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	David Raksin - film composer
		David Raksin was active in the music business for so many decades that he was thought by many to be the Grandfather of film music.
		Raksin created notable scores for films such as "Forever Amber" and "The Bad and the Beautiful", though he is best known for the soundtrack to "Laura", where the lead character is always represented by the same theme, an "idée fixe".
		Raksin and Laura are covered extensively in the book "Film Music, a neglected art" by Roy M. Prendergast (currently out of print but see some copies at this Amazon.com link).
	www.mfiles.co.uk /composers/David-Raksin.htm (463 words)

	Telegraph \| News \| David Raksin
		David Raksin, who has died aged 92, was the senior figure in the world of film composing; having begun his career in 1935 arranging the music for Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, he went on to write scores for more than 400 films and television shows, most notably that for Laura (1944).
		David Raksin was born in Philadelphia on August 4 1912.
		David Raksin was twice married and divorced, and is survived by a son and a daughter.
	www.telegraph.co.uk /news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/08/12/db1201.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2004/08/12/ixopright.html (932 words)

	Guardian \| David Raksin
		Raksin admitted having been a member of the Communist party from 1938 to 1940, and was instantly fllisted, so that he was unable to find work in any of the fields in which he had been operating - big-screen films, television and radio.
		Raksin was born in Philadelphia, the son of a music-shop owner who was an occasional woodwind player with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and also conducted the orchestras that accompanied silent movies in local cinemas.
		Raksin was the first film composer invited to establish a collection of his manuscripts in the music division of the Library of Congress, and the narrator of the National Public Radio's series The Subject Is Film Music.
	www.guardian.co.uk /print/0,3858,4990357-103684,00.html (758 words)

	DAVID RAKSIN
		David Raksin served on the ASCAP Board of Directors from 1995 - 2002, and in 1992, was presented with the ASCAP Golden Soundtrack Award in recognition of his lifetime achievement in film and television music.
		David Raksin began his long and distinguished career in films when he came to Hollywood to work with Charlie Chaplin on the classic score of Modern Times.
		Raksin was appointed by the Librarian of Congress to the National Film Preservation Board; he also served for eight terms as President of the Composers and Lyricists Guild.
	www.ascap.com /raksin.html (657 words)

	News - Music from the Movies
		David Raksin, the legendary composer of the classic scores for Laura and The Bad and the Beautiful died of heart failure on Monday 9th August 2004.
		Raksin, who was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 4th August 1912, studied under Arnold Schoenberg and was one of the great Golden Age composers who began his movie career in 1935, when he went to Hollywood to assist Charlie Chaplin with the music for Modern Times.
		David Raksin is survived by a son, a daughter and three grandchildren.
	www.musicfromthemovies.com /article.asp?ID=363 (170 words)

	David Raksin - Free Music Downloads, Videos, CDs, MP3s, Bio, Merchandise and Links
		David Raksin was among the most prolific and storied composers in Hollywood history, his career spanning across six decades and some of the most acclaimed films in cinema history.
		Raksin was born August 4, 1912 in Philadelphia, where his father was a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra in addition to conducting and performing in concert bands and for silent movies.
		The younger Raksin began studying piano as a child and by 12 was fronting his own dance band, even appearing on the local CBS radio station -- he taught himself orchestration while still in high school, funding his subsequent studies at the University of Pennsylvania by performing with society bands and radio orchestras.
	www.artistdirect.com /nad/music/artist/bio/0,,482575,00.html (585 words)

	David Raksin COMPOSER by D'Lynn Waldron,PhD
		David Raksin graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and was a student of Arnold Schoenberg.
		David Raksin’s big break came in 1944 when the top composers at TCF turned down the psychological detective story Laura, and Raksin then fought with the formidable studio head Darryl Zanuck to have the critical scene left in where the audience understands that the detective has fallen in love with the supposedly deceased Laura.
		David Raksin became a professor of film scoring at USC in 1956 and was still an adjunct professor teaching and nurturing young composers there when he died at 92.
	www.dlynnwaldron.com /DavidRaksin.html (863 words)

