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Dimitri Tiomkin

 
Music Encyclopedia: Dimitri Tiomkin

(b St Petersburg, 10 May 1894; d London, 11 Nov 1979). American composer of Russian origin. He was a pupil of Glazunov in St Petersburg and of Busoni in Berlin. In 1929 he moved to Hollywood, where he became a successful composer of film music, notably High Noon (1952), Dial M for Murder (1954) and The Guns of Navarone (1961).



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Artist: Dimitri Tiomkin
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  • Born: May 10, 1894, Kremenchuk, Ukraine
  • Died: November 11, 1979, London, England
  • Active: '40s, '50s, '60s
  • Genres: Soundtrack
  • Instrument: Composer, Piano, Musical Director
  • Representative Albums: "Giant," "36 Hours, Vol. 5," "The Western Film World of Dimitri Tiomkin"

Biography

It was once considered cute by Hollywood wits to poke fun at Russian-born composer Dimitri Tiomkin's borscht-flavored accent. How amusing it was to hear him yell out "Switt lyand of lyaberty!" while orchestrating "The Star Spangled Banner" for Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). A graduate of the St. Petersburg Academy (where he studied under the famed composer Glazunov) and a holder of both a law and music degree, Tiomkin exhibited a fondness for Native American music early in his career. While a touring concert pianist, it was Tiomkin who was most instrumental in introducing the works of Gershwin to Europe. Tiomkin left Russia for the U.S. in 1925, becoming an American citizen 12 years later and making his conducting debut with the L.A. Philharmonic in 1938. Most of his first compositions for American consumption were live ballets (his wife was choreographer Albertina Raasch); he didn't start working in films until 1933. With Lost Horizon (1937), Tiomkin began a long association with director Frank Capra, which unfortunately ended in bitterness due to artistic clashes on the set of It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Though jukebox acceptance was probably never a priority with Tiomkin, he was responsible for several Top Ten hit songs, all of which originated in his film scores: "Do Not Forsake Me" from High Noon (1952), the whistled main theme from The High and the Mighty (1954), the credit music from Friendly Persuasion (1956), and "Green Leaves of Summer" from The Alamo (1960), among others. The winner of five Academy Awards (among many other international honors), Tiomkin remained active in films until 1970, the year that he produced, directed, and orchestrated the U.S./Soviet co-production Tschaikovsky. ~ Hal Erickson, All Music Guide
Actor: Dimitri Tiomkin
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  • Born: May 10, 1894 in Kremenchuk, Ukraine
  • Died: Nov 11, 1979 in London, England
  • Active: '30s-'60s
  • Major Genres: Drama, Western
  • Career Highlights: High Noon, The Thing, Strangers on a Train
  • First Major Screen Credit: Devil May Care (1929)

Biography

From the end of the 1940s until the beginning of the 1960s, Dimitri Tiomkin was one of the more prominent composers in movies; decades after his death, he remains one of the most problematic creative figures of his era in Hollywood. Tiomkin was born in Kremenchuk, Ukraine in 1894. Raised in St. Petersburg, Russia and educated in that city's conservatory, his teachers included renowned classical composer Alexander Glazunov. He came of age amid the turmoil of revolutionary Russia and fled to Western Europe, studying in Berlin and later establishing himself as a performer as part of a piano duo. Tiomkin subsequently became a concert pianist and, among his other credits as a performing musician, he gave the European premiere of George Gershwin's "Concerto in F," in 1928.

With the advent of talking pictures, Tiomkin and his wife, the former dance director Albertina Rasch -- whom he'd met while on a vaudeville tour of America in the early '20s -- relocated to Hollywood. He made his debut as a film composer in 1930 with Our Blushing Brides, a drama starring Joan Crawford, and his subsequent movie projects included Broadway to Hollywood, Paramount's Alice in Wonderland (both 1933), and Mad Love (1935). His association with director Frank Capra started with Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), but he didn't achieve prominence until the release of Capra's Lost Horizon in 1937. That fantasy adventure film featured one of the most prominent scores of any movie of the 1930s; Tiomkin's music was uncommonly bold for the era, the action sequences written in a manner recalling Max Steiner, while the portions of the score covering the parts of the movie depicting Shangri-la, filled with rich, Eastern-sounding melodies and lush choruses, were even more striking, and brought him to the attention of the mass public. Tiomkin became Capra's composer-of-choice for the next few years, helping to close out the director's Columbia Pictures career and open his period as an independent director/producer on Meet John Doe (1941). Tiomkin continued to work on other independent productions, including The Moon and Sixpence (1941), mixed with the occasional big-studio project such as Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943), and he later scored the Capra-produced wartime documentary series called Why We Fight (1943).

