles concert on February 24, 1935.(73) During 1936-37, Newman paid homage to one of his teachers by facilitating the historic recording of Arnold Schoenberg’s four quartets at the Goldwyn Studios by the Kolisch Quartet.(74) (Rudolph Kolisch, first violinist, was the brother of Schoenberg’s wife.) Twenty-five sets were pressed, Kaufman, Gershwin and Hugo Friedhofer among the first to buy a copy. Newman himself recorded many symphonic and popular classical works for Magicraft,(75) Majestic Records,(76) Decca and Capitol Records, as can be seen in ( Figure7 ). His earliest known commercial soundtrack album is for “The Song of Bernadette” released by Decca during 1944, comprising eight tracks on four 10” (78) rpm discs (DA-365).
The composer Hugo Friedhofer best summed up Alfred’s musical tastes and style:-
“His repertoire consisted largely of the 19th century romantics: - Chopin, Schumann, Mendelssohn and such-like. These, plus the orchestral works of Wagner, Tchaikovsky [and] some Brahms, which latter he loved. His melodic lines remained firmly affixed to the 19th century right up to the end. I’m convinced that the only music of our own time that he really liked were the show tunes of Gershwin, Kern, Cole Porter and Richard Rogers. Later, he came to like the early Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich.
He also liked a great deal of Debussy and Ravel, also Richard Strauss (largely via Korngold’s film scores, which for a while had considerable influence on his own writing.) Indeed, with the passage of time his musical horizon did expand, although at bottom he never really cut loose from the 19th century except on rare occasions. Then he’d come up with some really surprising concepts. I remember (among other things) the labor camp montage in The Hurricane [1937] which was built on a persistent ostinato pattern in the low brass, over which was exposed a stark, ever-expanding melodic line, all very dissonant and fraught with the protagonist’s mood of anger, despair and frustration ... There were many other instances, far too numerous to mention. Right from the beginning I’d say that Alfred had two things going for him, i.e. a sense of the orchestra, and an inborn sense of drama which seldom if ever went astray. These two, added to his truly remarkable conducting ability, constituted the ‘Newman style’.” (77)
After 1960, up until the time of his death in 1970, Alfred composed once again on a freelance basis. His final music score for the film Airport (Figure 8) received a posthumous Oscar nomination. The main title marked a change of direction for him (much like Herrmann’s jazz-based score to his last film Taxi Driver) and was optimistic, up-beat and invigorated, in harmony you could say with the new generation of American film composers. However, Alfred was seriously ill throughout the time he was working on the score in 1969 and died at his home in Hollywood early the following year, exactly one month short of his 70th birthday. “It was, for many of us, the official parting knell of Hollywood’s Golden Age”, said Tony Thomas.(78)
Thanks largely to Ken Darby and Alfred Newman’s widow Martha Montgomery Newman Ragland, the music which he conducted, supervised and composed throughout his forty year long film career, including disc and tape recordings, photograph albums, bound conductor books, jottings and lecture notes, etc., are safely housed in the USC Alfred Newman Memorial Library, Los Angeles, California. In 1997, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the motion picture industry, the main music recording sound stage at 20th Century - Fox (stage 1 originally built in 1928) was renamed The Alfred Newman Scoring Stage in his honour. Alfred’s musical legacy thus endures and is enhanced by the composing work being carried on today by his two sons and daughter David, Thomas and Maria, and his nephew Randy Newman.
“No man dies whose life’s work remains to inspire and excite the imaginations of future generations.”
From liner notes to Alfred Newman Hollywood Maestro (Citadel Records CT 6003) by Ken Darby, March 9, 1976.
NWS
Edinburgh,
UK Revised May 2019 Manuscript © N. William Snedden May 13, 2019
Recording South Pacific (1958). Left to right: Alfred Newman (conducting), Bill Lee (playback singer), Joshua Logan (film director), Ken Darby (associate). South Pacific lost out to Gigi for best musical picture which swept the Oscars in 1959. Alfred, for whom personal honour was said to be as important as professional acclaim, was the first to congratulate André Previn who adapted Frederick Loewe’s music.
