David Raksin

Birth : 1912-08-04, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Death : 2004-08-09

History

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia David Raksin (August 4, 1912 – August 9, 2004) was an American composer who was renowned for his work in film and television. With over 100 film scores and 300 television scores to his credit, he became known as the "Grandfather of Film Music."

Movies

Zappa
Self (archive footage)
With the help of more than 10,000 dedicated Zappa fans, this is the long-awaited definitive documentary project of Alex Winter documenting the life and career of enigmatic groundbreaking rock star Frank Zappa. Alex also utilizes in this picture thousands of hours of painstakingly digitized videos, photos, audio, writing, and everything in between from Zappa's private archives. These chronicles have never been brought to a public audience before, until now.
Bad Boy Made Good: The Revival of George Antheil's 1924 Ballet Mécanique
Interviewee
A documentary on American composer George Antheil (1900-1959) featuring excerpts from Leger's Ballet Mecanique (1924) for which Antheil wrote the music.
Cinerama Adventure
Self
A nostalgic and compelling look into the legendary three camera, three projector process that revolutionized motion pictures and led the industry into the widescreen era.
Charlie Chaplin: A Tramp's Life
Self
A biographical documentary about the great British actor and director Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977), from rags to riches, from the slums of London to glory.
Ben-Hur: The Making of an Epic
Himself - Composer
The story of how the classic epic "Ben-Hur" was made.
Music for the Movies: Bernard Herrmann
Self
Music For The Movies: Bernard Herrmann explores the work of a composer who created music for over 50 films, collaborating with such diverse directors as Orson Welles, Nicholas Ray, and Martin Scorsese. Best remembered for his twelve-year collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock in such classics as Vertigo, North By Northwest ,and the unforgettable Psycho, Herrmann pioneered many fundamental techniques of film scoring in the course of his 35-year career.
Lady in the Corner
Music
Grace Guthrie tries to stave off the hostile take over of her publishing empire. While fighting off a ruthless British business-mogul, she must also deal with a mole.
The Day After
Music
In the mid-1980s, the U.S. is poised on the brink of nuclear war. This shadow looms over the residents of a small town in Kansas as they continue their daily lives. Dr. Russell Oakes maintains his busy schedule at the hospital, Denise Dahlberg prepares for her upcoming wedding, and Stephen Klein is deep in his graduate studies. When the unthinkable happens and the bombs come down, the town's residents are thrust into the horrors of nuclear winter.
The Ghost of Flight 401
Original Music Composer
An aircraft crashes in the Florida Everglades, killing 103 passengers. After the wreckage is removed, salvageable parts from the plane are used to repair other aircraft. Soon passengers and crew on those aircraft report seeing what they believe to be the ghost of the wrecked airplane's flight engineer.
Glass Houses
Music
The film's plot centres around the libidinous sexual shenanigans of a middle-class Californian family, and deftly explores themes such as marital discord, middle age, adultery, and incestuous desire.
What's the Matter with Helen?
Original Music Composer
Two middle-aged women move to Hollywood, California after their sons are convicted of a notorious murder and open a dance school for children eager to tap their way to stardom.
The Over-the-Hill Gang Rides Again
Original Music Composer
Walter Brennan is back as the clever and funny over the hill Texas Ranger Nash Crawford. This time the gang must face corruption in their own home town. The gang put their heads together to clean up their town, take back the rule of law and rehabilitate the town lush (played by Fred Astaire) along with way.
Will Penny
Original Music Composer
Will Penny, an aging cowpoke, takes a job on a ranch which requires him to ride the line of the property looking for trespassers or, worse, squatters. He finds that his cabin in the high mountains has been appropriated by a woman whose guide to Oregon has deserted her and her son. Too ashamed to kick mother and child out just as the bitter winter of the mountains sets in, he agrees to share the cabin until the spring thaw. But it isn't just the snow that slowly thaws; the lonely man and woman soon forget their mutual hostility and start developing a deep love for one another.
A Big Hand for the Little Lady
Conductor
A naive traveler in Laredo gets involved in a poker game between the richest men in the area, jeopardizing all the money he has saved for the purpose of settling with his wife and child in San Antonio.
