57 Facts About Alfred Newman

Alfred Newman was an American composer, arranger, and conductor of film music.

Alfred Newman won nine Academy Awards and was nominated 45 times, contributing to the extended Newman family being the most Academy Award-nominated family, with a collective 92 nominations in various music categories.

Alfred Newman is perhaps best known for composing the fanfare which accompanies the studio logo at the beginning of 20th Century Fox's productions.

Alfred Newman was highly regarded as a conductor, and arranged and conducted many scores by other composers, including George Gershwin, Charlie Chaplin, and Irving Berlin.

Alfred Newman conducted the music for many film adaptations of Broadway musicals, as well as many original Hollywood musicals.

Alfred Newman 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.

Alfred Newman was born on March 17,1900, in New Haven, Connecticut, the eldest of ten children to Russian-Jewish parents who emigrated shortly before his birth.

Alfred Newman's father had been a cantor in Russia, which contributed to her love of music.

Alfred Newman sent Newman, her first born, to a local piano teacher to begin lessons when he was five.

Stojowski offered him a scholarship, after which Alfred Newman won a silver medal and a gold medal in a competition.

Alfred Newman studied harmony, counterpoint and composition with Rubin Goldmark and George Wedge.

Alfred Newman then began playing in theaters and restaurants, including the Strand theater and the Harlem Opera House, with a schedule that often had him playing five shows a day.

Alfred Newman greatly admired his ability to play Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt, Wagner and other composers, and with equal skill, in her opinion, as Paderewski.

Alfred Newman said he "possessed most unusual moral qualities and characteristics":.

Alfred Newman is a beautiful looking boy, modest, gentle, unassuming, and wholly unspoiled.

Alfred Newman's father is a poor Russian fruit dealer and Alfred is the oldest of eight children.

Alfred Newman began traveling the vaudeville circuit with La Rue's show when he was 13, where she billed him as "The Marvelous Boy Pianist".

Cincinnati Symphony conductor Fritz Reiner was so impressed by Alfred Newman, he invited him to be a guest conductor.

Alfred Newman conducted George White's Scandals in 1919, Funny Face in 1927 and Treasure Girl in 1929.

Alfred Newman was kept on and received credit for directing the music, which became his Hollywood debut.

Alfred Newman later used that music theme in other films, such as How to Marry a Millionaire in 1953, which opens with him conducting an orchestra.

Hollywood reporter Sidney Skolsky observed them working together as Alfred Newman conducted the 65-piece orchestra.

Alfred Newman described Newman's ability to carefully synchronize the music to scenes, such as the factory sequence, where Chaplin throws the place into confusion.

Alfred Newman became Goldwyn's favorite composer, while his style evolved with each new film he scored.

Alfred Newman scored numerous adventure stories and romances, historical pageants and swashbuckling epics, as did his contemporary, Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

Alfred Newman began taking lessons with Arnold Schoenberg, who emigrated to the US from Europe in 1934.

In 1937, Alfred Newman organized a private recording of Schoenberg's four string quartets by the Kolisch Quartet at the United Artists.

Alfred Newman received his first Academy Award for Alexander's Ragtime Band in 1938.

Alfred Newman's score was unique in the way it included different musical themes and created different motifs for the key actors, which helped frame the action.

In 1933, while he was still under contract at United Artists, Newman was commissioned by Darryl F Zanuck of Twentieth Century Pictures to compose a fanfare to accompany the production logo appearing at the start of the studio's films.

In 1940, Alfred Newman began a 20-year career as music director with 20th Century-Fox Studios, composing over 200 film scores, nine of which won Academy Awards.

Alfred Newman wore many hats at the studio depending on the need, acting as composer, arranger, music director and conductor for various films.

Alfred Newman was noted for developing what came to be known as the Newman System, a means of synchronizing the performance and recording of a musical score with the film, a system which is still in use today.

Alfred Newman's scores were developed around the overall mood of each film.

Alfred Newman tailored specific themes to accompany different characters as they appeared on screen, thereby enhancing each actor's role.

Alfred Newman used three different motifs to color different issues during the film.

Alfred Newman's interpretation added the sound of the wind and blowing leaves to give the music an ethereal quality that augmented Bernadette's visions.

Alfred Newman spent considerable time learning personal details about Wilson and his family, such as the songs they sang and played on their piano at home, the music they liked to dance and listen to, the songs they played during political rallies or political functions during his career.

Alfred Newman composed or music directed the score to some of Frank Capra's Why We Fight series of films, including Prelude to War and War Comes to America.

Alfred Newman created the music for The All-Star Bond Rally, a documentary short film featuring Hollywood stars promoting the sales of War Bonds.

Alfred Newman often studied period music and assimilated it into his scores.

In 1954, Alfred Newman wrote additional music for his 20th Century-Fox fanfare, extending it with several bars of warm, soaring strings in order to promote the studio's adoption of the new CinemaScope presentation.

Alfred Newman received his eighth Oscar for The King and I in 1956.

In 1959 Alfred Newman composed the score for The Diary of Anne Frank.

Alfred Newman remained active until the end of his life, scoring Universal Pictures' Airport shortly before his death.

Alfred Newman died on February 17,1970, at the age of 69, a month shy of his 70th birthday, at his home in Pacific Palisades, California, from complications of emphysema.

The passing of Alfred Newman was symbolic of the end of a golden age.

Alfred Newman received an unprecedented 45 Oscar nominations, and his 9 Academy Awards are more than any other musical director or composer had received.

Alfred Newman's nine Academy Awards are the most received by any musician: Alexander's Ragtime Band, Tin Pan Alley, The Song of Bernadette, Mother Wore Tights, With a Song in My Heart, Call Me Madam, Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, The King and I and Camelot.

Alfred Newman composed the familiar fanfare which accompanies the studio logo at the beginning of 20th Century's productions, and still introduces 20th Century pictures today.

Music historian Robert R Faulkner is of the opinion that had Newman not been music director at Twentieth Century Fox, composers such as Bernard Herrmann, Alex North, and David Raksin, all of whose music was somewhat radical, might never have had such major careers in Hollywood.

Alfred Newman was a true musical force, and one that cannot in any sense be replaced.

Between 1930 and 1970, Alfred Newman wrote music for over 200 films of every imaginable type, including a score for the newsreel made from the World War II footage of the Battle of Midway.

Alfred Newman won nine Academy Awards, the third highest number of Oscars ever won by an individual 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 Alfred Newman's nominations were for Best Original Score and two were for Original Song.

Alfred Newman has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1700 Vine Street.

Alfred Newman was the head of a family of major Hollywood film composers:.