Franz Waxman conducts. (c) John W. Waxman Photo Collection. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

By Elyse Eisenberg

How is the star film composer of Hollywood’s Golden Years virtually unknown to moviegoers today? The name Franz Waxman doesn’t usually ring a bell, but the movies he worked on—“Philadelphia Story”, “Rebecca”, more…are classics. Read more about this composer’s life and work:

German-born film composer Franz Waxman composed the scores for hundreds of films, including Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rebecca” (1940) and “Rear Window” (1954), and the iconic “Sunset Boulevard” (1950).

If you ask Franz Waxman’s son, John Waxman, to discuss his own life’s work–a library of music for motion pictures, one of the largest in the world– he immediately starts reminiscing about his father and the “Hollywood Sound”. There are very few people who remember this musical heritage–there are very few left who care. It’s a great legacy lost forever, Waxman said, who added that while people might recognize the music from his father’s films, most people do not know his father’s name.

“Among film historians and people who are serious about film, Franz Waxman is one of the best-known film composers. Maybe what John Waxman is saying is that he is not as famous as he should have been,” said Jeanine Basinger, a film professor at Wesleyan University for almost 40 years, who has taught hundreds of students in her film program.

The Hollywood films from Waxman’s time did not feature cinematographers or composers, and often even the directors were invisible, according to Basinger, because at the time it was all about the stars. All of that began to change in the 1960s when movies evolved into an art form, and people began looking at the art behind the scenes.

So why isn’t Franz Waxman known today? For Basinger the answer is clear: because of the era in which he worked, when composers received little credit. Basinger pointed out that unusually, Waxman was able to maintain his own voice and creativity while serving the artistic needs of the studio.

John Waxman recounts:

“Sometimes my father got assigned to films that were real stinkers, and the producers thought the music could save it. The legendary composer, Max Steiner, used to say, ‘You can dress up a corpse but you can’t bring it back to life. My father also had to pay the rent.”

The Sound of Hollywood’s Golden Age

John Waxman, who makes film music available to orchestras all over the world, says that the popularity of film music has grown tremendously since 1980. “When I first started off, some publishers laughed at me. They didn’t think it was serious music, just filler. But, it’s really much more than that.” Waxman explains: “The best example is in Hitchcock’s “Psycho”–all of the tension and anxiety is conveyed through the music; if you watch the film without the music, the scenes go on forever.”

Basinger says: “For the great composers, like Franz Waxman, the music is worthwhile on its own, but if the music has been designed with pauses and crescendos, and you leave that out of the film, then you are leaving out a design element.”

“My father would say good music is good music, no matter what the genre or context,” Waxman said. “My father could work in every genre, including horror films (”Bride of Frankenstein” [1935]), comedies (”Philadelphia Story” [1940]), war pictures (”Objective, Burma!” [1945]), historical dramas, women’s pictures and Westerns. “He was a chameleon.”

Waxman recounts:

“My father would work on a Kirk Douglas western in the morning, would go to the studio for lunch, work until dinner on the “Spirit of St. Louis” (1957), after dinner he would take a swim, and work on “Miracle In The Rain” (1956) in the evening. He couldn’t wait for inspiration to strike, he had to turn out so many scores in such a short time.”

“One of the great things about Franz Waxman was that he could soar with the romanticism and emotional fullness, as in the Hollywood melodrama ‘Rebecca’, where he infused the main character who is remembered and unseen with so much power and emotional appeal,” Basinger said.

Franz Waxman is one of a number of film composers whose inventive work helped define the Golden Age in Hollywood. A new PBS documentary “Cinema’s Exiles: From Hitler to Hollywood” takes an in-depth look at the impact of Franz Waxman and many other German and Eastern European exiles on Hollywood’s film industry.

During the “Golden Age” of cinema there were many prolific film composers. They include Max Steiner, Hans Eisler, Miklos Rosza, Dimitri Tiomkin, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

The Genesis for the PBS Documentary Cinema’s Exiles

“The idea started off with my father, but I knew that there were many other German refugees from the film industry who also changed the motion picture business,” said John Waxman, who pitched the idea to Karen Thomas, the producer for the documentary.

“One of the things my dad does well is carry on the importance of film music, and my family’s legacy,” said Franz Waxman’s granddaughter Alyce Waxman. “It is such a beautiful story of how these composers defined American cinema, how they went from something so bleak to something so great. So, many people associate film with America, when it was actually outsiders who created film.”

Basinger explains:

“The “Golden Age in Hollywood’ was not born in Hollywood– it came from composers in Europe who were trained in the classical music traditions of Beethoven and Wagner, who used large orchestras and lushly romantic scores. The reason why Hollywood cinema became so great was because it absorbed huge talent from Europe, all of the greats fleeing persecution were absorbed in Hollywood cinema.”

Ironically, their experiences in Nazi Germany gave the work depth. “There’s a great emotional sensitivity in their music, that they have suffered, and lived full lives. They were not just born in California. There is a power and sophistication that comes from their survival and the great European tradition that elevates their music,” Basinger said.

