Adolph Deutsch

Adolph Deutsch
Birth nameAdolph Charles Sander Deutsch
Born(1897-10-20)20 October 1897
London, England, United Kingdom
Died1 January 1980(1980-01-01) (aged 82)
Palm Desert, California, United States
OccupationComposer
Years active1914–1961

Adolph Sender Charles Deutsch (20 October 1897 – 1 January 1980)[1] was a British-American composer, conductor and arranger.

Born in London, England, he emigrated to the United States in 1911, and settled in Buffalo, New York. His parents, Alex (Alexander) Deutsch and Dena née Gerst, were German Jews.

In 1914, Deutsch was "a Buffalo movie house musician", accompanying silent films.[2] Deutsch began his composing career on Broadway in the 1920s and 1930s, and arranged for several American dance bands such as Paul Whiteman and Paul Ash before working for Hollywood films beginning in the late 1930s.[1] For Broadway, he orchestrated Irving Berlin's As Thousands Cheer and George and Ira Gershwin's Pardon My English.[1]

Deutsch won Oscars for his background music for Oklahoma! (1955), and for conducting the music for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) and Annie Get Your Gun (1950).[1] He was nominated for The Band Wagon (1953) and the 1951 film version of Show Boat,[1] for which he conducted the orchestra. For Broadway and Hollywood, he conducted, composed and arranged music, but did not write songs, not even for the Broadway shows on which he worked. In addition to his music for westerns and his conducting of the scores for musicals, Deutsch composed for films noir, including The Mask of Dimitrios (1944), The Maltese Falcon (1941), and Nobody Lives Forever (1946), as well as Little Women (the 1949 adaptation), and the Billy Wilder comedies Some Like It Hot (1959), and The Apartment (1960).[3] His final film was Go Naked in the World.

Deutsch died of heart failure on 1 January 1980.[4]

Filmography

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Colin Larkin, ed. (1992). The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music (First ed.). Guinness Publishing. p. 683. ISBN 0-85112-939-0.
  2. ^ The Buffalo News, 15 April 1944
  3. ^ "Movie Reviews". The New York Times. 24 July 2020. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
  4. ^ "ADOLPH DEUTSCH, 82 HOLLYWOOD COMPOSER, OSCAR WINNER; BYLINEUNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL: [FOURTH Edition]". The Boston Globe. 2 January 1980. ProQuest 293237171.