Alfred Newman

Overview

Born
March 17, 1900 · New Haven, Connecticut, USA
Died
February 17, 1970 · Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA (emphysema)
Nickname
- Pappy
Height
5′ 6″ (1.68 m)

Biography

Alfred Newman is 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, contributing to the Newmans being the most nominated Academy Award extended family, with a collective 92 nominations in various music categories.

In a career spanning more than four decades, Newman composed the scores for over 200 motion pictures. Some of his most famous scores include All About Eve (1950), Anastasia (1956), Wuthering Heights (1939), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), The Mark of Zorro (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Song of Bernadette (1943), Captain from Castile (1947), Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), How the West Was Won (1962), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), and his final score, Airport (1970), 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.

Newman was highly regarded as a conductor, and arranged and conducted many scores by other composers, including George Gershwin, Charles 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.
- IMDb mini biography by: Tango Papa

Family

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Trademarks

Often scored movies for 20th Century Fox, most notably composing the iconic fanfare that has been used by the company since its inception

Trivia

Father of composers Thomas Newman, Maria Newman and David Newman, and director Tim Newman. Brother of composers Emil Newman and Lionel Newman. Grandfather of composer Julia Newman. Uncle of composer Randy Newman. Great-uncle of composer Joey Newman.
Composed the 20th Century Pictures logo theme, retained when the company merged with Fox films and became 20th Century-Fox. It is still in use today.
In 1940, he achieved the astonishing feat of garnering four Oscar nominations for four different films.
Holds the record for the most Academy Awards of any composer (9). The closest is Alan Menken who has eight.
Child prodigy by the age of eight. He derived his first income as an accompanist on piano in vaudeville, and in the orchestral pits of picture theatres. Newman worked his way up the ladder, conducting his first orchestra by age 17, consequently being tagged the boy conductor. By 1917, he had made his way to New York, conducting musicals on Broadway, beginning with "George White's Scandals".