	Blog of Death: David Raksin
		David Raksin, the Oscar-nominated composer who wrote the theme to the 1944 film "Laura," died on Aug. 9 of heart failure.
		But Raksin was best known for composing the mournful theme to "Laura." One of the most recorded songs in history, it was inspired by a letter Raksin received from his wife asking for a divorce.
		Raksin's greatest challenge, however, came during the McCarthy era, when he was forced to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
	www.blogofdeath.com /archives/001151.html (398 words)

	washingtonpost.com: 'Laura' Composer David Raksin Dies (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-31)
		David Raksin, a Hollywood composer whose haunting score from the film noir classic "Laura" is considered one of the finest cinematic blendings of music and story, died Aug. 9, five days after his 92nd birthday, at his home in Los Angeles.
		Raksin was born in Philadelphia, where his father ran a music store, led an orchestra at a silent movie house and occasionally played clarinet with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
		Raksin also wrote the themes for the television shows "Wagon Train," "Ben Casey" and "Medical Center," as well as the 1983 TV movie "The Day After." In 1986, he premiered a classical work for voices and chamber orchestra, "Oedipus Remembers," at the Library of Congress.
	www.washingtonpost.com /ac2/wp-dyn/A55306-2004Aug10?language=printer (785 words)

	ScoreTrack.Net - Music for The Movies: David Raksin
		David Raksin was born into a musical family in Philadelphia and began studying a variety of instruments at a young age.
		Raksin used to say that a movie composer must walk a fine line between too much emotional involvement with the story of the film, which can hurt the creative process, and too little emotional involvement which prevents empathizing with the characters and their situation.
		David Raksin was president for eight terms of the Composers and Lyricists Guild and was on it’s Board of Directors, along with being on the board of ASCAP, and the Library of Congress National Film Preservation Board, plus many other activities.
	www.scoretrack.net /draksin.html (597 words)

	David RAKSIN The Bad and the Beautiful : Film Music on the Web CD Reviews March 2000 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-31)
		As Raksin tells it in his typically witty liner notes to this Rhino/Turner Classic Movies release of the complete soundtrack, the theme was later rescued from producer John Houseman's rejection by the serendipitous intervention of one of Hollywood's top music and lyric duos.
		Raksin's variations and developments are brilliant -- the scherzo of the 'Hurry' cue, for example -- and leave an overall effect that is far from the mono-thematic approach that became so popular a decade or solater.
		David Raksin's music for The Bad and the Beautiful is one of my ten all time favourite film scores so I was predisposed to like this original soundtrack album even before it arrived.
	www.musicweb-international.com /film/2000/mar00/bad.htm (784 words)

	David Raksin
		In addition to Laura, David Raksin is the composer of over 100 film scores, including Forever Amber, Force Of Evil, Carrie, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Bad And The Beautiful, Two Weeks In Another Town, and The Redeemer, and has composed for over 300 television shows.
		David Raksin began his musical studies as a pianist and was later instructed in woodwinds by his father, an orchestral musician and silent-film conductor.
		Raksin at the composer's invitation, for the dancing elephants (choreographed by George Balanchine) of the Ringling Bros./Barnum and Bailey Circus.
	www.otherminds.org /shtml/Raksin.shtml (297 words)

	American Composers Orchestra - David Raksin Remembers His Colleagues
		At 88 years of age, David Raksin is today's patriarch of motion picture composers.
		His scores for Laura (which Stphen Sondheim call "the finest melody ever written for film"), The Bad and the Beautiful, and hundreds of other films and television shows are amongst the most compelling and diverse collections of music over written.
		Over his more than 60 years in the business, Raksin has counted as his colleagues virtually every composer of Hollywood's golden age, including Max Steiner, Erich Korngold, Alfred Newman, Miklós Rózsa, Franz Waxman, Aaaron Copland, and Bernard Herrmann.
	www.americancomposers.org /raksin_intro.htm (145 words)

	The Society of Composers & Lyricists -
		David Raksin, the last remaining composer of the Golden Age of films, began his long and distinguished career when he came to Hollywood to work with Charlie Chaplin on the classic score of Modern Times.
		Raksin's brief Montage with the Philadelphia Orchestra, probably the first film piece to be performed by a major orchestra.
		David Raksin’s importance to the community of composers and lyricists cannot be overstated.
	www.thescl.com /site/scl/content.php?type=1&id=6158 (493 words)

	Scotsman.com News - Obituaries - David Raksin, composer (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-31)
		DAVID Raksin, the noted film composer whose haunting theme song for the 1944 film noir classic Laura became one of the most recorded tunes in history, has died.
		Raksin may be best known for his score for Laura, a romantic mystery starring Dana Andrews as a detective who falls for a woman (Gene Tierney) as he investigates her apparent murder.
		Raksin was under contract to MGM in 1951 when he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee.
	news.scotsman.com /obituaries.cfm?id=927322004 (960 words)