A Big Hand for the Little Lady
Original Music Composer
A naive traveler in Laredo gets involved in a poker game between the richest men in the area, jeopardizing all the money he has saved for the purpose of settling with his wife and child in San Antonio.
Love Has Many Faces
Original Music Composer
A woman lives in Acapulco with moochers and a husband who married her for her money.
Sylvia
Music
Sylvia West (Carroll Baker) may not be who she says she is. Her fiancé, the very well-to-do Frederick Summers (Peter Lawford), hires an investigator named Alan Maklin (George Maharis) to do some digging, and what he finds out about her life prior to becoming a writer is quite shocking. Will the newfound knowledge ruin the marriage? Gordon Douglas (Young at Heart) directs this drama, which is based on E.V. Cunningham's book.
Invitation to a Gunfighter
Music
In New Mexico, a Confederate veteran returns home to find his fiancée married to a Union soldier, his Yankee neighbors rallied against him and his property sold by the local banker who then hires a gunman to kill him.
The Patsy
Original Music Composer
When a star comedian dies, his comedy team decides to train a 'nobody' to play the Star in a big TV show (a Patsy). But the man chosen, bellboy Stanley Belt (Lewis), can't do anything right. The TV show is getting closer, and Stanley is getting worse.
Scorpio Rising
Music
A gang of Nazi bikers prepares for a race as sexual, sadistic, and occult images are cut together.
Night Tide
Original Music Composer
A young sailor falls in love with a mysterious woman performing as a mermaid on the local pier. As they become entwined, he comes to suspect the woman might be a real mermaid who lures men to a watery death during the full moon.
Too Late Blues
Original Music Composer
Ghost is an ideological musician and leader of a jazz band who would rather play his blues in the park to the birds than compromise himself. His peripatetic performances lead him to cross paths with a singer, while his masculinity is thrown into question following a violent brawl.
Pay or Die!
Original Music Composer
A beautifully rendered, fact-based crime film about a crusading Italian policeman battling Black Hand extortionists in New York’s Little Italy is back on the big screen. In addition to Ernest Borgnine’s brilliantly sensitive portrayal as Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino, this engrossing picture is deftly photographed by Lucien Ballard, beautifully scored by David Raksin with a stellar supporting cast including Zohra Lampert and Alan Austin. Literate, suspenseful and emotionally moving, this memorable film remains the definitive depiction about the emergence of the Mafia in America.
Al Capone
Original Music Composer
In this unusually accurate biography, small-time hood Al Capone comes to Chicago at the dawn of Prohibition to be the bodyguard of racketeer Johnny Torrio. Capone's rise in Chicago gangdom is followed through murder, extortion, and political fraud. He becomes head of Chicago's biggest "business," but moves inexorably toward his downfall and ignominious end.
The Redeemer
Music
El redentor (original title)
Separate Tables
Original Music Composer
Boarders at an English resort struggle with emotional problems.
Twilight for the Gods
Original Music Composer
An alcoholic captain sails a two-master through danger with a call girl and others on board.
Until They Sail
Original Music Composer
Four sisters in New Zealand fall for four U.S. soldiers en route to the Pacific theater in WWII.
Gunsight Ridge
Original Music Composer
An undercover agent takes the job of sheriff in order to find the men responsible for a series of stagecoach robberies.
Man on Fire
Original Music Composer
Bitter over their divorce, a wealthy businessman (Bing Crosby in a rare non-singing, unsympathetic role) prevents his ex-wife from seeing their child. She then takes him to custody court, and a judge tries to determine what will be best for the child.
Bigger Than Life
Original Music Composer
A friendly, successful suburban teacher and father grows dangerously addicted to cortisone, resulting in his transformation into a household despot.
Hilda Crane
Original Music Composer
After two failed marriages, a disillusioned woman returns to her hometown to start life anew.
Jubal
Original Music Composer
Jubal Troop is a cowboy who is found in a weakened condition, without a horse. He is given shelter at Shep Horgan's large ranch, where he quickly makes an enemy in foreman Pinky, a cattleman who accuses Jubal of carrying the smell of sheep.
