- Walter Scharf
Walter Scharf (
1 August 1910 -24 February 2003 ) was an American film composer.Born in
New York , he was the son ofYiddish theatre comicBessie Zwerling . While in his 20s, he was one of the orchestrators forGeorge Gershwin 's Broadway musical "Girl Crazy ", became singerHelen Morgan 's accompanist, and later worked as pianist and arranger for singerRudy Vallee .He began working in
Hollywood in 1933, arranging forAl Jolson atWarner Bros. ,Alice Faye at20th Century-Fox andBing Crosby at Paramount. He orchestrated the original version ofIrving Berlin 's "White Christmas" for the film "Holiday Inn" (1942), and from 1942 to 1946 he served as head of music forRepublic Pictures .From 1948 to 1954, Scharf was arranger-conductor for the
Phil Harris -Alice Faye radio show.A ten-time Oscar nominee, Scharf worked on more than 100 films, receiving nominations for his musical direction on such pictures as
Danny Kaye 's "Hans Christian Andersen" (1952),Barbra Streisand 's "Funny Girl" (1968) and "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory " (1971).In the early 1960s he was approached by
Harold Lloyd to provide new scores for his silent film compilations. Lloyd regarded Scharf's ability to mix comedy themes with big, dramatic orchestral touches as ideal for his brand of 'thrill' comedy.Scharf implemented a similar style for the
Jerry Lewis Jekyll and Hyde -inspired comedy "The Nutty Professor " in (1963), working on more than a dozen Lewis comedies overall. He worked on threeElvis Presley pictures including "Loving You " (1957) and "King Creole " (1958), and with lyricistDon Black , he wrote the hitMichael Jackson single from the film "Ben" (1972), which won him aGolden Globe ; and scored the popular "Walking Tall " (1973) and its two sequels.Scharf composed music for dozens of 1960s television dramas including "
Ben Casey ", "The Man From U.N.C.L.E. " and "", although he became best-known for his music for theNational Geographic and "The Undersea World ofJacques Cousteau " documentaries, which he scored between 1965 and 1975. He received twoEmmy s for the Cousteau series, in 1970 and 1974, and composed an original symphonic work, "The Legend of the Living Sea", for a Cousteau museum exhibit aboard theRMS Queen Mary in 1971.Scharf's initial work for the concert hall was "The Palestine Suite", written in 1945 and performed at the
Hollywood Bowl underLeopold Stokowski . After retiring from films and TV in the 1980s, he returned to concert writing, notably with "The Tree Still Stands: A Symphonic Portrait of the Stages of a Hebraic Man", first performed in 1989, and the 1993 "Israeli Suite".Scharf wrote an unproduced opera based on
Norman Corwin 's "The Plot to Overthrow Christmas" and received theGolden Score Award from theAmerican Society of Music Arrangers and Composers in 1997.External links
*imdb name|id=0770127|name=Walter Scharf
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