Waxman’s Career High Points

Franz Waxman began his musical career playing at the Tingle Tangle club in Berlin, and he eventually got a break writing songs for Frederick Hollander, who gave Waxman his first important movie assignment: orchestrating and conducting a score for Josef von Sternberg’s classic Marlene Dietrich vehicle, “The Blue Angel.” Then, one evening, after Hitler had come to power, Waxman was walking home from the studio when he was beaten up by a group of Hitler Youth. He got back up, went back to his apartment and left that night with his girlfriend. They left everything and went to Paris. In Paris, he ended up in the Hotel Ansonia, where other film professionals from Germany passed through. Many refugees like Waxman who emigrated to the U.S. were forced to leave family behind, but ended up finding work in close-knit Jewish communities.

Waxman states:

“You know the famous story in Hollywood– it’s 25 percent talent and 75 percent connections. Once in the U.S., my father was invited along with my mother to the home of writer Salka Viertel. There, he met director James Whale, who said he had a picture he wanted my father to score for Universal Pictures. It was “The Bride of Frankenstein”. It led to a two-year contract with Universal as head of the music department and it was the beginning of steady employment for the next 30 years.”

Waxman won the Academy Award in 1950 for Billy Wilder’s “Sunset Boulevard” and in 1951 for George Stevens’ “A Place in the Sun.” He was the only composer to have won the award for Best Score two years in a row, according to Waxman.

Still, John Waxman reflects on the “golden age” as a challenging time for his father and the émigré composers: “It was tough in those days because composers were not appreciated in the same way they are today. People look back at the ‘golden age’, and think it must have been really great. It wasn’t all that great.”

Waxman’s Final Masterpiece

“My father’s brother and part of his family were exterminated in Auschwitz. My father didn’t talk about it. It was too painful. All of these émigrés lived with these stories, every one of them had stories, but they did not look back. They were interested in the future,” Waxman said.

While Franz Waxman focused most of his career on composing scores for Hollywood films, his last great work was very much about the Holocaust–but not for film–it was a concert.

Waxman recounts:

“My father received a commission from the Cincinnati May Festival for a composition for a children’s chorus, and he was looking for a work that would fit their requirements. My aunt was a German refugee who worked in New York finding European books for McGraw-Hill that were appropriate for translation and publication in the U.S. One morning she called my father and asked him to order her a roast beef sandwich with lettuce, tomato and Russian dressing for lunch, because she had a package from Prague–a book which she was sure would be a subject that he could compose to.”

It was the publication “I Never Saw Another Butterfly”, of poems written by children interned at the Terezin ghetto near Prague. “The Nazis tried to portray the Terezin ghetto as a ‘model’ camp to the Red Cross, when actually very few children there survived,” Waxman said. Franz Waxman wrote the work “The Song of Terezin”–a series of eight songs each based on a poem from the book–over a six-week period. “He composed it almost like Mozart writing the requiem–he knew he was sick and had to finish it fast. Five months before he died, Waxman was able to make a trip to Prague.

Franz Waxman passed away in 1967, at the age of 60.

What was the genesis for this project?
Serendipity. I received a telephone call from a man named John Waxman in the fall 2001. He had seen the documentary we had made on violinist Isaac Stern for PBS’ AMERICAN MASTERS, and wanted to know where we had found archive footage that featured his late father, composer Franz Waxman. John came to Washington some time later, and asked if we might have lunch. At that time, he told me about his father, who had orchestrated The Blue Angel, and had become a composer for the German cinema. When Adolf Hitler came to power, Franz Waxman fled to safety in America. Waxman went on to run the music division of Universal Studios, scored hundreds of Hollywood films, and earned two Academy Awards. At our lunch, John Waxman said that there were many German exiles from the film industry who had similar and similarly dramatic stories, but they had never been told. Did I, he asked, think it would make a good television documentary? Yes.

Tell us a little more about Franz Waxman’s story.
Franz Waxman was German, lived in Berlin, and had been the orchestrator of The Blue Angel. One evening, shortly after Adolf Hitler had come to power, Waxman was walking home from the studio when he was pulled into a dark alley by a group of Nazi thugs, and beaten. He got himself home to his apartment, and told his fiancée to pack her bags. They were going to leave Berlin that night. They took the train to Paris. A job in Paris took Waxman to a job in Hollywood. By Christmas time, Waxman’s visa was about to expire. He was invited to a Christmas party at the home of writer Salka Viertel. There, he met director James Whale, who said he had a picture he wanted Waxman to score. It was called The Bride of Frankenstein.

Why make Cinema’s Exiles for public television?
I have spent my entire career in public television. My career began at PBS, and I have been producing, directing and writing documentaries for public television ever since. Public television, and especially funders such as the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts, give producers the encouragement and the wherewithal to make television programs that matter.

