TABLE OF CONTENTS

Overview of the Collection

Biographical History

Scope and Contents of the Collection

Restrictions

Subject and Genre Headings

Related Material

Administrative Information

Inventory

Correspondence-Subject Files

Writings

Memorabilia

Scores by others annotated by Franz Waxman

Scores by others without annotations

Scores by others arranged by Franz Waxman

Scores by Waxman

Franz Waxman Papers

An inventory of his papers at Syracuse University

Biographical History

FRANZ WAXMAN 1906-1967

A Biographical Memoir by John W. Waxman

[Photo at right: Last portrait of Franz Waxman, taken by Boris Goldenberg in 1965, for the premiere of The Song of Terezín at the Cincinnati May Festival.]

Franz Waxman led a variety of musical lives as composer, conductor and impresario. He was born in Konigshutte, Upper Silesia, Germany, on December 24, 1906, and was the youngest of seven children. No one in the family was musical except Franz, who started piano lessons at the age of six. His father was an industrialist, and not believing his son could earn a living in music, encouraged him in a banking career. He worked for two and a half years as a teller and used his salary to pay for lessons in piano, harmony and composition. He then quit the bank and moved to Dresden and then to Berlin to study music.

During this period he paid for his musical education by playing piano in nightclubs and with the Weintraub Syncopaters, a popular jazz band of the late 1920s. While with the band he began to do their arrangements, and this led to orchestrating some early German musical films. Frederick Hollander, who had written some music for the Weintraubs, gave Waxman his first important movie assignment: orchestrating and conducting Hollander's score for Josef von Sternberg's classic film, "The Blue Angel." The film's producer, Erich Pommer, who was also head of the UFA Studios in Berlin, was so pleased with the orchestration of the score that he gave Waxman his first major composing assignment: Fritz Lang's version of "Liliom" (1933) which was filmed in Paris. Pommer's next assignment, Jerome Kern's "Music in the Air" (Fox Films, 1934), took him to the United States, and he brought Waxman with him to arrange the music.

Waxman's first original Hollywood score was "The Bride of Frankenstein" (1935), which led to a two-year contract with Universal as head of the music department. He scored a dozen of the more than 50 Universal films on which he worked as music director. Among the best known are "Magnificent Obsession, "Diamond Jim" and "The Invisible Ray."

Two years after he went to Hollywood, Waxman, then 30, signed a seven-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to compose. He averaged about seven pictures a year, and it was during this period that he scored such famous Spencer Tracy films as "Captains Courageous," "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and "Woman of the Year." In 1937, he was loaned by M-G-M to David O. Selznick for "The Young at Heart" and was nominated for both Best Original Music and Best Score - the first two of 12 Academy Award nominations he was to receive for the 144 films he scored in his 32 years in Hollywood. In 1940 he was again loaned to Selznick, this time for "Rebecca," and was nominated for his third Academy Award.

Waxman left M-G-M in 1943 and began a long association with Warner Brothers. "Old Acquaintance" is from this period. (Selections from three more of his Warner Brothers scores can be heard on RCA albums: "Mr. Skeffington" is included in "Classic Film Scores for Bette Davis" and "To Have and Have Not" and "The Two Mrs. Carrolls" are included in "Casablanca - Classic Film Scores For Humphrey Bogart.")

In 1947 Waxman founded the Los Angeles International Music Festival, which he was to head for 20 years. World and American premieres of 80 major works by composers such as Stravinsky, Walton, Vaughan Williams, Shostakovitch and Schoenberg were given at the festival.

By 1947 Waxman had a busy schedule indeed. In addition to devoting a great deal of time to the festival, he was in demand at all the major studios, was guest conducting symphony orchestras in Europe as well as in the United States and was composing concert music. For the film "Humoresque" he wrote a special piece based on themes from Bizet's "Carmen," which was played by Isaac Stern on the soundtrack. The "Carmen Fantasie" has become standard repertoire and was recorded by Jascha Heifetz for RCA. Among Waxman's other concert works are "Overture for Trumpet and Orchestra," based on themes from "The Horn Blows at Midnight;" "Sinfonietta for String Orchestra and Timpani;" a dramatic song cycle "The Song of Terezin," and an oratorio, "Joshua."

