Alfred Newman was born on March 17, 1900, in New Haven, Connecticut. He was an American composer, arranger, and conductor of film music. He worked as the conductor of musicals on Broadway for over a decade.
Newman worked as a music conductor in Irving Berlin’s first film musicals, ‘Reaching for the Moon’. He launched his career as music scorer in Samuel Goldwyn’s ‘Street Scene’ in 1931, followed by films like ‘Dodsworth’, ‘Born to Dance’, ‘You Only Live Once’, ‘The Hurricane’ and ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’. He then continued rising high in his career with great musical hits for movies like 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 Airport. He has been the recipient of nine Academy awards. He became the most nominated composer in history and the third highest number of Oscars winner after Walt Disney and Cedric Gibbons until 2006. His music score in the film, ‘How the West Was Won’ was featured at 25th position under the list of 25 greatest film scores by the American Film Institute. He was honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Recording at 1708 Vine Street in Hollywood, California.
Some of his notable scores include films like:
How Green was My Valley
Song of Bernadette
The Razor’s Edge
Captain from Castille
Love Is a Many Splendored Thing
Newman tied nuptial knot with a former actress and Goldwyn Girl, Martha Louise Montgomery in 1947. The couple had five children. He is the head of a film-scoring dynasty in Hollywood that includes his two brothers, two sons, a daughter, a nephew, a grandnephew and a granddaughter, each of whom were iconic music composers and conductors in their own capacity. He passed away on February 17, 1970, owing to complications of emphysema disease.
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