With right arm raised, conductor Steiner faces the Columbia Studio Orchestra, with instruments at the ready, violin bows raised, and “eyes up,” the mostly male musicians participate in this photo op while the contented composer, Dimitri Tiomkin, acknowledges the camera (the only one to do so). A dapper Frank Capra, director of Lost Horizon, the film score being recorded this day, and Columbia musical director Morris Stoloff, seated, look relaxed.
RELATED: Tiomkin and Stoloff
About the score, the lengthiest of his career to date, Tiomkin wrote, “I was given complete freedom to do the work as I chose, and it was not until the whole score had been written, orchestrated and recorded that Mr. Capra and studio executives heard as much as a bar of it.”
As Max Steiner’s biographer, Steven C. Smith points out, it was director Frank Capra who came up with the idea to team Steiner with Tiomkin. Capra and Tiomkin had become fast friends but had not worked together professionally. Columbia Studio’s president, Harry Cohn, was not thrilled when Capra wanted to hire Tiomkin to write the music score since Tiomkin did not have a large body of dramatic film work and certainly had yet to work on a feature film with a $2.6 million budget. So, Capra suggested Max Steiner serve as musical director and conductor.
From Steven C. Smith’s book, Music by Max Steiner, “Max was happy to team with one of Hollywood’s most successful directors. Tiomkin was happy to have Max as his protector and partner.”
One might argue that this opportunity, and the long process of recording the music with Steiner, provided Tiomkin the music scoring experience that would inform the remainder of his career. Teaming with Capra on future films elevated Tiomkin’s stature in Hollywood.
Tiomkin’s music for Lost Horizon would go on to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Score and would be re-used by Columbia, in music library fashion, in countless of their other films throughout the remainder of the decade.
William H. Rosar’s 1978 article in Film Music Notebook, “Lost Horizon: An Account of the Composition of the Score,” provides a detailed look at the creation of the score.
The Sony Pictures release of Frank Capra at Columbia includes 20 feature films directed by Capra, including Lost Horizon.
Image number: DT67 (8-inch x 10-inch publicity photograph)
(Eighteenth in an occasional series featuring rare or unusual photographs.)
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