(Photo acknowledgment: Ed Nassour.)
Alfred Newman conducting his last film score Airport (1970) on the Universal scoring stage. His command of the orchestra on this occasion was said to be “flawless” despite failing health. Alfred once said composing was a lonely business and that although he studied composition as part of his training, he never wanted to compose: “I studied music because I wanted to be a good conductor.”98
(Photo acknowledgment: Ed Nassour.)
1 As well as members of the Newman family, Fred Steiner interviewed for his Ph.D thesis many of Alfred Newman’s colleagues including: Edward Powell, February 23, 1976 (100 pages of transcript, a challenging read!); Cyril Mockridge, December 28, 1976 in Honolulu, published in The Cue Sheet, vol. 14, no. 2, April 1998 (Part I) & vol. 14, no. 3, July 1998 (Part II); and David Buttolph, February 26, 1977 in San Diego, published in The Cue Sheet, vol. 18, no.1/2, January-April 2002, 2-20. See also Fred Steiner’s article “About Alfred Newman: New Data (and Some Errata),” The Cue Sheet, vol. 20, no. 4, October 2005.
2 Irene Kahn Atkins, Oral History with Hugo Friedhofer, March 13-April 29, 1974, American Film Institute/Louis B. Mayer Foundation.
3 In “Boy Pianist Shows His Amazing Talent. Recital of Alfred Newman, 15 Years Old, Discloses Rare Musical Gifts,” Musical America, November 11, 1916, 45.
4 The Music League of America was part of the National Federation of Musical Clubs whose official magazine The Musical Monitor, vol. V, no. 11, July 1916, 578, states the league was “endowed by the foremost philanthropic women of the Nation’s metropolis [New York], and conducted for the purpose of assisting talented young musicians towards winning professional recognition.”
5 The letter, dated April 9, 1917, survives in the USC Alfred Newman Memorial Library. The journalist, music critic, founder, editor and publisher of several trades devoted to music, John Christian Freund, was born in London in 1848 and died in Mount Vernon NY in 1924. He was also well known as a lecturer, playwright and the author of several novels, e.g. By the Roadside.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919) was prominent in Connecticut society. Her autobiography The Worlds and I was published by George H. Doran Co. in 1918.
7 In “Let’s Talk It Over”, The National Magazine: An Illustrated American Monthly, vol. XLI October 1914 to March 1915, Boston: Chapple Publishing Co. Ltd., 338-339.
8 Alfred’s second brother christened George was nicknamed “Yale” by his mother Luba because he was born in New Haven where Yale University was founded in 1701. Also, Luba’s father was Yale Lewis Kosakoff.
9 William Rosar, “Notes on telephone conversations with Friedhofer 6/4/77.” Newman once told Ken Darby “One sadness a day is all a melancholy Jew can take, and I should know. I’m a melancholy Jew!” In “The Soundtrack,” Films in Review, vol. 27, no. 6, June/July 1976, 371.
10 Michael Newman’s “sister-in-law” Ida Shannon née Goldstein, born 1889, is also on the list of household members in 1920 residing at 25 Kingsland Avenue, Elmhurst in the borough of Queens. She followed Luba to the USA from Russia ca 1896 and was in fact a cousin of the Kosakoff family.
11 Census records differ slightly for Luba’s year of immigration. The 1910 New Haven Township Census shows 1894 and the 1920 New York Census gives 1895. These records also indicate Michael was naturalized in 1895 and Luba in 1900.
12 Fred Steiner notes in his Ph.D thesis, Ibid, 64 n1, that according to Leslie Zador, Michael Newman left his wife Luba just before Sydell was born (1917), forcing a change in career direction for Alfred towards earning a living as a theatre musician, as opposed to classical concert hall pianist. Although Michael Newman is listed on the 1920 New York City Census along with the whole Newman family, Fred Steiner’s observation is nevertheless valid; the burden of financial support fell on Alfred from a young age when his family moved to join him in New York when he was 16.
