Alfred Newman
Alfred Newman (March 17, 1900 – February 17, 1970) was an American composer, arranger, and conductor of film music. From his start as a music prodigy, he came to be regarded as a respected figure in the history of film music. He won nine Academy Awards and was nominated 45 times,[1] contributing to the extended Newman family[2] being the most Academy Award-nominated family, with a collective 92 nominations in various music categories.
For other uses, see Alfred Newman (disambiguation).
Alfred Newman
March 17, 1900
February 17, 1970 (aged 69)
Composer, conductor, arranger
5 including David, Thomas, and Maria Newman
- Emil Newman (brother)
- Lionel Newman (brother)
- Randy Newman (nephew)
- Joey Newman (grandnephew)
1915–1970
In a career spanning more than four decades, Newman composed the scores for over 200 motion pictures. Some of his most famous scores include Wuthering Heights, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Mark of Zorro, How Green Was My Valley, The Song of Bernadette, Captain from Castile, All About Eve, Love is a Many Splendored Thing, Anastasia, The Diary of Anne Frank, How The West Was Won, The Greatest Story Ever Told, and his final score, Airport, all of which were nominated for or won Academy Awards. He is perhaps best known for composing the fanfare which accompanies the studio logo at the beginning of 20th Century Fox's productions. Prior to commencing his employment with 20th Century Fox, Newman composed the fanfares which are most often associated with Samuel Goldwyn productions and David O. Selznick productions.
Newman was also highly regarded as a conductor, and arranged and conducted many scores by other composers, including George Gershwin, Charlie Chaplin, and Irving Berlin. He also conducted the music for many film adaptations of Broadway musicals (having worked on Broadway for ten years before coming to Hollywood), as well as many original Hollywood musicals.
He was among the first musicians to compose and conduct original music during Hollywood's Golden Age of movies, later becoming a respected and powerful music director in the history of Hollywood.[3] Newman and two of his fellow composers, Max Steiner and Dimitri Tiomkin, were considered the "three godfathers of film music".[4][5]
Death[edit]
Newman died on February 17, 1970, at the age of 69, a month shy of his 70th birthday, at his home in Hollywood, from complications of emphysema.
Newman won nine Academy Awards, the third highest number of Oscars ever won by an individual (Walt Disney won twenty-six, Cedric Gibbons won eleven) and was nominated for forty-five, making him the most nominated composer in Oscar history until 2011, when John Williams broke the record. Forty-three of Newman's nominations were for Best Original Score (making him the second most nominated in that category after John Williams) and two were for Original Song.
The American Film Institute ranked his score for How the West Was Won as No. 25 on their list of the 25 greatest film scores. Ten of Newman's other scores were also nominated:
Newman has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1700 Vine Street.
He married Martha Louise Montgomery (born December 5, 1920, Clarksdale, Mississippi - died May 9, 2005, Pacific Palisades, California), a former actress and Goldwyn Girl; they had five children.
He was the head of a family of major Hollywood film composers: