The Exiles and Émigrés That Shaped the Sound of Early Hollywood
In 1934, the talented young composer Franz Waxman was working for the legendary Berliner Union Film Ateliers studio in Berlin. His career was on the rise. But trouble was brewing. "The head of production was a man named Erich Pommer," his son John William Waxman recalls. "When Hitler fired him and put Joseph Goebbels, who was a Minister of Propaganda, in as head of production, the handwriting was clearly on the wall."
A short time later, the Jewish Waxman was beaten in the street by Nazi thugs. "He picked himself up, dusted himself off, went back to the apartment and said to my mother, 'I'm packing. Look up when the next train leaves for Paris,'" his son says.
Alice and Franz Waxman were two of the tens of thousands of German and Austrian émigrés who would leave Europe from World War I through the rise of the Nazis and World War II. They initially fled to Paris, settling at the same hotel as future Hollywood legends Peter Lorre and Billy Wilder (Waxman would later win his first Academy Award for "Sunset Boulevard," composing the score for his friend Wilder's masterpiece).
The Waxmans soon made their way to Hollywood, where many of their fellow émigrés had fled, and set about making connections in the vibrant salon of German-born actress and screenwriter Salka Viertel.
"My parents were new to Los Angeles and to this environment, and they're being introduced around by Salka and then introduced to this man who screams at the top of his lungs, 'Oh, my god, I've been looking all over the world for you. I saw "Liliom" and you're the composer for my next picture,'" John Waxman recalls. "'I want you to come to the studio after the holidays and I want to show it to you.' Well, my father would have scored a Mickey Mouse cartoon; I mean anything to stay in the United States. So he's, 'Sure.' The director was James Whale, the picture was 'The Bride of Frankenstein.'"
Whale had been captivated by Waxman's innovative work on the 1935 French Film "Liliom" (later adapted as the American musical "Carousel"), starring Charles Boyer. He was particularly taken with a scene where Boyer's character dies and ascends to heaven.
"To score that scene, my father went to a concert hall called Sainte Traelle and they have a big dome in this concert hall," his son says. "So, he said to the engineers, 'Listen, guys, is there any way you can get a mic way up at the top of that dome because I want the effect that this music that we're about to record is coming from afar, from a heavenly place.' So it was that effect that caught James Whale's attention, and that's when he knew that Waxman was the composer for 'Bride of Frankenstein.'"
Waxman's bombastic, eerie score was just the first in an illustrious career. Nominated for twelve Oscars, he would compose iconic scores to classic films like "Rebecca," "Sunset Boulevard," "A Place in the Sun," "Stalag 17," "Rear Window," "Suspicion" and "Peyton Place." He also founded the Los Angeles Music Festival.
But not every émigré fleeing Hitler was as content to work in films. When famed composer Arnold Schoenberg, creator of the influential twelve-tone system, arrived in Los Angeles, he quickly realized working in movies was not for him after an awkward meeting with MGM producer Irving Thalberg. According to the Boston Globe: "When Schoenberg met with Thalberg, the producer complimented the composer on his 'lovely music;' the composer snapped back with 'I don't write 'lovely' music.'"
But many Austrian and German emigres would have no such qualms about working in American films, joining the estimated 1,500 refugees who would help modernize and artistically elevate the film industry from the 1930s to the 1950s.
"First of all, there were the directors: Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, Otto Preminger, Max Ophuls, Fred Zinnemann, Billy Wilder," Tim Robey writes in The Daily Telegraph. "But there were also the composers, who made an indelible mark on the art of film scoring — and in many ways brought it to a zenith. This was music designed to fill the movie palaces of old — and the films — with the bursting emotional impact the studios demanded."
One such composer was the prolific Austrian Max Steiner, a three-time Oscar winner who wrote iconic scores for classics including "Casablanca," "Gone with the Wind," and "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre."
Max believed that music could sit underneath dialogue, work with the film to enhance and amplify the emotions, the characters, the drama of the moment.Andy Trudeau, NPR Music Producer
"A real important point to make about Max Steiner was that he was truly a pioneer," NPR Music Producer Andy Trudeau told Weekend Edition in 2000. "Max believed that music could sit underneath dialogue, work with the film to enhance and amplify the emotions, the characters, the drama of the moment. This was quite a radical idea, because prior to Max really coming onto the scene, film music was limited to main titles, a little bit of source music in the body of the score and something at the end. Max said, 'If I can get underneath some of those scenes, I can really do things.' And he really proved his point with a film called 'King Kong.'"
Another innovator was the former child prodigy Erich Wolfgang Korngold — who composed for Errol Flynn swashbuckling classics like "The Sea Hawk" and "The Adventures of Robin Hood" and "Captain Blood." "His approach to the medium was predominantly theatrical and operatic (he once described "Tosca" as 'the best film score ever written')", I.S. Mowis writes on IMDB. "A master of technique, credited with 'inventing' the syntax of orchestral film music, he composed at the piano with projectionists running reels at his behest."
But despite Korngold's enormous success in Hollywood, his reputation as a top-tier composer would suffer, since many criticized his choice to sell his soul to the studios. "He was no longer recognized as a serious composer in the classical world and was no longer accepted there," violinist Daniel Hope told Deutsche Welle.
But many German émigrés, well aware they needed money to survive in a new country, and also needing to feed their artistic souls, were happy to make film scores their own. Frederick Hollander, already respected in Berlin for his work on the Marlene Dietrich classic "Blue Angel," would score films including "Destry Rides Again" and Billy Wilder's "Sabrina." During his exile in Hollywood, composer Bernard Herrmann's forceful and bold work on "Citizen Kane," "Psycho" and "Vertigo" would contribute to the iconic status of the films.
However, some émigrés who had fled persecution would find themselves equally persecuted in America. Hanns Eisler, who escaped Nazi rule in 1933, was nominated for the Oscars because of his work in "None but the Lonely Heart" and "Hangman Also Die!" In 1947, he was deported from America during the communist witch-hunt, despite the fact, that as Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times notes, Eisler was a Marxist but never a card-carrying member of the Communist Party.
For John William Waxman, the remarkable ability of these traumatized immigrants to not only survive but help transform Hollywood music is not only remarkable — but a testament to their talent, grit — and adaptability.
"If you sing the song, 'San Francisco', that's Bronislaw Kaper. If you hum the theme from "Rawhide," that's Ditmitri Tiomkin, who was Russian, but also had to escape. So, these composers adapted their talent and became all-American citizens and wrote quintessential American music. I mean, 'Get 'em out, get 'em out, rawhide!' What's more American than that?"