The Big Combo
Music
Police Lt. Leonard Diamond vies to bring a clever, well connected, and sadistic gangster to justice all the while obsessing over the gangster's girlfriend.
Suddenly
Music
The tranquility of a small town is marred only by sheriff Tod Shaw's unsuccessful courtship of widow Ellen Benson, a pacifist who can't abide guns and those who use them. But violence descends on Ellen's household willy-nilly when the U.S. President passes through town... and slightly psycho hired assassin John Baron finds the Benson home ideal for an ambush.
Apache
Original Music Composer
Following the surrender of Geronimo, Massai, the last Apache warrior is captured and scheduled for transportation to a Florida reservation. On the way he manages to escape and heads for his homeland to win back his girl and settle down to grow crops. His pursuers have other ideas though.
The Bad and the Beautiful
Orchestrator
Told in flashback form, the film traces the rise and fall of a tough, ambitious Hollywood producer, Jonathan Shields, as seen through the eyes of various acquaintances, including a writer, James Lee Bartlow; a star, Georgia Lorrison; and a director, Fred Amiel. He is a hard-driving, ambitious man who ruthlessly uses everyone on the way to becoming one of Hollywood's top movie makers.
The Bad and the Beautiful
Conductor
Told in flashback form, the film traces the rise and fall of a tough, ambitious Hollywood producer, Jonathan Shields, as seen through the eyes of various acquaintances, including a writer, James Lee Bartlow; a star, Georgia Lorrison; and a director, Fred Amiel. He is a hard-driving, ambitious man who ruthlessly uses everyone on the way to becoming one of Hollywood's top movie makers.
The Bad and the Beautiful
Original Music Composer
Told in flashback form, the film traces the rise and fall of a tough, ambitious Hollywood producer, Jonathan Shields, as seen through the eyes of various acquaintances, including a writer, James Lee Bartlow; a star, Georgia Lorrison; and a director, Fred Amiel. He is a hard-driving, ambitious man who ruthlessly uses everyone on the way to becoming one of Hollywood's top movie makers.
Carrie
Original Music Composer
Carrie's dreams of adventure in the big city are quickly squashed as she discovers all that awaits her there is a bleak life of grueling and poorly paid factory work—that is, until a traveling salesman named Drouet steps into her life and changes her outlook.
The Girl in White
Original Music Composer
The first female doctor in New York City comes up against prejudice from male counterparts who feel threatened by her skills. Eventually, though, they come to respect her and romance blossoms between her and the head doctor.
The Man with a Cloak
Original Music Composer
Set in 19th-century New York, this mystery begins when a Frenchwoman shows up at the home of one of Napoleon's former marshals. The alcoholic man is badly crippled and slowly dying, but this doesn't stop the forthright lady from pushing him to change his will to include his estranged grandson so that he can help out the struggling French Republic. Unfortunately, the dying man's conniving housekeeper and butler, already planning murder to get the money themselves, overhear her and begin plotting her demise.
Across the Wide Missouri
Original Music Composer
In the 1830's beaver trapper Flint Mitchell and other white men hunt and trap in the then unnamed territories of Montana and Idaho. Flint marries a Blackfoot woman as a way to gain entrance into her people's rich lands, but finds she means more to him than a ticket to good beaver habitat.
Kind Lady
Music
Mary Herries has a passion for art and fine furniture. Even though she is getting on in years, she enjoys being around these priceless articles. One day she meets a strange young painter named Elcott, who uses his painting skill to enter into her life. Little does she expect that his only interest in Mary is to covet everything she has.
The Magnificent Yankee
Conductor
Biography of celebrated American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes.
The Magnificent Yankee
Orchestrator
Biography of celebrated American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes.
The Magnificent Yankee
Original Music Composer
Biography of celebrated American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Right Cross
Music
A sportswriter forms a ring triangle with a fight manager's daughter and her Mexican-American boxer.
A Lady Without Passport
Original Music Composer
A secret service agent falls in love with an illegal immigrant.
The Next Voice You Hear...
