Ray Heindorf
Birth : 1908-08-25, Haverstraw, New York, USA
Death : 1980-02-03
History
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ray Heindorf (August 25, 1908 – February 3, 1980) was an American songwriter, composer, conductor, and arranger.
Born in Haverstraw, New York, Heindorf worked as a pianist in a movie house in Mechanicville in his early teens. In 1928, he moved to New York City, where he worked as a musical arranger before heading to Hollywood. He gained his first job as an orchestrator at MGM, where he worked on Hollywood Revue of 1929, and subsequently went on the road playing piano for Lupe Vélez.
After completing this engagement, he joined Warner Bros., composing and/or arranging and conducting music exclusively for the studio for nearly forty years. Heindorf, along with Georgie Stoll at MGM, were jazz aficionados well known in the black entertainment community for employing minority musicians in their studio music departments.
He undertook the musical direction of Judy Garland's comeback film A Star is Born (1954) and made a cameo appearance as himself in the premiere party sequence where Jack Carson's character congratulates him on a great score.
Among Heindorf's other screen credits are 42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1935, The Great Lie, Knute Rockne All American, Kings Row, Night and Day, Tea for Two, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Jazz Singer, No Time for Sergeants, The Helen Morgan Story, Marjorie Morningstar, Damn Yankees, Auntie Mame, Finian's Rainbow, and his final musical for Jack L. Warner, 1776.
Between 1943 and 1969 he was nominated for eighteen Academy Awards, 17 nominations for Best Score and 1 nomination for Best Song. Heindorf won three, in the category of Best Score of a Musical, for Yankee Doodle Dandy, This is the Army, and The Music Man. His wins for the former two films made him the first to accomplish consecutive wins in a musical category.
Heindorf died in Tarzana, California, aged 71, and reputedly was buried with his favorite conducting baton.
Original Music Composer
Suddenly widowed by an accident, a deputy sheriff from the Midwest becomes a customs agent and cracks a narcotics ring. Pilot movie for the series "O'Hara, U.S. Treasury."
Original Music Composer
A leprechaun follows an Irishman who stole his pot of gold to the American South.
Original Music Composer
A newspaper editor deals with a particularly stressful day in the newsroom.
Music Supervisor
Up and coming young lawyer Anthony Lawrence faces several ethical and emotional dilemmas as he climbs the Philadelphia social ladder. His personal and professional skills are tested as he tries to balance the needs of his fiance Joan, the expectations of his colleagues and his own obligation to defend his friend Chester on a murder count.
Music Supervisor
Lieutenant Braden discovers that Sally, the woman he's been falling in love with, has actually been checking out his qualifications to be a U.S. Navy frogman. He must put his personal life behind him after being assigned to be smuggled into a Japanese-held island via submarine to photograph radio codes.
Music
Torch singer Helen Morgan rises from sordid beginnings to fame and fortune only to lose it all to alcohol and poor personal choices.
Music
Wartime romance about a lonely man and woman who meet one rainy afternoon in New York.
Music Director
A wealthy woman discovers a vineyard worker with a beautiful operatic singing voice. She helps make him a star but then breaks his heart. He flees in misery to Mexico where he meets a sweet farm girl.
Original Music Composer
A wealthy woman discovers a vineyard worker with a beautiful operatic singing voice. She helps make him a star but then breaks his heart. He flees in misery to Mexico where he meets a sweet farm girl.
Music
He dazzled America for decades with his musical artistry. Now fans as well as those curious about this exciting entertainer’s unique appeal can relive the Liberace magic in his only starring film, Sincerely Yours. In a poignant story scripted by Irving Wallace, Liberace plays a concert pianist threatened by deafness. Plunged into despair, he finds escape from personal sorrow by secretly involving himself in the problems of strangers. Liberace touches the heart and delights the ear with sparkling renditions of 31 selections from Chopin to Chopsticks. Along the way he romances Joanne Dru and Dorothy Malone, trades barbs with old pro William Demarest and in a warmly humorous nightclub scene, pokes fun at his own image as the 1950s matinee idol of the little-old-lady set. From beginning to end, Sincerely Yours perfectly captures the charisma and sheer musicality of the legendary Mr. Showmanship.
Music
In 1927, a Kansas City, Missouri cornet player and his band perform nightly at a seedy speakeasy until a racketeer tries to extort them in exchange for protection.
Music
The lives and romances of three sisters in a musical family; the youngest daughter's life is complicated by the subsequent arrival of a charming composer and a cynical music arranger.
Movie Premiere Attendee (uncredited)
A movie star helps a young singer-actress find fame, even as age and alcoholism send his own career into a downward spiral.
Music Director
A movie star helps a young singer-actress find fame, even as age and alcoholism send his own career into a downward spiral.
Original Music Composer
A movie star helps a young singer-actress find fame, even as age and alcoholism send his own career into a downward spiral.
Music Director
Three struggling theatrical performers meet a famous songwriter who is trying to convince a wealthy oilman to finance a musical he is scripting, promising them stardom if it comes to fruition.
Original Music Composer
A group of sailors invest in a musical revue.
Music Director
Sharpshooter Calamity Jane takes it upon herself to recruit a famous actress and bring her back to the local saloon, but jealousy soon gets in the way.
