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:
“While the music is performed, the cameras linger savagely over the faces of the audience. What a bottomless chasm of vacuity they reveal! Those who flock round the Beatles, who scream themselves into hysteria, whose vacant faces flicker over the TV screen, are the least fortunate of their generation, the dull, the idle, the failures . . .”
—Paul Johnson (b. 1928)
“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)
“Who that has heard a strain of music feared then lest he should speak extravagantly any more forever?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)