Programme Notes
ALFRED NEWMAN (1901-
Street Scene: 'How to Marry a Millionaire'
Alfred Newman was one of the most respected of Hollywood composers: born in New York,
he won a piano scholarship at the age of ten and was the youngest conductor ever
to appear on Broadway, as musical director of the 1920 George White Scandals, and
the Greenwich Village Follies of 1922 and 1923. He remained a conductor of musical
comedy when he went to Hollywood in 1930, but his career was transformed when he
worked with Charles Chaplin on City Lights a silent film, with synchronised score,
made after the coming of sound in a stubborn rearguard action on Chaplin's part:
it was released in 1931. After City Lights Newman worked with King Vidor on Street
Scene. Both films were prestige productions and established Newman's credentials
as a composer in his own right; he went on to write the music for some of the most
successful high-
Swashbucklers and romantic action movies were his forte his name appeared on the credits of Captain from Castile, Prince of Foxes and Twelve O'Clock High. His professionalism and understanding of a composer's rôle in the development of a film, as well as his opulently orchestrated style, earned him the approval of the studio heads, and from 1939 to 1960 Newman was head of the music department at 20th Century Fox. He was versatile as well as prolific: his last score, finished in 1970 just before he died, was for Airport, with a celebrity cast headed by Burt Lancaster. Lancaster called it 'the biggest piece of junk ever made', but Newman helped to make Airport a spectacular success and there were no fewer than three sequels.
His career was at its zenith in 1953 when How to Marry a Millionaire was made for
Fox. It starred three Hollywood super-
The film was a remake of a 1932 musical with Joan Blondell, The Greeks had a Word
for Them, in which the young Betty Grable had a walk-
Programme Notes by Paul Vaughan ©
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