Do you have any special ties to this particular Hollywood community? Is this story a part of your personal/family history?
Although I have always admired the work of Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang, Peter Lorre, Paul Henreid – I had never known that they were refugees from Adolf Hitler. This story was new to me.

Once I began working on the film, I did find that I had a connection to the story. A good friend and fellow Washington producer, Catherine Wyler (whose father was William Wyler), suggested that I speak with her late mother’s best friend, Lupita Tovar Kohner, who had lived through this time. I spoke with Mrs. Kohner, then filmed an interview with her. Mrs. Kohner became a key witness to the story.

When making this film, did you encounter any resistance from the Hollywood community? The Berlin film community?
We have had nothing but encouragement and support from the Hollywood film community, and from the Museum of Film and Television in Berlin.

Have you heard from any of the families of the subjects you featured?
Every family that we contacted went out of their way to be helpful to us on this project. The families of Marlene Dietrich, Werner Richard Heymann, Frederich Hollander, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Henry Koster, Ernst Lubitsch, Erich Pommer, Miklos Rozsa, Curt Siodmak, Salka Viertel, Franz Waxman, Fred Zinnemann – all of them have provided footage and photographs and encouragement.

What do you hope that the audience takes away from the film?
On the one hand, we hope that our audience will recognize and appreciate the contributions that the exiles have made to our great American cinema. We are, of course, a nation of immigrants, and the story of the exiles is another of the many examples that demonstrates what makes this country so unique. In addition, we hope that the program causes the audience to reflect on the courage of these men and women, individually and collectively. The indomitability of the human spirit is indeed remarkable. Despite unbelievable hardships, they soldiered on. Very few of them returned to Germany. America was now home.

What brought Sigourney Weaver to the project to narrate?
Several years ago, I saw Sigourney Weaver on stage in a play written by my friend Chris Durang, Sex and Longing. I was then, and have been ever since, impressed by her. She brings an intelligence, curiosity and understanding to any script. I asked Chris if he would bring us together, and he kindly did so.

What most surprised you when you were researching?
The sheer numbers of men and women who were forced to flee Adolf Hitler. And their courage. Their acceptance of the situation, and their steadfastness in moving forward. One might expect that these émigrés would spend the rest of their lives mourning the life left behind. We did not find anyone (or relatively few) who did so. Most of them recognized what had been left behind. (Everyone lost families in the Holocaust.) They did not look back.

Any story that had to be left on the cutting room floor you’d like to tell?
Director Douglas Sirk had a fascinating story. His wife was Jewish, although Sirk was not. Sirk began his career in the theater, then moved to directing films for UFA. He had always worked with the melodrama format, and used it for social commentary. By the late 1930’s, Sirk decided to leave Germany. He and his wife escaped over the border to Switzerland, and found their way to America. In Hollywood, he was initially shunned by fellow Germans. He directed an anti-Nazi film, then a series of widescreen and Technicolor melodramas for Universal Pictures. Magnificent Obsession and Imitation of Life are two of those successful pictures. Imitation of Life was, at the time, Universal Pictures’ most commercially successful film. Sirk was very successful in the United States, but did not like the Hollywood system. After Imitation of Life, he left the U.S.

What were the greatest difficulties for exiled talent once they arrived in Hollywood?
Aljean Harmetz, one of our consultants (also a writer for The New York Times), and author of an important study on Casablanca says that one cannot overstate the problem of language. Most of the exiles arrived speaking no English. Most of them had strong German/middle European accents. For actors especially, the accent could be a career-ender. The exception was the anti-Nazi films, which during the war were a boon to careers; the irony, of course, was that they were hired to play Nazis. Some actors, Peter Lorre being one of them, worked very hard to lose his Viennese accent. He succeeded, as did Paul Henreid, but the majority did not.

The unions were also a problem, particularly for those involved in crafts such as set direction, lighting, cinematography. These craftsmen and women found it extremely difficult to gain entry to the union; some of Germany’s finest cinematographers (and German cameramen were renowned throughout Europe) were refused admission. Fred Zinnemann was one of those rejected cinematographers; he took another route, became a director’s assistant, and ultimately a director.

Were the Germans and Austrians the primary group to exile here in such a fashion, or through the years have there been others?
Berlin, and the German cinema, had been a magnet for the talented filmmakers and actors in Europe in the 1920’s and the 1930’s. Composers, directors, writers, actors, cinematographers, etc. came to Berlin from Germany, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Poland – throughout middle Europe. The first wave of émigrés came to the United States from Berlin soon after Hitler’s takeover of the government. The next “wave” came from Austria, when Hitler took control in that country. However, it is important to note that those who could get out tried to do so whenever they could do – often with the assistance of men and women like Marlene Dietrich and Ernst Lubitsch.

What’s your next project?
Our next project is a documentary on American artist James McNeill Whistler. The development phase has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. Nancy Porter, director of Louisa May Alcott, an upcoming AMERICAN MASTERS special, is working with us on the program as a director.