During the early days of American involvement in World War II, Tiomkin was in charge of evaluating the abilities of draftees with musical training and selecting those who would work in Special Services (i.e. entertainment) units or be assigned to Hollywood in the making of movies for the armed forces. He evidently abused this authority on at least one occasion; according to composer Miklos Rozsa, a young but already well-established composer from Europe, who was an experienced film composer with two major-hit credits, Tiomkin interviewed him and summarily designated Rozsa to a combat unit, in what could only have been a matter of extreme jealousy. Fortunately for movies and for Rozsa, the composer later revealed a health problem that made him ineligible for military service, but he never forgave Tiomkin for what the latter had tried to do.

Tiomkin's career took off in the post-World War II era. He worked on independent and medium-budget studio productions such as Dillinger (1945) and Angel on My Shoulder (1946), but it was his selection to write the music for David O. Selznick's mammoth production of Duel in the Sun (1946) that put Tiomkin into the front rank of screen composers. Although ostensibly a Western, Duel in the Sun was really an overheated drama of sex and passion that happened to be set in the 19th-century American West. Tiomkin's main struggle was delivering a piece of music to accompany a love scene between the characters played by Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones that "felt" to Selznick like a sexual climax. In one of the funniest exchanges of criticism and memos ever recorded in old Hollywood, the producer kept saying that the music for the scene somehow missed what Selznick was looking for. Duel in the Sun was ridiculed by most critics, but it did earn a substantial box-office gross, and some of Tiomkin's music was released as a 78 rpm album, placing it among the earliest such commercial soundtrack releases.

Tiomkin's relationship with Capra ended with a disagreement over the scoring for It's a Wonderful Life (1946), but he was involved in arranging Claude Debussy's music for Selznick's Portrait of Jennie (1948), and his next big break came when Howard Hawks engaged him to write the music for his epic Western Red River (1948). The movie was everything that Selznick's lust-in-the-dust epic hadn't been, and it was a huge hit, critically and commercially, helped in no small measure by Tiomkin's rousing central theme. Around the same time, Tiomkin was engaged by producer Stanley Kramer for the first time, on So This Is New York (1948). The latter was a failure at the box office, but it was his association with Kramer's next two movies, Home of the Brave and Champion (both 1949), that proved fortuitous. The former was a critical success and the latter was a huge hit, establishing its star, Kirk Douglas, as one of the top leading men of the period, and also earning multiple Academy Award nominations and enhancing the careers of virtually everyone associated with the movie. By this time, Tiomkin's music was beginning to show certain patterns and recognizable, "signature" elements, such as the brassy "growl" that the composer used to underscore intense action scenes or intense, suspenseful moments.

Tiomkin was one of the busiest composers in Hollywood in 1950 and 1951, scoring six movies in each year, among them the pioneering big-studio science fiction production of Howard Hawks' The Thing, for RKO, and Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train at Warner Bros., as well as the independent production The Well. In 1952, he scored nine movies, among them Hawks' epic The Big Sky, but his most important scoring assignment was for a movie that seemed destined for failure. Stanley Kramer's production of High Noon (1952), directed by Fred Zinnemann, had been pegged as a box-office bomb and was even turned down by Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn as part of Kramer's new contract with the studio. Tiomkin was called in to see if a musical score could save the movie, and he delivered -- in tandem with lyricist Ned Washington and country & western singer Tex Ritter -- a full score as well as a ballad, officially called "High Noon" but also known by its opening line, "Do not foresake me, oh my darling." Tiomkin's resulting score, patterned loosely after the work of Earl Robinson on a 1945 war movie called A Walk in the Sun, mixed instrumental music and a haunting ballad. The latter moved the action forward and played an essential role in making the movie a hit, the score and the ballad filling up long silent minutes of screen time that had seemed interminable to screening and preview audiences. The song became a hit several times over, including a pop release by Frankie Laine and a country single by Ritter himself, while Tiomkin earned two Oscars for his work. Additionally, Tiomkin became one of the Hollywood community's more visible composers, thanks to his somewhat flamboyant manner and his mangling of English pronunciation, calling the cowboy singer "Tax Ritter" and otherwise establishing an image as a cheerful, volatile Russian émigré. The movie was more than a career-defining release for Tiomkin -- it was a career-expanding one.