13 In “Sulli Pupil Sings in New Haven,” Musical Courier, December 3, 1913, 37. The same journal, October 29, 1913, 18, carries an advert and photo of Giorgio Sulli whose studio address is given as 1425 Broadway, the Metropolitan Opera House Building in New York.
14 In “Wallingford Report,” New Haven Evening Register, November 19, 1913, 7.
15 Many piano works either composed or arranged by Reuven Kosakoff can be found in US Music Copyright Catalogues. For example, he arranged with Stella Nahum, Luba Newman’s cousin, an edition of Beethoven’s Bagatelle, Op. 119, no. 1, copyright entry E pub. 54963, and Mendelssohn’s Presto agitato, copyright entry E pub. 54970, both © April 27, 1936, J. Fischer & bro. New York.
16 In Alumni Directory of Yale University, Living Graduates & Non-Graduates, New Haven: Issued for Private Distribution by Yale University, 1926, 1038.
17 As Fred Steiner notes in his Ph.D, Ibid, 56n24, an annotated photo of the bungalow survives in the USC Alfred Newman Memorial Library.
18 In The New Haven Sunday Register, May 24, 1908. Six months earlier, at the inaugural concert of the Italian Conservatory of Music given at Harmonie Hall on December 9, 1907, Caselotti played Chopin, Schumann and Liszt. In “Sulli Pupils Heard in New Haven,” The Musical Courier, December 18, 1907, 37. A photograph of Caselotti together with his two daughters, taken a decade later at their home in Floral Park, Long Island, appears in Musical Courier, September 27, 1917, 27.
19 The National Magazine, Ibid, states “Master Newman ... is a pupil of E. A. Parsons of New Haven, and Professor Parsons has done wonders for the child. He is hoping to receive sufficient patronage from society people and lovers of music to enable him to continue his studies in New York this winter.”
20 Greenough, Jones & Co. New Haven Directory for 1874-75, page 280, lists E. A. Parsons as director of the New Haven Conservatory of Music at 69 Church, room 34.
21 An advert in Musical Courier, July 27, 1895, 2, lists “E. A. Parsons, Pianist and Composer, Organist Church of the Divine Paternity, Instruction in Piano and Compositions, Broadway and 38th Street, New York.” See also Monthly Bulletin of the Free Public Library, New Haven, Connecticut, June 1896.
22 In “Sigismond Stojowski’s Critical Classes at The Von Ende School of Music,” Musical Courier, December 30, 1915, 32. The article includes a photo portrait of Stojowski. An advert for the school, founded in 1910, may be found in the New York Tribune, Sunday, October 10, 1915, 3. Oscar Levant among others was a pupil of Stojowski.
23 In “Von Ende Medal Winners, Noted Judges Decide Annual Contest of New York School,” Musical America, May 29, 1915, 41. Ken Darby, Film Music Notebook, vol. 2, no. 2, 1976, 6, gives the year as 1914 when Alfred won the silver medal which must relate to the start of the school year rather than the end of term when medals were awarded.
24 Musical Courier September 19, 1918, 11, lists George Wedge as teacher of theory and sight-reading at Mr. Herbert Witherspoon’s music studios at 44 West 86th St. NY close to the Von Ende School. Rubin (aka Reuben)
Goldmark (1872-1936) was a prominent composer and is cited as one of Alfred Newman’s benefactors and teachers in The Cincinnati Enquirer, December 11, 1926, 7, an article announcing Newman’s debut concert with the Cincinnati Symphony. The Musician for January 1920, 28, lists Goldmark sitting on a committee comprising Ernest Bloch, Harold Bauer, Fritz Kreisler, Sergei Rachmaninov and many others distinguished musicians assembled to judge the best symphonic scores submitted to New York’s New Symphony Orchestra under the conductorship of Artur Bodanzky.
