By Dr. Bruce Smith ——Bio and Archives--February 21, 2024
HeartlandLifestyles | CFP Comments | Reader Friendly | Subscribe | Email Us
Few composers possessed better skill at combining music with cinematic images than Alfred Newman (1900-1970). He scored more than 250 films. Nominated 45 times for an Academy Award, he won nine times.
A child prodigy and the oldest of eight children of parents who immigrated from Russia, Newman began to earn money playing the piano as a teenager to support his family. He moved to Hollywood in the 1930s to begin a career composing and scoring for films, many of them with producer Samuel Goldwyn. He wrote the familiar 20th Century Fox fanfare.
How The West Was Won was an epic film from an era when epic films were common. Filmed in five chapters, it had three directors, Henry Hathaway, John Ford, and George Marshall. It’s breathtaking and memorable. In addition to traditional themes of westward movement in covered wagons, it pays tribute to mountain men and plainsmen, women who made the trek toward the ‘promised land,’ and the heroic efforts of those who risked and lost their lives in the westward movement. The film also portrays the effects of the Civil War on the West and shows travel to the West on rivers, a feature often neglected in popular accounts.
Newman’s music can speak for itself. I suggest playing the main title first. It’s the orchestral arrangement of the theme played to a painted scene. Consider what the music suggests to you without the images from the film. Then play the main theme. It’s accompanied by many scenes from the movie with many familiar actors, including Jimmy Stewart, Gregory Peck, George Peppard, Henry Fonda, Richard Widmark, Karl Malden, Robert Preston, Debbie Reynolds, Lee J. Cobb, Carroll Baker, John Wayne, Harry Morgan, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef, and Walter Brennan.
I play the music often as inspiration. To me, it has always been the theme of an unstoppable force. Please share your own thoughts and insights in the comments.
Support Canada Free Press
View Comments
Dr. Bruce Smith (Inkwell, Hearth and Plow) is a retired professor of history and a lifelong observer of politics and world events. He holds degrees from Indiana University and the University of Notre Dame. In addition to writing, he works as a caretaker and handyman. His non-fiction book The War Comes to Plum Street, about daily life in the 1930s and during World War II, may be ordered from Indiana University Press.