Franz Waxman's music is some of the most recognizable in film history - audiences know the scores, even if they can't name the composer. Among his works were The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Rear Window (1954), To Have and Have Not (1944), The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947), Magnificent Obsession (1954), A Place in the Sun (1951), and Sunset Blvd (1950) (the latter two earning him Academy Awards).

As Waxman's son John wrote in his memoir of his father, "He was born in Konigshutte, Upper Silesia, Germany, on December 24, 1906, and was the youngest of seven children. No one in the family was musical except Franz, who started piano lessons at the age of six. His father was an industrialist, and not believing his son could earn a living in music, encouraged him in a banking career. He worked for two and a half years as a teller and used his salary to pay for lessons in piano, harmony and composition. He then quit the bank and moved to Dresden and then to Berlin to study music." Waxman financed his education by playing the infamous Berlin nightclubs of the late 1920's with a popular jazz band called the Weintraub Syncopaters.

While with the band, Waxman began to arrange songs to give the band a signature sound. During this time, he met Frederick Hollander, who occasionally wrote songs for the Syncopaters which Waxman would arrange. Hollander was involved in the German film industry and invited Waxman to orchestrate and conduct Hollander's newest film score. The film turned out to be Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel (1930) starring Marlene Dietrich.

In the early 1930's, the rise of Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Party's oppression of Jews caused an exodus of Jewish members of the German film industry. In 1932 Waxman (who had been born Franz Wachsmann) left Germany to work in Paris for German productions being filmed there. When the producer of The Blue Angel, Erich Pommer, was in Paris making Fritz Lang's Liliom (1933), he hired Waxman to do the score. The following year Pommer went to Hollywood to produce Jerome Kern's Music in the Air (1934) for Fox, and he took Waxman with him.

After a two year stint as head of the Music Department with Universal Pictures, where he did his first original score for The Bride of Frankenstein, Waxman signed a seven year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Luckily for Waxman, he was only 30 years old at the time, as his work load at MGM averaged seven films a year. His son John later wrote, "[I]t was during this period that he scored such famous Spencer Tracy films as Captains Courageous (1937), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), and Woman of the Year (1942). In 1937, he was loaned by MGM to David O. Selznick for The Young in Heart and was nominated for both Best Original Music and Best Score - the first two of 12 Academy Award nominations he was to receive for the 144 films he scored in his 32 years in Hollywood."

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Waxman did not limit himself to the film industry. In 1947, he founded The Beverly Hills Music Festival (which two years later became The Los Angeles Music Festival), serving both as Musical Director and Conductor. During his time with the Festival, he premiered the works of many new composers, as Franz Waxman's official site, www.franzwaxman.com, relates: "Reviewing the concert of June 2, 1954, Los Angeles Daily News critic Mildred Norton wrote that the new season "continued the tradition now established by the festival's founder-director Franz Waxman of offering unhackneyed and stimulating departures from the usual." "Although he was part of the film industry, which is often (and wrongly) associated with conservative musical attitudes, Waxman was a strong champion of contemporary music, as the concert programs clearly reveal. Even Mozart is outpaced by LA resident Stravinsky. Arthur Honegger, for whom Waxman felt a particular affinity, is well represented, and among the most striking events of the Festival's history were the world premiere of Stravinsky's Agon in 1957 and the West Coast premiere of Britten's War Requiem, under Waxman's direction, that took place within two years of the work's publication in 1962."

Waxman continued to compose for film and television until his untimely death at the age of 60 on February 24th, 1967. His music continues to be enjoyed by audiences around the world to this day. The Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, The Nashville and Dallas Symphony Orchestras, and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (to name only a few) continue to feature his works in their repertoire; contemporary artists such as violinist Lara St. John have included his music on their CDs. In 2007, Waxman's music is scheduled to be performed in New York, California, Florida, Texas, The Netherlands, Spain, Japan and London.

by Lorraine LoBianco

SOURCES:
Franz Waxman 1906-1967, A Biographical Memoir by John W. Waxman , The Franz Waxman Papers, Syracuse University

www.franzwaxman.com

The Internet Movie Database