Alfred Newman (1900-1970) was the most successful member of the Newman Gang, a bunch of composers and arrangers that included his brother Lionel, son Thomas, nephew, Randy, and numerous lesser lights.
Al Newman still holds the record for the most Oscars for music, with nine. He had long held the record for most nominations, with 45, until John Williams broke it. Williams has won five Oscars, and while he is still working, at 89 years of age, he is not going to break that record.
Three of the pictures Newman scored are on my Top 100 list: The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green was My Valley (1941), and All about Eve (1950).
Newman was also second to none for his eclecticism, and for the esteem in which directors and studio music directors held him. His melodies stayed with people, who reused them, when they seemed to fit a later movie. Thus, his famous opening theme to the New York-set Street Scene (1931), was for many years the most often used theme for urban tales. And when an aging John Ford (1894-1973) made The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), the old man’s last great picture, and he needed a leitmotif for the grief that Hallie Stoddard (Vera Miles) felt for the fiancee she’d betrayed but never stopped loving, Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), he used the “Ann Rutledge Theme” that Newman had composed for Ford’s classic, Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), which had served to express the grief Abe Lincoln (Henry Fonda) felt for his first love, who had died young.
Newman was also famous for his generosity. Ken Darby was, for a time, the most brilliant choral arranger in the business, and Newman’s collaborator. There was no Oscar category for what Darby did, so Newman made him co-composer, which got Darby five nominations and one Academy Award (for The King and I).
Ken Darby returned the favor, in writing a book, Hollywood Holy Land, that had to be published posthumously, giving his side of the story of the butchering of Newman’s bold, ambitious score for George Stevens’ The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965).
The Gunfighter, about shootist Jimmie Ringo’s ill-fated attempts to live out his days in peace, was made by Columbia, and starred Gregory Peck. However, Columbia mogul Harry Cohn did not want Greg Peck; he wanted John Wayne. But John Wayne did not want Harry Cohn.
According to one of Wayne’s biographers, Scott Eyman, early in Wayne’s career, when he was the king of the B-Westerns, Cohn had gotten the idea that Wayne was sleeping with one of Cohn’s favorite mistresses. Cohn badmouthed Wayne such that it just about sunk his career. When word got back to Wayne, he came after the mogul, grabbing him by the throat in his office, and threatening to kill him, if didn’t stop defaming him. Wayne resolved then never to work for Columbia.
Of course, Wayne (1907-1979) got to play the role of a dying gunfighter in his swansong, The Shootist (1976), which provided a poetic ending to his 50-year career in pictures.
Alfred Newman: The Gunfighter (1950) (Theme)
The Gunfighter (1950): Trailer
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