Music
Once principal photography was completed, Preminger hired David Raksin to score the film. The director wanted to use "Sophisticated Lady" by Duke Ellington for the main theme, but Raksin objected to the choice. Alfred Newman, music director for Fox, convinced Preminger to give Raksin a weekend to compose an original tune. Inspired by a Dear John letter he had received from his girlfriend, Raksin wrote the haunting theme for which Johnny Mercer later wrote lyrics. It eventually became a jazz standard recorded by more than four hundred artists, including Stan Kenton, Dick Haymes, Woody Herman, Nat King Cole, The Four Freshmen, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Frank Sinatra. Preminger was so pleased with Raksin's score the two collaborated on four additional films. (refer to "Laura (1945 song)")
Read more about this topic: Laura (1944 film)
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“And this shall be for music when no one else is near,
The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!
That only I remember, that only you admire,
Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)
“Westminster Abbey is nature crystallized into a conventional form by man, with his sorrows, his joys, his failures, and his seeking for the Great Spirit. It is a frozen requiem, with a nation’s prayer ever in dumb music ascending.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)