Born December 24, 1906 in Upper Silesia, Germany, now Slaskie, Poland, Franz Wachsmann, later Waxman, pursued his dream of a career in music despite his family’s misgivings, supplementing his piano, harmony and composition lessons with his salary as a bank teller.

The young composer found a job arranging music for a popular Berlin jazz band which led to a career in German films. His first job was orchestrating Frederick Hollander’s score for The Blue Angel, the film that made a star of Marlene Dietrich. After both scoring and arranging a number of German films, he came to Hollywood’s attention for his scoring of Fritz Lang’s Liliom for Fritz Lang in France. Moving to Hollywood, he was immediately hired by universal at director James Whale’s suggestion to score The Bride of Frankenstein which immediately put him in the top ranks of Hollywood composers.

Working first for Universal, then MGM, Waxman’s original scores in the 1930s included Fury, Captains Courageous and The Young in Heart for which he received two Oscar nominations, one for his original score and one for scoring, which he earned as the film’s arranger. Competitive awards for scoring began with the 1934 awards and continued through the 1967 awards. Awards for score composition began with the 1938 awards and continue to the present day. Waxman, from 1930 to 1960, scored more than 150 films.

Among Waxman’s scores are 1938’s A Christmas Carol and 1939’s On Borrowed Time; 1940’s Rebecca, his first for Alfred Hitchcock which brought him his third Oscar nod, his second for arranging and The Philadelphia Story; 1941’s Suspicion and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, two more Oscar nods, again for arranging; 1942’s Woman of the Year and Journey for Margaret; 1943’s Air Force and Destination Tokyo and 1945’s Objective Burma!, his sixth Oscar nod, once again for arranging. He received a seventh nod for arranging 1946’s Humoresque for which also provided incidental music.

Waxman finally won back-to-back Oscars on his eighth and ninth nominations for 1950’s Sunset Boulevard and 1951’s A Place in the Sun, albeit for arranging his compositions, not writing them. Subsequent scores included 1953’s Stalag 17; 1954’s Rear Window, his last for Hitchcock and The Silver Chalice, for which he received a tenth Oscar nod, yet again for arranging; 1955’s Mister Roberts; 1957’s The Spirit of St. Louis, Peyton Place and Sayonara as well as 1959’s The Nun’s Story, which brought him his eleventh Oscar nod, still in the arranging category.

Finally for the first time since 1938, Waxman received an Oscar nomination for composing the score for 1962’s Taras Bulba. Slowing down due to illness after that, Franz Waxman died of cancer on February 24, 1967 at the age of 60. He was survived by a son, his wife Alice having died in 1957.

In 1999, six USA commemorative stamps were issued in the Legends of American Music series. Included were Max Steiner, Dimitri Tiomkin, Bernard Herrmann, Alfred Newman, Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Waxman.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935), directed by James Whale

James Whale was so taken with Waxman’s score for Fritz Lang’s French film, Liliom, that he insisted Universal hire the new to Hollywood composer to compose the score for the sequel to Whale’s 1931 classic, Frankenstein.

Waxman’s score for The Bride of Frankenstein so impressed the studio that they not only signed him to a contract, they made him head of their music department but concerned that he was spending more time arranging and conducting other composers’ scores than creating his own, Waxman moved on to MGM after just a few years. The music he composed for The Bride of Frankenstein was incorporated into subsequent Universal films for years.

REBECCA (1940), directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Waxman’s fame and fortune increased significantly with his first score for Alfred Hitchcock’s first Hollywood film for which he received one of his twelve Oscar nominations.

The arbitrariness of the Oscar categories within the music branch are such that Oscars were given for scoring, i.e. the arranging and conducting of the score, not the score itself, from 1934 to 1937 after which composers finally received awards recognition for their creations. However, from 1938 through 1967, awards for Best Score co-existed with awards for Best Scoring. It wasn’t until 1968 that the award for Scoring was finally eliminated.

Ironically, Waxman, who composed some of Hollywood’s greatest scores, received ten of his twelve Oscar nominations for arranging and conducting his scores, rather than for composing them.

SUNSET BOULEVARD (1951), directed by Billy Wilder

Finally, on his eighth nomination, Waxman received an Oscar for one of his scores, albeit for arranging and conducting the score, not composing it. A year later he won again for his scoring of A Place in the Sun, making him the first to recive twoconsecutive Oscars for Scoring.

In 2005, the American Film Institute conducted a poll to select the 25 greatest film scores of all time. Waxman’s score for Sunset Boulevard placed sixteenth on the list.

PEYTON PLACE (1957), directed by Mark Robson

Waxman’s score for Peyton Place was one of his best and most popular. An LP recording of the score became a best-selling album. It’s odd that the film, which was nominated for nine Academy Awards, didn’t also receive one for Best Scoring, especially since the nominees included two by Hugo Friedhofer for other Fox films, An Affair to Remember and the all but forgotten The Boy on a Dolphin as well as Paul Smith for the Disney nature film, Perri (a female squirrel) and Johnny Green for MGM’s Rainttree County. None of them had a chance of beating the winner, Malcolm Arnold for The Bridge on the River Kwai.

THE NUN’S STORY (1959), directed by Fred Zinnemann

Waxman’s last great score for Zinnemann’s Audrey Hepburn starrer was another popular effort that included a best-selling LP release.

Waxman received his eleventh Oscar nomination for his work, losing to Miklos Rozsa for the year’s Best Picture Oscar winner, Ben-Hur. He would recive his final nomination for the 1962 adventure film, Taras Bulba.