Waxman won the Academy Award in 1950 for "Sunset Boulevard" and in 1951 for "A Place in the Sun." He is the only composer to have won the award for Best Score in two successive years. It was during the '50s and '60s that he composed some of his most important and varied scores. These are represented by the above two Academy Award winners as well as by "Prince Valiant" and "Taras Bulba." He had usually been associated with romantic films, but now he progressed to epic and jazz-oriented scores. "Crime in the Streets," "The Spirit of St. Louis," "Sayonara," "Peyton Place" and "The Nun's Story" are also from this period and the complete scores were issued on soundtrack albums. Franz Waxman received many honors during his lifetime, including the Cross of Merit from the Federal Republic of West Germany, honorary memberships in the Mahler Society and the International Society of Arts and Letters, and an honorary doctorate of letters and humanities from Columbia College. He died February 24, 1967, in Los Angeles at the age of 60.

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Scope and Contents of the Collection

Documenting the German-American composer's career from the early 1920s through the late 1960s, the Franz Waxman Papers comprises correspondence, writings, memorabilia, and scores.

The Correspondence-Subject Files (Boxes 1-9) contains both incoming and outgoing letters and related material, most of which was generated between 1922 and 1967. Correspondence encompasses that of conductors (Eugene Ormandy, William Steinberg, Leopold Stokowski, Bruno Walter); composers (Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss, Rolf Liebermann, Igor Stravinksky, Alexander Tansman); family members (Alice Waxman, John Waxman, Lella Waxman); motion picture producers, directors, and associates (Louis R. Lipstone, Joshua Logan, Marcella Rabwin, Dore Schary, Jerry Wald, Hal B. Wallis, Jack L. Warner, Darryl F. Zanuck); musicians (Johnny Green, Menahem Pressler, Jascha Heifetz, Rudolf Serkin, Isaac Stern); and music managers (Dorothy Huttenback, William McKelvey Martin). Other correspondents include playwright James Forsyth; dance director J. Marks; music publisher Hans Sikorski; singer Herva Nelli; and UCLA Fine Arts Department faculty Frances Inglis and William W. Melnitz. In addition, the Correspondence-Subject Files incorporates the letters of music publishers (Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., Theodore Presser Company, Salabert, Inc.); music associations and professional organizations (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers [ASCAP], International Society for Contemporary Music, Musicians Mutual Protective Association, Southern California Symphony Association, Union of Soviet Composers); and theatrical agencies (Herbert Barrett Management, Inc., Columbia Artists Management, Inc., Basil Horsfield Management Ltd., Organisation Artistique Internationale). Other correspondents include CBS News, Ford Foundation, and Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation. Also, letters, clippings, programs, and publicity document the history of the Los Angeles Music Festival from 1947 through 1966. Other performance-based materials relate to the "Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial Concert" and "The Song of Terezin."

Housed separately (Oversize packages 1-113), original and reproduction motion picture scores, as well as those for radio and television productions, constitute the bulk of Waxman's Writings. The remainder is comprised of essays, notebooks, transcripts of speeches, and miscellaneous notes (Box 10).

Encompassing a broad assortment of personal and printed documents, as well as a variety of formats, Memorabilia (Boxes 10-23) includes audio-visual material; a music-related autograph collection; financial records; photographs of Waxman, other music professionals, and performances; printed material, including clippings (1928-1967), program notes (1940-1996), and publicity; scores by others, many bearing annotations by Waxman; and scripts for some of the films and theatrical productions with which Waxman was associated.

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Restrictions

Access Restrictions

There are no access restrictions on this material.

Use Restrictions

Written permission must be obtained from SCRC and all relevant rights holders before publishing quotations, excerpts or images from any materials in this collection.

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Related Material

A collection of original recordings and restored selections of Franz Waxman's music are housed in the Belfer Audio Archive and Laboratory.

See also the papers of Miklos Rosza and the Christopher Palmer Collection of Roy Webb Scores.

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Subject Headings

Persons

Corporate Bodies

Subjects

Genres and Forms

Occupations

Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

Preferred citation for this material is as follows:

Franz Waxman Papers,
Special Collections Research Center,
Syracuse University Library

Acquisition Information

Gift of estate of Franz Waxman.

Finding Aid Information

Created by: GK
Date: Oct 1996
Revision history: 22 Aug 2005 - EAD file created (MRR); 25 Jan 2007 - added copyright restriction statement (MRC); 18 Apr 2007 - updated Related Material

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Inventory