Over the next decade, Tiomkin would periodically write ballads (especially on Western themes) for movies and television shows, and enjoyed another hit with the theme for the television series Rawhide. He would occasionally steal from himself -- some of his music from Hawks' Land of the Pharaohs was borrowed liberally from his own score for Lost Horizon -- and not all of the ballads were memorable (few people remembered the songs from Take the High Ground or Blowing Wild), but he was generally in the top rank of film composers, working on such major (and respected) movies as Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder, William Wellman's The High and the Mighty (both 1954), and George Stevens' Giant (1956). The latter yielded a song that was later adopted by the state of Texas as its official song. Tiomkin was engaged by producer Hal Wallis for a pair of Westerns, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) and The Last Train From Gun Hill (1959), both directed by John Sturges, with the former yielding up a superb ballad underscoring the action. Tiomkin also became John Wayne's composer of choice, on the actor/producer's outsized production of The Alamo (1960), in addition to scoring the Howard Hawks Western Rio Bravo (1959), also starring Wayne. For the latter score, Tiomkin deliberately recalled musical elements from his first Wayne/Hawks movie, Red River.

The 1960s were less kind to the composer. He started off well enough with The Guns of Navarone and Town Without Pity (both 1961), both of which received Academy Award nominations, but by the middle of the decade, Tiomkin was working on far fewer movies than he had in the previous one. In 1963, Tiomkin moved his base of operations to Europe and became a kind of front-ranked bottom-feeder, replacing Miklos Rozsa as the principal composer at producer Samuel Bronston's Spanish-based studio. Rozsa had walked away from his relationship with Bronston, and no other major composer would go near the man's outsized but frequently shapeless epic films; Tiomkin took the work and was responsible for scoring 55 Days at Peking (1963) and The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), both of which saw release as soundtrack albums and received Academy Award nominations. He also closed out Bronston's epics with Circus World (1964) (which won him a Golden Globe Award). He was back working with John Wayne again on The War Wagon (1967), but by the end of the 1960s, with the move by most Hollywood producers to a less densely orchestral, more pop-oriented brand of soundtrack music, Tiomkin's activities came to a halt. His last Academy Award nomination was for Tchaikovsky in 1971. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Filmography: Dimitri Tiomkin
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The Lemon Sisters

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Men Don't Leave

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Hairspray

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Tchaikovsky

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MacKenna's Gold

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The War Wagon

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Circus World

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The Fall of the Roman Empire

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36 Hours

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55 Days at Peking

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The Guns of Navarone

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Town Without Pity

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The Alamo

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The Sundowners

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The Unforgiven

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Last Train From Gun Hill

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Rio Bravo

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The Young Land

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The Old Man and the Sea

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Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

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Friendly Persuasion

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Giant

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The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell

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Land of the Pharaohs

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Dial M for Murder

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Blowing Wild

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His Majesty O'Keefe

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I Confess

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Return to Paradise

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The Big Sky

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Bugles in the Afternoon

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High Noon

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Mutiny

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Drums in the Deep South

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Strangers on a Train

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The Thing

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The Well

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Champagne for Caesar

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Cyrano De Bergerac

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The Gunfighter

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The Men

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Champion

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D.O.A.

