March 17: The Newmans of Hollywood

Film composer Alfred Newman, who scored more than 200 films and won nine Academy Awards (receiving 45 nominations, four of them in 1939 alone), was born into poverty in New Haven on this date in 1900. Newman was a child prodigy who walked daily for miles to practice on a neighbor’s piano. He traveled the vaudeville circuit as “The Marvelous Boy Pianist,” and began a decade as a Broadway conductor at the age of 20. In 1930, he accompanied Irving Berlin to Hollywood, where Newman would serve as musical director for 20th Century Fox for twenty years (he composed the company’s fanfare) and created a sychronization system for music and film that is still used today. Newman’s brother Lionel scored three dozen films and several TV series; his brother Emil scored over 80 films; his son David has scored nearly 100 films; his son Thomas Newman has scored over 70 films and received ten Academy Award nominations; his daughter Maria Newman is an prominent musician and composer; and his nephew Randy has written dozens of hit songs and won his second Academy Award (with twenty nominations) this year.

“There was in his conducting style a mixture of sentiment and romantic turbulence, of precision and passionate intensity that is next to impossible to duplicate.” —David Raksin