25 In “Annual Concert of The Von Ende School, Artist-Pupils Give Notable Performances – Address by John C. Freund, Editor of ‘Musical America’,” Musical America, June 12, 1915, 8.
26 In “For Polish Victims’ Relief. Paderewski Listened in Stojowski Recital in Aeolian Hall,” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 22, 1916, 10. See also “Stojowski Pupils in Benefit. Students of Eminent Pianist Appear for Polish Relief Fund,” Musical America, May 27, 1916, 33. Details of Paderewski’s various appeals for the Polish Victim’s Relief Fund made whilst in America can be found in the Polish Music Center at USC.
27 In “Annual Concert of Von Ende School. Large Audience Applauds Work of Gifted Pupils of New York Musical Institution,” Musical America, June 10, 1916, 45.
28 Georges Barrère (1876-1944) was a French flute player who while a student in Paris gave the premiere of Debussy’s Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune in 1894.
29 In “New Haven Municipal Concert Held in a Yale Hall,” Musical America, August 12, 1916, 14.
30 In The Worlds and I, ibid, 340. An autobiographical profile of Ruth Helen Davies features in The [New York] Sun, September 24, 1916, 2.
31 Musical America, August 12, 1916, Ibid.
32 In Brooklyn Life, April 1, 1916, 20, & in “Lenore Ulrich At Strand,” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 2, 1916, 10. Alfred Newman’s obituary published in Variety, February 19, 1970, states he got into trouble with the Gerry Society for performing under age.
33 In “At Leading Picture Theaters,” The Moving Picture World, April 15, 1916, 426 & September 30, 1916, 2088.
34 In “Providence, R. I.,” The Dramatic Mirror, March 3, 1917, 16.
35 In “Mitchell Staging ‘Hitchy Koo’,” The New York Clipper, May 23, 1917, 5.
36 The original Broadway cast of Hitchy-Koo, in two acts and nineteen scenes, book and lyrics by Glen MacDonough and E. Ray Goetz, music by E. Ray Goetz, can be found in The Theatre, July 1917, 22. The article states the show opened on June 7th at the Cohan and Harris whilst other sources such as The Billboard, June 2, 1917, 4, give the opening date as Monday evening June 4. Miss La Rue’s photo features in the latter article.
37 Fred Steiner, Ph.D, Ibid, 75.
38 In “Sawyer Act Closes,” The New York Clipper, February 26, 1919, 8. A description of Sawyer’s stage act can be found in Variety, February 21, 1919, 24.
39 The New York Clipper, August 6, 1919, 6, reports the Broadway producer Edgar McGregor signing 18-year old Alfred Newman to a two year contract with plans for him to direct the Victor Herbert operetta Dream Girl adapted by Anne Caldwell from “The Road to Yesterday”. However, Dream Girl, with book by Rida Johnson Young, did not play on Broadway until August 1924. (Herbert died in New York 26 May 1924 at the age of 65.) The New York Clipper, December 3, 1919, 4, states Newman is to direct the orchestra for The Sweetheart Shop produced by McGregor and William Moore Patch opening in Atlantic City January 6. 1920. The Billboard reports the show moving to the Academy of Music, Baltimore, January 12, 1920.
40 Dere Mabel, which closed out of town after touring the east coast during February and March 1919, featured an unusual song “We’re Pals, A Couple of Pals”, music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Irving Caesar, performed by Louis Bennison who “talks” the number to his dog Harold, a vicious Airdale. In Ken Darby, Film Music Notebook, Ibid, 7. See also George Gershwin: His Life and Work by Howard Pollack, University of California Press, 2006, 246.
41 Quoted in Fred Steiner’s Ph.D thesis, 83, from a biography of Alfred Newman issued by the 20th Century-Fox publicity department ca 1957.
