Happy Birthday (yesterday) Miklos Rozsa

Miklos Rozsa was one of the finest movie score composers Hollywood had. Born April 18, 1907, in Hungary, he took his musical training in Germany and worked there until 1931. He moved on to France and Great Britain and came to the United States in 1940 where he stayed until his death in 1995. His career in America was successful, garnering him 17 Oscar nominations, with three wins: Spellbound in 1945, A Double Life in 1947, and Ben-Hur in 1959.

Rozsa also wrote concert music and had his music performed by conductors such as Eugene Ormandy, Bruno Walter, and Leonard Bernstein. But it was for his film scores that he is best remembered:

To Be or Not to Be

The Lost Weekend

A Song to Remember

The Naked City

Quo Vadis

Lust for Life

King of Kings

El Cid

The Green Berets

  

Not a bad line up, but that’s only some of them.  There were over 100.

One of my favorites is 1946’s The Killers with Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner. One of the title characters was William Conrad (radio’s Matt Dillon and tv’s Cannon). This composition is significant for a musical phrase that everybody knows, even if they’ve never seen the movie (and they should, by the way).

Listen to the first four notes and see if you can name the show that Walter Schumann used this music in. Rozsa sued and got a co-credit for the music.