Hugo Friedhofer -- how many times have you seen that name in the
credits of 1930s and '40s movies for "orchestration" or "musical
arranger" and thought -- Gee, what a busy guy! He was, and, ironically,
much of that work went uncredited. He is not usually mentioned with the
great film composers of early Hollywood, but he was very much an equal
and as prolific once he received the opportunities to compose as well.
Friedhofer began studying the cello at age 13. In 1917, he dropped out
of high school in support of a teacher who had been fired for radical
and anti-war beliefs. He worked as a cellist for the People's Symphony
Orchestra in San Francisco (always a liberal kind of place). He married
quite young at 19 and had a child by the age of 22. He quickly put his
music expertise to a working life by playing in theater orchestras and
accompanying silent films and stage shows between features. He also
started writing arrangements of music and worked at the Granada Theater
(became the Paramount in 1931), with the opportunity to write some
incidental music.
Friedhofer came to Los Angeles in the later 1920s and became a friend
of the violinist George Lipschultz,
who just happened to be the musical director at Twentieth Century Fox.
It was 1929, and Lipschultz asked him to fill in a musician spot for
film music recording at a small studio. That was the beginning of
Friedhofer's career in films. When this small studio was taken over by
Fox, he and other musicians were on the street. But he was brought to
the notice of Erich Korngold, a relatively new film composer at Warner
Bros. where Max Steiner was king.
Friedhofer was hired by Warner Bros soon after to arrange scores for
musicals and orchestrate scores-mostly for these two composers.
Including orchestrating all of Korngold's movie scores and fifty of
Steiner's, Friedhofer would orchestrate or musically direct 105 films
into the mid 1950s during his career.
But he was already doing significant film composing as well from 1930
along with incidental and stock music for several studios before his
stay at Warner. Friedhofer's developing style was in the romantic vein
of his contemporaries. He studied composition with
Ernst Toch after aiding the composer with
contributions to
Peter Ibbetson (1935) at
Paramount. With the move to Warner, Friedhofer's problem became being
just too valuable as an orchestrator and musical director for Warner to
free him for composing assignments until the late 1930s. With tight
budgets and the need for musical managers to wear several hats,
Friedhofer's legendary efficiency was hard to give up. His first full
film score was for Samuel Goldwyn's
Die Abenteuer des Marco Polo (1938)
after being recommended by another film composer great
Alfred Newman. His first for Warner's was
The Oklahoma Kid (1939) (with
James Cagney debuting as a cowboy!). He did
not get credit for this nor for
Im Zeichen des Zorro (1940)
(co-work with Newman) and
Land der Gottlosen (1940) both in
1940. Into and after the war years Friedhofer was very busy -- but
still not getting the composing credit due -- as for
Gilda (1946). All told, he was not credited
as composer for some 120 films.
Friedhofer broke from the confines of Warner Bros. finally in 1946 to
freelance and received the grand prize right off. Again, it was Newman
who recommended him for scoring Goldwyn's wonderful post-war drama of
adjustment
Die besten Jahre unseres Lebens (1946),
and Friedhofer showed his power as composer with a score that engaged
the story at every turn and most deservedly won the Oscar for Best
Score. Other memorable credited scores included such classics as: the
gripping music for Das Rettungsboot (1944),
directed by Alfred Hitchcock;
the delightful Christmas strings score of
Jede Frau braucht einen Engel (1947); and
the soaring music for 'Ingrid Bergman' in
Johanna von Orleans (1948).
Though he continued in demand, much of Friedhofer's scoring output
through the 1950s went to films mostly relegated to Saturday mornings
these days, but there were notables, as the 1957 duo
Die große Liebe meines Lebens (1957)
and the well-received
Zwischen Madrid und Paris (1957).
And the next year came the engaging and thought-provoking
Der Barbar und die Geisha (1958)
(a fine performance by John Wayne)
under the always versatile direction of
John Huston. He also did some TV
episodic and mini-movie music through the 1960s in addition to more
films.
Friedhofer had all the qualities of an accomplished, indeed, incisive
and intuitive film composer -- proved with a total of eight Oscar
nominations -- and yet he was his own worst enemy. Anxieties about his
abilities brought self-criticism and doubts that boiled out in a
misanthropic view of the world in general that no amount of praise from
public or friends could dislodge. At the least he should have believed
that he had succeeded in grand style -- with nearly 250 pieces of
screen music as a realistic basis for affirmation.