42 In Musical Courier, July 8, 1920, 41. See also “Alfred Newman Youngest Musical Conductor Exerts Remarkable Influence Over Both Players and Audience – Bright Future Is Predicted,” The Billboard, July 31, 1920, 26, which includes a portrait photo of Newman at the time of directing George White’s Scandals of 1920. 43 Newman would have been aged 16, or thereabouts, at the time of this meeting given Gershwin’s first job after leaving school was at Remicks which he joined in 1914 and left in 1917. Gershwin’s first published song with the firm was “When You Want 'Em, You Can't Get 'Em, When You've Got 'Em, You Don't Want 'Em” dating from 1916.
44 In “Where East Is Talked,” Hollywood Filmograph, August 3, 1929, 32. The musical comedy Hold Everything, directed by Roy Del Ruth, was released by Vitaphone during March 1930.
45 The making of Reaching for the Moon is summarised in The Irving Berlin Reader edited by Benjamin Sears, OUP, 2012, 85-87. Suffice to say it was a distressing experience for Berlin whose eight songs were cut down to one. Sources are unclear as to why Newman was invited to participate given up to that point he had no previous work ties to Berlin. Kevin Courrier in Randy Newman’s American Dreams, ECW Press, 2005, 202, argues, as others do, that the start of Alfred Newman’s Hollywood career was “a serendipitous accident.” Prompted by a question from Tony Thomas as to how he got into the motion picture business, Alfred responded “Irving Berlin brought me to Hollywood in 1930 at the time when original scores were being written for films and as you say I just drifted into composing because I had to.” In liner notes to Alfred Newman Hollywood Maestro, Citadel Records CT 6003.
46 In “A Youthful Leader,” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 14, 1930, 21.
47 Ibid. An early article titled “Numerous Newmans” outlining the theatrical careers of the other Newman brothers (Lionel, Irving, Robert) may be found in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 13, 1932, 20.
48 In “Newman With U.A.,” Variety, July 23, 1930, 57. Fred Steiner recounts in his Ph.D thesis, Ibid, 111, a story told to him by United Artists sound engineer Gordon Sawyer concerning Newman’s succession as United Artists music director, how Riesenfeld’s work on Berlin’s Reaching for the Moon was thrown out because all the recordings “sounded like German music!” Riesenfeld was formerly music director of the Rivoli, Rialto and Criterion theaters in New York. He returned east during December 1930 after completing the synchronised score for Tabu, a South Sea Island picture made by F.W. Murnau and Robert Flaherty.
49 Variety, August 13, 1930, 2, reports Edmund Goulding as having been secured to direct Berlin’s picture on the United Artists lot.
50 The release of How to Marry a Millionaire (November 4, 1953) was deferred to allow The Robe to be seen first (September 16, 1953) as this was the first film to start production in Cinemascope.
51 Newman signed for Twentieth Century-Fox during September 1939 when Louis Silvers relinquished his post. Before taking over full time as musical director he completed three freelance scoring jobs including the Hunchback of Notre Dame at RKO. In Motion Picture Herald, September 9, 1939, 38 and “Keeping Newman Hopping,” Variety, November 29, 1939, 31.
52 See A Fiddler’s Tale: How Hollywood and Vivaldi Discovered Me, by Louis Kaufman with Annette Kaufman, The University of Wisconsin Press, 2003, 119-124.
53 Earle Hagen in “Memoirs of a Famous Composer Nobody Ever Heard Of,” Xlibris Corporation, 2000, 104, states that the last time he worked with Alfred was in 1961 on Flower Drum Song at Universal and “Al was in poor health.”
54 Hugo Friedhofer AFI Oral History, Ibid, 390.
55 Based on Clifford McCarty, Film Composers in America: A Filmography, 1911-1970, Oxford University Press, 2000, 217-221, Newmans’s film stats as composer/musical director are: United Artists 74; Twentieth Century- Fox 100; other studios (RKO, Paramount, etc.) 23; documentaries/shorts/trailers 9; films as subordinate composer (TCF) 48 = 254 total.
