![]() ![]() ![]() He soon drifted into musical theater, which not only paid more but was home to scores of pretty girls who may have distracted an impressionable teenage boy a time or two.Īt the age of 17, Alfred was the youngest musical director on Broadway and beginning in 1920 began conducting musicals for George Gershwin, George White's Scandals 19, Jerome Kern, the Greenwich Follies of 19, Irving Berlin, and others. He was just 13 when he became the featured soloist at the Strand Theater. By 1913, the Newman's had moved to New York and Alfred was playing at as many as five gigs per day. When Stojowski offered little Alfred a scholarship, a friendly businessman in New Haven convinced the local ticket inspector to look the other way, allowing the lad to travel to Stojowski's New York studio several times using the same ticket.ĭespite the boy's musical success, his father was still unable to find work, so it fell to Alfred's talented fingers to bring money into the house. He was barely seven when painting was about all that his first teacher had left to teach him, but after his first recital friends brought him to the attention of the Polish virtuoso Sigismund Stojowski. Despite the poverty that was so present in the Newman household, Alfred's momma found a way to pay for his music lessons, even resorting to hiring a maestro whose primary job was as a house painter. The oldest of ten children born into an achingly poor Jewish family in New Haven, Connecticut, 1901, Alfred Newman was musical from the moment the midwife slapped him on the tuckus moments after his mother delivered him. Vaudeville was a product of the immigrant community, and these were the same people who brought their showbiz traditions and values to Hollywood. A theater manager would hire an orchestra if he could afford one, or simply a single player to play between the acts to help establish a happy mood for the audience. Movie music is an outgrowth of the music played in vaudeville halls. Although we are most impressed with what we see, what we hear is just as important to the whole experience. This only touches the surface when we consider the many people who are involved in bringing a story to the local movie house. On the screen we see the acting stars, hear the words of the writer, and enjoy the vision of the director. We pay close attention to the Stars which causes us to forget that movie making is such a collaborative art form. ![]()
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