Original Music Composer
The Next Voice You Hear... (1950) is a drama film in which a voice claiming to be that of God preempts all radio programs for days all over the world. It stars James Whitmore and Nancy Davis as Joe and Mary Smith, a typical American couple. It was based on a short story of the same name by George Sumner Albee.
The Reformer and the Redhead
Original Music Composer
A small-town politician falls for an idealistic zookeeper.
Whirlpool
Original Music Composer
The wife of a psychoanalyst falls prey to a devious quack hypnotist when he discovers she is an habitual shoplifter. Then one of his previous patients now being treated by the real doctor is found murdered, with her still at the scene, and suspicion points only one way.
Force of Evil
Music
Lawyer Joe Morse wants to consolidate all the small-time numbers racket operators into one big powerful operation. But his elder brother Leo is one of these small-time operators who wants to stay that way, preferring not to deal with the gangsters who dominate the big-time.
Apartment for Peggy
Music
Professor Henry Barnes decides he's lived long enough and contemplates suicide. His attitude is changed by Peggy Taylor, a chipper young mother-to-be who charms him into renting out his attic as an apartment for her and her husband Jason, a former GI struggling to finish college.
Fury at Furnace Creek
Music
The Arizona wilderness, 1880. Gen. Fletcher Blackwell sends a message telling Capt. Walsh, who is escorting a wagon-train through Apache territory, heading for the fort at Furnace Creek, that he should cancel the escort and rush to another town. Apache leader "Little Dog" is leading the attack on the wagon-train and massacring everyone at the poorly manned fort. As a result the treaty is broken with the Indians and the white settlers take over the territory with the help of the cavalry, as the Apaches are wiped out and only "Little Dog" remains at large. Gen. Fletcher Blackwell is court-martial-led for treason.
Daisy Kenyon
Original Music Composer
Daisy Kenyon is a Manhattan commercial artist having an affair with an arrogant and overbearing but successful lawyer named Dan O'Mara. O'Mara is married and has children. Daisy meets a single man, a war veteran named Peter Lapham, and after a brief and hesitant courtship decides to marry him, although she is still in love with Dan.
Daisy Kenyon
Music
Daisy Kenyon is a Manhattan commercial artist having an affair with an arrogant and overbearing but successful lawyer named Dan O'Mara. O'Mara is married and has children. Daisy meets a single man, a war veteran named Peter Lapham, and after a brief and hesitant courtship decides to marry him, although she is still in love with Dan.
Forever Amber
Original Music Composer
Amber St Clair, orphaned during the English Civil War and raised by a family of farmers, aspires to be a lady of high society; when a group of cavaliers ride into town, she sneaks away with them to London to achieve her dreams.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Original Music Composer
Walter Mitty, a daydreaming writer with an overprotective mother, likes to imagine that he is a hero who experiences fantastic adventures. His dream becomes reality when he accidentally meets a mysterious woman who hands him a little black book. According to her, it contains the locations of the Dutch crown jewels hidden since World War II. Soon, Mitty finds himself in the middle of a confusing conspiracy, where he has difficulty differentiating between fact and fiction.
The Homestretch
Music
A young couple's marriage is threatened by the husband's love of horses and the racetrack circuit.
Fallen Angel
Original Music Composer
An unemployed drifter, Eric Stanton wanders into a small California town and begins hanging around the local diner. While Eric falls for the lovely waitress Stella, he also begins romancing a quiet and well-to-do woman named June Mills. Since Stella isn't interested in Eric unless he has money, the lovelorn guy comes up with a scheme to win her over, and it involves June. Before long, murder works its way into this passionate love triangle.
Don Juan Quilligan
Original Music Composer
When a an overly romantic barge captain marries two women, each reminding him of his mother, he finds himself resorting to prison to escape them.
Where Do We Go from Here?
Original Music Composer
Bill wants to join the Army, but he's 4F so he asks a wizard to help him, but the wizard has slight problems with his history knowlege, so he sends Bill everywhere in history, but not to WWII.
Circumstantial Evidence
Orchestrator
A man waits on death row while his son and friend try to prove that he did not kill a grocer with an ax.
Belle of the Yukon
Original Music Composer
Left by a con man, Belle De Valle, a dancer, finds him again in gold-rush Alaska running an honest casino/dance hall.