56 In Ken Darby, Film Music Notebook, Ibid, 10.
57 In Louella O. Parsons, “Noted Child Orchestra In Movie with Heifetz,” Times-Union, Albany, N.Y., May 7, 1939. The Merenblum children’s orchestra in Hollywood was founded by the Russian concert violinist Peter Merenblum who came to the USA ca 1925 initially forming a children’s symphony orchestra in Seattle. He later taught violin at USC from about 1934 giving free tuition to talented children who could not pay for lessons. He even bought shoes for his poor prodigies. See “In Hollywood,” The Poughkeepsie Star Enterprise, May 6, 1939. 58 In Lawrence Morton, “Film Music Profile: Alfred Newman,” Film Music Notes, vol. IX, no. 5, May-June 1950, 15.
59 In Tony Thomas, Music for the Movies, Silman-James Press, 2nd Ed. 1997, 74. Hugo Friedhofer wrote to Charles Boyer (aka Page Cook) on November 4, 1974 saying he was given a copy of the soundtrack album for The Diary of Anne Frank from “Paps” himself and there were passages in the score in which Newman’s “unsurpassed and ineffably beautiful compassion” moved him in spite of the film’s “ponderous nature.” Later, on the sixth anniversary of Newman’s death, Boyer informed Friedhofer he had been given an original sketch of the main theme for Anne Frank from Newman. Every time Boyer looked at the framed sketch hung on the wall tears welled up in his eyes.
60 See Ken Darby, Hollywood Holyland: The Filming and Scoring of the Greatest Story Ever Told, Filmmakers Series, No. 30, Scarecrow Press, 1992. Hugo Friedhofer also discusses the music for Stevens’ film in his AFI Oral
History, Ibid, 390-392. Instead of Newman’s music written to accompany the raising of Lazarus and for the way to the cross, Stevens used Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus and part of the Verdi Requiem, at which point Alfred is reported to have said “I’ve had it. Goodbye.”
61 David Raksin Remembers his Colleagues, https://www.americancomposers.org/raksin_newman.htm.
62 In Page Cook, “The Sound Track,” Films in Review, vol. 27, no. 6, June-July 1976, 372.
63 William Darby and Jack Du Bois, American Film Music: Major Composers, Techniques, Trends, 1915-1990, McFarland & Co., Inc. 1990, 74.
64 Steiner-Powell interview transcript, Ibid, 35.
65 In Film Score: The View from the Podium, Edited by Tony Thomas, A. S. Barnes and Co. Inc., 1979, 131-141.
66 In “Femme Gossip,” Variety, April 17, 1929, 61.
67 In “Youthful Conductor Guides Orchestra Through Popular Concert Program With the Authority of a Maestro,” The Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, December 13, 1926, 4. See also “New Conductor,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, Saturday, December 11, 1926, 7.
68 In The Los Angeles Times, Tuesday, August 30, 1932, 6 & 24.
69 Alfred Newman’s full concert debut in charge of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra was held Wednesday evening, February 15, 1933. The program included: Lalo Le Roi d'Y; Haydn Symphony in G major ("Surprise"); Rimsky-Korsakov "Grand Paque Russe"; Ravel "Rhapsodie Espagnole"; Newman’s "Street Scene"; John Alden Carpenter "Perambulator Suite"; and "A Victory Ball" by Ernest Schelling. In “Studio Musical Director Known as Conductor,” The Los Angeles Times, February 5, 1933, 41. Lawrence Morton in Film Music Notes, Ibid, reports that Alfred was a guest conductor of the American Orchestral Society of New York, but concert details are scant. This would have been sometime prior to 1933 and presumably after 1926. Composer John Williams also stated in an interview Alfred Newman conducted “elsewhere, like in Russia” but this too has not been corroborated. See Derek Elley, “The Film Composers: 3, John Williams Part 2”, Films and Filming, August 1978, 32.
