David Raksin - Biography
David Raksin the celebrated composer of Laura was born in Philadelphia on August 4th 1912 and died in Van Nuys California on August 9th 2004. Raksin's father was a pianist in a silent movie theatre and also played in the Philadelphia Orchestra under Stokowski gave his son rudimentary musical instruction. By his teenage years he formed a dance band and played on local Philadelphia radio. Raksin used his band gigs to work his way through Ivy League University of Pennsylvania. Upon graduation he went to New York as an arranger where he got to know Gershwin and Oscar Levant. Raksin reputation caught the attention of Charles Chaplin perhaps through Gershwin who was a friend and he got to work on Chaplin’s Modern Times. Chaplin who nominally was the composer for Modern Times would whistle tunes and Rakskin would write them down and harmonize them. The theme for Modern Times, Smile would 18 years later have lyrics added and be a hit for Nat Cole (It also notoriously become Jerry Lewis’s theme song). Rakskin in 1937 became an assistant to Stokowski who premiered a piece of his Montage with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Raksin in his early years in Hollywood learned his trade writing scores for B movies including a few B plus ones like some Sherlock Holmes.
Raksin’s break was when he got to write the score for Otto Preminger’s great noire Laura The theme from Laura became a runaway hit when lyrics by Johnny Mercer were added (it also took a merciless kidding from Spike Jones).Raksin was now an A list composer and wrote scores for Forever Amber, The Secret Life of Water Mitty and memorably in the John Garfield movie Force of Evil. His uses of the First Movement of Beethoven’s Opus 131 Quartet as two doomed men are eating rolls and coffee as one sells out the other, is unforgettable. One difficult time for Raksin was when he was called by the House Un-American Activities Committee investigating Communism in Hollywood .Though he didn’t give names out of fear of being blacklisted he evidently confirmed names that were already given. He later on said he felt deep shame over this but he lost some friends including the director of Force of Evil Abraham Polansky.
In the early 1950’s he wrote scores for fine movies like Tracy/Hepburn Pat and Mike, Vincent Minelli’s The Bad and the Beautiful and Sinatra’s disturbing assassination movie Suddenly. Raksin received an Academy Award nomination for his 1958 score to Separate Tables based on the Rattigan play. As the movie business began to decline he began to write music for cartons and television including the very popular Ben Casey series. From 1956 to 2003 he taught film composition at USC where he influenced many young Hollywood composers. Raksin also produced and wrote a series of radio documentaries on film composing. Raksin was also a fine writer and raconteur (the present writer has many pleasant memories of listening to his witty reminisces on Radio Station KUSC in Los Angeles). He continued to write distinguished score for TV dramas well into the 1980’s. He also belonged and led many professional organizations of Film and Theatrical composers. After a long and distinguished life he died at the age of 92.