Irish Eyes Are Smiling
Additional Music
Climbing to fame, Irish-American composer Ernest R. Ball romances a showgirl, who catches the eye of an underworld character.
Laura
Original Music Composer
A police detective falls in love with the woman whose murder he's investigating.
Bathing Beauty
Original Music Composer
After breaking up with her fiancé, a gym teacher returns to work at a women's college, but a legal loophole allows him to enroll as one of her students.
Tampico
Music
A story of of the captain of an oil tanker during World War II, Captain Bart Manson, who rescues Katherine Hall when her ship is sunk by a German U-boat.
Main Street Today
Music
This patriotic short film promotes America's war effort at home. The story looks at a fictional small town's main street, seeing where additional workforce, for increased production of materials needed by the military, might come from.
City Without Men
Music
A young woman's husband has been imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. In order to be near him to try to help him get his sentence overturned, she moves into a boardinghouse near the prison whose residents are the wives of inmates.
The Undying Monster
Music
A werewolf prowls around at night but only kills certain members of one family. It seems like just a coincidence, but the investigating Inspector soon finds out that this tradition has gone on for generations and tries to find a link between the werewolf and the family, leading to a frightening conclusion.
Dr. Renault's Secret
Original Music Composer
A remake of the 1927 horror film "The Wizard". Dr. Larry Forbes arrives in a remote French village to visit his fiancée who lives with her scientist father Dr. Renault and his Ape-like manservant Noel. Several Murders coincide with Dr. Forbes arrival, with clues pointing in multiple directions.
Why We Fight: Prelude to War
Music
Prelude to War was the first film of Frank Capra's Why We Fight propaganda film series, commissioned by the Pentagon and George C. Marshall. It was made to convince American troops of the necessity of combating the Axis Powers during World War II. This film examines the differences between democratic and fascist states.
The Man Who Wouldn't Die
Original Music Composer
A man believed to be dead and buried escapes from his grave and returns to the scene of the crime seeking revenge.
On the Sunny Side
Original Music Composer
Because of the war, a 12-year-old boy from England, Hugh, is sent to live with the Andrews family in Ohio. Don, the Andrews' 11-year-old son, eagerly accepts the English boy, and is happy when his school-friends do the same. But his isn't so happy when things begin to change when his father fore-goes their evening game of Chinese Checkers to play chess with Hugh, and Hugh shows himself to be a formidable scholar, and impresses Don's girlfriend Betty, and becomes more popular with the boys than Don was...and Don is beginning to think that Hugh is too much of a good thing. Don gets downright depressed and decides to run away. Uh, oh, here comes Hugh.
Inflation
Music
The Devil works with Adolf Hitler to cause inflation in the United States.
The Gorilla
Music
When an escaped circus gorilla appears to have gone on a murderous rampage, a threatened attorney calls on the detective trio of Garrity, Harrigan and Mullivan to act as bodyguards. In short order, we discover that there is more to the attorney than meets the eye, and the ape may be innocent after all. When a pretty young heiress faces peril, it's up to our heroic trio to save the day.
Mr. Moto's Last Warning
Original Music Composer
A Japanese man claiming to be Mr. Moto, of the International Police, is abducted and murdered soon after disembarking from a ship at Port Said in Egypt. The real Mr. Moto is already in Port Said, investigating a conspiracy against the British and French governments.
Wings Over Honolulu
Original Music Composer
A Navy pilot gets involved in a romantic triangle while stationed in Hawaii.
Midnight Court
Music
After losing his bid for district attorney, an aspiring young lawyer agrees to defend a ring of car thieves.
The Mighty Treve
Original Music Composer
Story of a dog that is fanatically devoted to its master.
These Three
Orchestrator
Martha and Karen graduate from college and turn an old Massachusetts farm into a school for girls. The friends are aided in their venture by local doctor Joe Cardin, who begins a relationship with Karen, and a prominent woman whose granddaughter, Mary, later enrolls in the new school. Mary soon reveals herself to be a spiteful child and tells a scandalous lie about Martha and Joe that threatens to destroy the lives of all involved.