70 In Page Cook, “The Soundtrack,” Films in Review, vol. 30, no. 8, October 1979, 485. In his autobiography “Memoirs of a Famous Composer Nobody Ever Heard Of,” Earle Hagen recalls receiving the ‘death ray’ stare from Alfred when recording his song arrangements with Herb Spencer on the picture Snows of Kilimanjaro.
71 Christopher Palmer, The Composer in Hollywood, Marion Boyars, 1990, 70.
72 David Raksin Remembers his Colleagues, Ibid.
73 In A Fiddler’s Tale, Ibid, 124.
74 In “Music and Musicians. A Movie Studio Records Arnold Schoenberg’s Quartets - About Alfred Newman,” The New York Sun, July 23, 1938, 9, Newman is quoted as saying “a hack movie-musician [himself], a movie producer [Goldwyn] and a movie-studio [United Artists] made possible the recording of four important modern compositions. I think we can be a little proud of that.” Schoenberg’s four quartets were recorded between December 29, 1936 and January 8, 1937. Newman studied with Schoenberg from 1936 through 1938, and thereafter maintained a social relationship via dinners, concerts, and tennis.
75 Edward Powell told Fred Steiner he was a vice-president of Musicraft Records, Inc. (a subsidiary of Jefferson- Travis Radio Manufacturing Corporation) during the 1940’s “to get Alfred recorded.” Robert Newman was also involved making Alfred’s Mercury record deal. The Billboard, March 30, 1946, 33, contains a Musicraft advert showing that Louanne Hogan’s debut recording, the Kern-Robin hit “In Love in Vain” from Centennial Summer (Musicraft-355), was conducted by Alfred Newman with “an orchestra of 33 top musicians assisted by arrangers Edward Powell and Herb Spencer.”
76 Majestic was purchased by Mercury Records during 1948. See The Billboard, October 23, 1948, 17, 40, which reports that a legal representative for Alfred Newman (possibly Edward Powell who had legal training) was seeking control of his “32 longhair [master] sides” in the Majestic inventory and that a court action had been filed.
77 Edited extract from Hugo Friedhofer’s letter to the musicologist William H. Rosar, December 7, 1976.
78 In Music for the Movies, Ibid, 76.
79 An article in Brooklyn Life, March 27, 1915, 15, cites “piano selections by Master Alfred Newman” at the Children’s Day concert celebrated by the Rubenstein Club “on Saturday afternoon of next week,” i.e. April 3, 1915, the earliest known public appearance by Alfred Newman in New York City.
80 Luba died at her home, 1438 Midvale Ave. West Los Angeles, on April 9, 1954 aged 71. At the time of her death she had 25 grandchildren and one-great-grandchild through her seven sons and three daughters. In The Los Angeles Times, Saturday, April 10, 1954, 3 and Sunday, April 11, 1954, 15.
81 Ella Wheeler Wilcox studied the harp with Madame Sorieul and the Welsh harpist Edith Davies-Jones, performing with the latter at The Stratford Hotel in Bridgeport, Connecticut ca 1915. In The Worlds and I, Ibid,
338. Another photo showing Wilcox playing harp with Davies-Jones standing beside her can be found in The Musician, vol. XXI, no. 1, January 1916, 399.
82 The Cincinnati Enquirer, December 5, 1926, Ibid, states “Newman’s first conducting was that of light operas, the first one being the work of Dr. Hugo Felix,” possibly a reference to The Sweetheart Shop (1920) which featured songs by George and Ira Gershwin.
83 The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Thursday, August 25, 1927, 10A, reports Alfred Newman taking charge of the orchestra of the 1927 series of “Artists and Models” in Atlantic City, opening Monday, August 29, 1927.
84 Newman adapted and arranged Chopin’s Nocturnes for the incidental music to the ballet “The Nightingale and The Rose” presented by John Murray Anderson. He also adapted Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and played this from the pit. According to Anderson’s memoirs Out Without My Rubbers, published in 1954, at this time (1922) Newman directed the orchestra of the Follies “dressed in Eton jacket and Eton collar.”