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Home of the Brave

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Portrait of Jennie

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Red River

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Angel on My Shoulder

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The Dark Mirror

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Duel in the Sun

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It's a Wonderful Life

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Whistle Stop

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Dillinger

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The Battle of China

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The Bridge of San Luis Rey

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Shadow of a Doubt

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The Nazis Strike

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The Battle of Britain

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The Battle of Russia

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The Corsican Brothers

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Meet John Doe

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Lucky Partners

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The Westerner

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Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

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Only Angels Have Wings

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The Great Waltz

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You Can't Take It with You

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Spawn of the North

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Lost Horizon

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Mr. Deeds Goes to Town

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I Live My Life

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Mad Love

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Wikipedia: Dimitri Tiomkin
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Dimitri Tiomkin
Born Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin
May 10, 1894(1894-05-10)
Kremenchuk, Poltava, Russian Empire (now Ukraine)
Died November 11, 1979 (aged 85)
London, England
Years active 1929 - 1979

Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin (Ukrainian: Дмитро Зиновійович Тьомкін, Dmytro Zynoviyovych Tiomkin, Russian: Дмитрий Зиновьевич Тёмкин, Dmitrij Zinov'evič Tëmkin, sometimes transliterated as Dmitri Tiomkin) (May 10, 1894November 11, 1979) was a film score composer and conductor. Along with Max Steiner, Miklós Rózsa, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and Franz Waxman, Tiomkin was one of the most productive and decorated film music writers of Hollywood.

Contents

Biography

Tiomkin was born of Jewish parents in Kremenchuk, Ukraine, and educated at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in Russia, where he studied piano with Felix Blumenfeld and harmony and counterpoint with Alexander Glazunov. In 1920, while working for the Petrograd Military District Political Administration (PUR), he was one of the lead organizers of two revolutionary mass spectacles, the "Mystery of Liberated Labor," a pseudo-religious mystery play for the May Day festivities, and "The Storming of the Winter Palace" for the celebrations of the third anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.[1]

In 1924 Tiomkin left the USSR[2] and moved to Berlin, where his father was practising as a doctor, and had lessons with Ferruccio Busoni. He emigrated to the United States in 1925, moved to Hollywood in 1930 with his wife, dancer Albertina Rasch (1895-1967), and became a U.S. citizen in 1937.

Although influenced by Eastern European music traditions, he was able to score typical American movies like Frank Capra's Lost Horizon (1937), It's a Wonderful Life (1946), and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). He also worked on Fred Zinnemann's High Noon (1952), which also won him a Best Song Oscar for “Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin'” (“The Ballad of High Noon”) along with his frequent collaborator, lyricist Ned Washington. Years later, this song was recorded by the Brazilian rock band Legião Urbana. He won the Academy Award for best scoring of the John Wayne film The High and the Mighty (1954); during the telecast ceremonies in 1955, Tiomkin humorously thanked all of the earlier composers who had influenced him in writing this music; among them were Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and many of the other great names of European classical music.

Tiomkin scored four films for Alfred Hitchcock: Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Strangers on a Train (1951), I Confess (1952) and Dial M for Murder (1954).

Many of his scores were for Western movies, including High Noon (1952), Giant (1956), Friendly Persuasion (1956), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), Rio Bravo (1959), and The Alamo (1960). Tiomkin also composed the music for The Guns of Navarone (1961), Town Without Pity (1961), 55 Days at Peking (1963), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), and The War Wagon (1967).

He was the first composer to receive two Oscars (score and song) for the same dramatic film, High Noon. The film uses a song to introduce the film and the lyrics tell the whole story in under 2 minutes and 30 seconds.[3]

However, one of Dimitri Tiomkin's scores for a classic film has not become as famous as his others. His music for the 1950 Cyrano de Bergerac, the first screen version in English of Edmond Rostand's classic French play (and the film for which actor Jose Ferrer won his only Oscar), is very rarely heard outside the film, is almost never performed in concert, has never been given an extensive recording, and was not nominated for an Oscar.

Besides cinema he was also active in writing for the small screen, writing some memorable television theme songs, including Rawhide (1959) and Gunslinger. He was also hired to write the theme for TV's The Wild Wild West (1965), but the producers rejected his work and hired Richard Markowitz. A cover version of the theme from Rawhide was performed in the 1980 cult musical film The Blues Brothers, the in-joke that the composer is a Ukrainian-born Jew being lost on the crowd at the cowboy bar.