	David Raksin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Johnny Mercer put lyrics to this theme, and during Raksin's lifetime this was said to be the second most-recorded song in history following only Stardust by Hoagy Carmichael and Mitchell Parish.
		Raksin also taught courses at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles.
		His son Alex is a Pulitzer Prize winning editorial writer for the Los Angeles Times.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/David_Raksin (147 words)

	David Raksin \| The San Diego Union-Tribune
		David Raksin, an Oscar-nominated composer who arranged music for Charlie Chaplin's silent classic "Modern Times" and wrote the memorable theme for 1944's "Laura," died Aug. 9, his son said.
		Raksin, who had been ailing for several years and had early-stage Alzheimer's disease, died at his Van Nuys home, son Alex Raksin said.
		Raksin was born Aug. 4, 1912, in Philadelphia and was educated at the University of Pennsylvania.
	www.signonsandiego.com /uniontrib/20040822/news_1m22raksin.html (296 words)

	Legendary Film Composer, USC Prof, Dies
		David Raksin, longtime USC Thornton School of Music faculty member and prolific film composer for such films as “Forever Amber,” “The Bad and the Beautiful” and the 1944 film noir classic “Laura,” died Aug. 9, of heart failure at his home in Van Nuys.
		Raksin began teaching film scoring and composition at the USC Thornton in 1956 and scored more than 450 films and TV shows during his career.
		Raksin — the last surviving major composer from Hollywood’s Golden Age — began his career in 1935 when he was hired to assist Charlie Chaplin with the music for “Modern Times.” He received Academy Award nominations for his scores for “Forever Amber” (1947) and “Separate Tables” (1958).
	www.usc.edu /uscnews/stories/10437.html (292 words)

	In Remembrance- David Raskin
		David Raksin, the film score composer whose theme from the 1944 film noir Laura became one of the most recorded songs of all time, has passed away on Monday, August 9, 2004 in Los Angeles, CA.
		Raksin was hired to transcribe and expand upon Chaplin's themes.
		Since Raksin had studied with Arnold Schoenberg at the University of Pennsylvania, his music was often considered avant-garde by others in the studio system and so Raksin would often by assigned to lower budgeted horror films like the 1942 werewolf picture The Undying Monster.
	www.filmbuffonline.com /InRemembrance/DavidRaskin.htm (874 words)

	David Raksin
		David Raksin was born in 1912 in Philadelphia.
		Raksin was then invited to Hollywood in 1935 to work with Charlie Chaplin with the music of Modern Times.
		Raksin also worked in radio where he wrote, narrated and conducted interviews for a three-year series of 64 hour-long programs, The Subject is Film Music.
	www.music.vt.edu /musicdictionary/appendix/Composers/R/DavidRaksin.html (516 words)

	Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise: David Raksin 1912-2004 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-31)
		I was very saddened to read of the death of David Raksin, whose Laura theme is one of the great inspirations in film-music history.
		Raksin said, "Ask Hitch where the cameras are coming from." I had been meaning to e-mail him asking whether he knew Lulu at the time of Laura, because something about the theme resembles Berg's "portrait" music.
		What Raksin did — as he explained in an interview with Roy Prendergast, author of Film Music: A Neglected Art — was to record a series of piano chords with the initial attacks omitted.
	www.therestisnoise.com /2004/08/david_raksin.html (405 words)

	WGBH/Television/Evening at Pops 99/Program Descriptions
		After organizing his own jazz band and studying composition in his native Pennsylvania, David Raksin moved to Hollywood in 1935, where he was engaged by Charlie Chaplin to arrange and orchestrate the music for his film Modern Times.
		Raksin has composed scores for more than 100 films, reaching enormous popular success with the theme from the classy mystery film "Laura" (1944).
		As he ponders the portrait in the empty apartment, Raksin's music, evocative and mysterious, makes it very clear to the viewer that the detective is falling in love with a woman who is (he thinks) completely unavailable.
	main.wgbh.org /wgbh/pages/pops/programnotes/laura.html (156 words)

	David Raksin, 1912-2004 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-31)
		Born on 4 August 1912 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Raksin began his musical studies as a pianist and was later instructed in woodwinds by his father, an orchestral musician and silent-film conductor.
		Inspired by the recent break-up with his first wife, Pamela (Raksin was the recipient of a ‘Dear John’ letter), the theme from Laura has gone on to be one of the most-recorded in history, with more than 400 different versions at the last count, and is one of the most famous and well-loved themes, ever.
		After his retirement, Raksin was a regular guest lecturer on film music courses; he taught composition for films at the USC Thornton School of Music since 1956, and held lectures at UCLA and many other educational establishments.
	www.moviemusicuk.us /raksinobit.htm (597 words)

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