85 Newman composed several musical numbers for Jack and Jill, adapted from Frederick Isham’s play, including “Concentrate, And Love Will Find A Way” and “Voodoo Man”, both copyright Jerome Remick Mar. 29, 1923. Among Newman’s earliest known copyrighted songs are “A’Dreamin of You” words by Lester A. O’Keefe of St. Louis; US Catalogue of Copyright Entries, Part III, New Series, vol. 15, E 494378, © Nov. 15, 1920, and “Why I Love You” words by Irving Caesar © Jan. 13, 1922, Harms Inc.
86 “G. & S. Title,” Variety, August 20, 1924, 10, reports a Gallagher and Shean show titled “The Two Must-Get- Theres” [sic] rehearsing at the Colonial, Newark, N.J. with book and lyrics by William Carey Duncan and Irving Caesar, and music by Alfred Newman, Joseph Meyer and William Daley. The show does not appear to have reached Broadway.
87 In The Billboard, May 30, 1925, 11. Trelawney of the Wells was a one act play, one week show benefit, revived by “The Player’s,” staged by R. H. Burnside, George W. Lederer, Ashley Cooper and William Cowan. The music program conducted by Alfred Newman is not stated in the article.
88 Big Boy originally opened January 7, 1925 at the Winter Garden and closed March 14 when Al Jolson suffered laryngitis for the second time. In Scarsdale Inquirer, March 21, 1925, 3. The show was revived during August that year.
89 Variety, November 11, 1925, 20, reports Frasquita spotted at the Shubert on or about December 1 starring Geraldine Farrar who called for $6,000 weekly plus a percentage of the takings. However, The Billboard, November 28, 1925, states the show opened in Hartford under the name of Romany Rose. The Broadway title was changed to The Love Spell. A later article in Variety “Musical Mix-up of ‘Frasquita’,” December 16, 1925, 47, states the show was a flop and Lehar’s score was panned as being “the worst thing he has done.”
90 In Daily News (New York’s Picture Newspaper), Thursday, December 17, 1925, 43.
91 In The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 31, 1926, 10A. The Ramblers moved from Werba’s Brooklyn Theater to the Lyric New York. Ernest Cutting took over from Alfred Newman who left to conduct Criss-Cross at the Globe. 92 In “20th-Fox Recruiting Talent for Shorts,” Motion Picture Daily, January 14, 1954, 1, 6. An advert “Extra Cinemascope Thrills: ‘Vesuvius Express’ and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony no. 4 conducted by Alfred Newman” can be found in Madera Daily News Tribune, April 17, 1954, 2.
93 For a fuller explanation see Milton Lustig, Music Editing for Motion Pictures, New York: Hastings House, Publishers, Inc., 1980, 107-114.
94 The photo belies the fact that Newman had a major falling out with Chaplin who accused Newman’s orchestral players of “lying down on the job.” In his memoirs The Bad and the Beautiful: My Life in a Golden Age of Film Music (Kindle Edition) Raksin states Newman broke his baton and stormed off stage refusing to work with Chaplin. Orchestral arranger Edward Powell took over the remaining recording sessions.
95 Earle Hagen on Alfred Newman in his Memoirs, Ibid.
96 Majestic recordings were originally issued as either double-sided 78 rpm 10” Sheallac records or in sets of either 2 or 3 discs after Mercury’s takeover of Majestic. See The Mercury Labels, A Discography Volume I: The 1945-1956 Era, compiled by Michel Ruppli and Ed Novitsky, Greenwood Press, 1993. An early biography prepared for Majestic Records titled “Alfred Newman – A Man of Note” dating from 1946 resides within the USC Alfred Newman Memorial Library.
97 “Mercury Sets Newman As Popular Conductor,” Variety, October 25, 1950, 42, confirms Newman signing with Mercury Records in 1950.
98 In Music for the Movies, Ibid, 69.