Besides writing music for several television series, Tiomkin made a few appearances as himself on television programs. These include being the mystery challenger on What's My Line? and an appearance on Jack Benny's CBS program in December 1961, in which he attempted to help Jack write a song.[4]

He also wrote the music to the song Wild Is The Wind. It was originally recorded by Johnny Mathis for the the 1957 film Wild Is the Wind. It is mostly well-known as a jazz singer Nina Simone's standard. The song carried on in a 1976 David Bowie's cover (Bowie being a long time admirer of Simone). In 1981, David Bowie released a single of the same name, which became a hit in the UK charts.

Dimitri Tiomkin died in London, England in 1979 and was interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Legacy

A number of Tiomkin's film scores were released on LP soundtrack albums, including Giant and The Alamo. Some of the recordings, which usually featured Tiomkin conducting his own music, have been reissued on CD.

In 1976, RCA Victor released Lost Horizon: The Classic Film Scores of Dimitri Tiomkin (US catalogue #ARL1-1669, UK catalogue #GL 43445) with Charles Gerhardt and the National Philharmonic Orchestra. Featuring highlights from various Tiomkin scores, the album was later reissued by RCA on CD with Dolby Surround Sound.

Awards and nominations

Academy Awards, USA

  • 1972 - nominated for "Best Music, Scoring Adaptation and Original Song" Score for Chaikovsky (1969)
  • 1965 - nominated for "Best Music, Score - Substantially Original" for: The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964)
  • 1964 - nominated for "Best Music, Original Song" and "Best Music, Score - Substantially Original" for 55 Days at Peking (1963)
  • 1962 - nominated for "Best Music, Original Song" for Town Without Pity (1961) AND for "Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture" for The Guns of Navarone (1961)
  • 1961 - nominated for "Best Music, Original Song" and for "Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture" for The Alamo (1960)
  • 1961 - nominated for "Best Music, Original Song" for The Young Land (1959)
  • 1959 - won an Oscar for "Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture" for The Old Man and the Sea (1958)
  • 1958 - nominated for "Best Music, Original Song" for Wild Is the Wind (1957)
  • 1957 - nominated for "Best Music, Original Song" for Friendly Persuasion, "Best Scoring of a Dramatic Picture" for "Giant" (1956)
  • 1955 - nominated for "Best Music, Original Song" for The High and the Mighty (1954) and won an Oscar for "Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture" for the same movie
  • 1953 - won (with Ned Washington) an Oscar for "Best Music, Original Song" for High Noon (1952) for "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin'", sung by Tex Ritter
  • 1953 - won an Oscar for "Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture" for High Noon (1952)
  • 1950 - nominated for "Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture" for Champion (1949)
  • 1945 - nominated for "Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture" for The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1944)
  • 1944 - nominated for "Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture" for The Moon and Sixpence (1943)
  • 1943 - nominated for "Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture" for The Corsican Brothers (1941)
  • 1940 - nominated for "Best Music, Scoring" for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

Golden Globes

  • 1965 for "Best Original Score" for The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964)
  • 1962 for "Best Motion Picture Score" for The Guns of Navarone (1961) AND for "Best Motion Picture Song" for Town Without Pity (1961)
  • 1961 for "Best Original Score" for The Alamo (1960)
  • 1957 he received the "Special Award" as "Recognition for film music"
  • 1955 he received the "Special Award" "For creative musical contribution to Motion Picture"
  • 1953 for "Best Motion Picture Score" for High Noon (1952)

References

  1. ^ James Von Geldern, Bolshevik Festivals (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1993), 157, Katerina Clark, Petersburg, Crucible of Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1995), 135-36
  2. ^ Katerina Clark, Petersburg, Crucible of Revolution, ISBN Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1995, p. 184
  3. ^ Roger L. Hall, A Guide to Film Music: Songs and Scores (Stoughton, PineTree Press, 3rd ed, 2007), 24.
  4. ^ http://us.imdb.de/name/nm0006323/filmoseries

External links


 
 
Learn More
55 Days at Peking (1963 Album by Original Soundtrack)
Great Epic Film Scores (1995 Album by Various Artists)
Alfred Hitchcock Presents Signatures in Suspense (1999 Album by Original Soundtrack)

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