The Amazing Newman Family

One family has influenced movie music more than any other. The best known member of this family is Randy Newman, who has had a very prolific career as a solo recording artist, but has been nominated for 18 Academy Awards (winning only one) for his film work. However, his uncle, Alfred Newman, was even more successful in film, who was nominated 45 times and won 9 Academy Awards, more than any other composer in history. His other uncle, Lionel, was nominated 11 times and won once, his cousin, Thomas, has been nominated 10 times (zero wins), and he has another uncle, another cousin, and a nephew who have all composed music for films. Oscars aside, the family has composed music for hundreds of films and some TV shows, and has been a force in Hollywood for three generations.

Alfred Newman grew up poor in the early part of the 20th century, and like many poor but creative immigrants at that time, wound up migrating to vaudeville and then the film industry. He wrote his first full film score for Street Scene in 1931, which was the start of a 40-year career in the movies. While he wrote original music for notable movies such as The Prisoner of Zenda, Dodsworth, and Gunga Din, he was best known for his adaptation of music from Broadway musicals, winning an Oscar for his musical adaptation for The King and I in 1956. Alfred's score for How the West Was Won was ranked by the American Film Institute as the twenty-fifth greatest American film score ever composed (you can hear the wonderful western overture from the film here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXPFuXfAmbI ).

Randy Newman grew up in L.A. in the 1940s and 50s, and released his first single at age eighteen in 1961. It was not successful, so he began his early career as a songwriter for other artists. Gene Pitney, Jerry Butler, and the O'Jays all recorded his songs, but he didn't receive much notoriety until Harry Nilsson recorded his album Nilsson Sings Newman in 1970. The success of that album paved the way for Newman to release more of his own work, which was critically successful and spawned many covers of his songs, but it was his song Short People in 1977 that infamously put him on the map. In the 1980s, Newman began doing more of the film work that he had started in the 1970s, notably writing scores for Ragtime and The Natural. Randy worked on many successful films in the next twenty plus years, but it is his work on the movie Toy Story that is the most instantly recognizable, especially the song You've Got a Friend in Me . Toy Story very naturally matched the playfulness, quirkiness, and touch of melancholy of Randy's music to the story of the film. (For me however, the film I most associate with Randy's music is the goofy Major League, because of the use of Randy's Burn On in the opening credit sequence.)

Thomas Newman was born in 1955, the son of Alfred Newman. He studied music composition at USC and then at Yale, and quickly found work in the movies. He made a name for himself in the 1980s, composing scores for Desperately Seeking Susan and Reckless. This led him to high profile work in the early 1990s in Fried Green Tomatoes, Scent of a Woman, and The Shawshank Redemption. His film resume in the last 15 years reads like a listing of notable movies from that period: American Beauty, Erin Brockovich, In the Bedroom, Finding Nemo, The Green Mile, and many more. He won a Grammy for his main theme for the TV show Six Feet Under, which is probably his best known work (watch and listen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYAe0qwg9Yw ). However, I will always think of this sequence from American Beauty when I think of Thomas Newman. Newman's music, Conrad Hall's cinematography, and Kevin Spacey's voiceover and acting made this scene electrifying the first time I saw it.

Those are the three best know Newmans, but there are several others who have worked or currently work in the film music industry. Hundreds of movies, hundreds of great scores! What's your favorite Newman music moment?