Music Director
Wildcatter Jeff Dawson does his best to bring in a gusher in Mexico despite continual bandit raids. He asks for help from his ex-employer Ward Conway, but Conway, now married to Dawson's ex-lover Marina refuses, fearing that his wife will want to renew her romance with the other man.
Music Director
Marjorie Winfield's engagement to Bill Sherman, who has just arrived home from fighting in World War I, serves as the backdrop for the trials and tribulations of her family.
Music Director
Unable, due to the seal of the confessional, to be forthcoming with information that would serve to clear himself during a murder investigation, a priest becomes the prime suspect.
Music Director
A series of misunderstandings leads to a chorus girl traveling to Paris to represent the American theater, where she falls in love with a befuddled bureaucrat.
Music Director
In 1900, unscrupulous timber baron Jim Fallon plans to take advantage of a new law and make millions off California redwood. Much of the land he hopes to grab has been homesteaded by a Quaker colony, who try to persuade him to spare the giant sequoias...but these are the very trees he wants most. Expert at manipulating others, Fallon finds that other sharks are at his own heels, and forms an unlikely alliance.
Orchestra Leader at Kahn Benefit (uncredited)
Songwriter Gus Kahn fights to make his name, then has to fight again to survive the Depression.
Music Director
Songwriter Gus Kahn fights to make his name, then has to fight again to survive the Depression.
Music Director
Alcoholic newspaperman Lew Marsh hits bottom, loses his job and is rehabilitated by Charley Dolan. After six years on the wagon he gets his job back and devotes himself to other recovering alcoholics.
Original Music Composer
Alcoholic newspaperman Lew Marsh hits bottom, loses his job and is rehabilitated by Charley Dolan. After six years on the wagon he gets his job back and devotes himself to other recovering alcoholics.
Music Director
A fading southern belle tries to build a new life with her sister in New Orleans.
Music Director
Agatha has fond memories of her romance with college president Dr. James Merrill, when she was a student and he was her professor, and wants to see if there is still a spark between them.
A documentary short film depicting the work of the motion picture director. An anonymous director is shown preparing the various aspects of a film for production, meeting with the writer and producer, approving wardrobe and set design, rehearsing scenes with the actors and camera crew, shooting the scenes, watching dailies, working with the editor and composer, and attending the first preview. Then a number of real directors are shown in archive footage (as well as a predominance of staged 'archive' footage) working with actors and crew.
Music Director
In this reworking of "No, No, Nanette," wealthy heiress Nanette Carter bets her uncle $25,000 that she can say "no" to everything for 48 hours. If she wins, she can invest the money in a Broadway show featuring songs written by her beau, and of course, in which she will star. Trouble is, she doesn't realize her uncle's been wiped out by the Stock Market crash.
Music Director
An Irish horsecar driver's daughter meets New York showman Tony Pastor and goes into vaudeville.
Music
Legendary trumpeter Art Hazzard teaches young Rick Martin everything he knows about playing, so Rick becomes a star musician, but a troubled marriage and the desire to play pure jazz instead of commercial swing songs cause him problems.
Ray Heindorf (uncredited)
A waitress at the Warner Brothers commissary is anxious to break into pictures. She thinks her big break may have arrived when actors Jack Carson and Dennis Morgan agree to help her.
Music
A waitress at the Warner Brothers commissary is anxious to break into pictures. She thinks her big break may have arrived when actors Jack Carson and Dennis Morgan agree to help her.
Music Supervisor
The adventures of the notorious Spanish Lothario Don Juan highlights Errol Flynn's swashbuckling and romantic antics.
Orchestrator
Georgia Garrett is sent by jealous wife Elvira Kent on an ocean cruise to masquerade as herself while she secretly stays home to catch her husband cheating. Meanwhile equally suspicious husband Michael Kent has sent a private eye on the same cruise to catch his wife cheating. Love and confusion ensues along with plenty of musical numbers.
Conductor
Georgia Garrett is sent by jealous wife Elvira Kent on an ocean cruise to masquerade as herself while she secretly stays home to catch her husband cheating. Meanwhile equally suspicious husband Michael Kent has sent a private eye on the same cruise to catch his wife cheating. Love and confusion ensues along with plenty of musical numbers.
Original Music Composer
A married couple who have a song-and-dance act in vaudeville are in trouble. Their struggling act is going nowhere, they're almost broke and they have to do something to get them back on top or they'll really be in trouble. They decide to put their young son in the act in hopes of attracting some new attention. The boy turns out to be a major talent, audiences love him and the act is on its way to the top. That's when an organization whose purpose is to stop children from performing on stage shows up, and they're dead set on breaking up the act.
Music Arranger
A wealthy socialite bored with her life meets and falls in love with a struggling songwriter on the verge of leaving New York and quitting the music business.
Orchestrator
Judy Jones can claim inheritance only if she marries a genius.
Conductor
Boisterous nightclub entertainer Buzzy Bellew was the witness to a murder committed by gangster Ten Grand Jackson. One night, two of Jackson's thugs kill Buzzy and dump his body in the lake at Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Buzzy comes back as a ghost and summons his bookworm twin, Edwin Dingle, to Prospect Park so that he can help the police nail Jackson.
Orchestrator
Boisterous nightclub entertainer Buzzy Bellew was the witness to a murder committed by gangster Ten Grand Jackson. One night, two of Jackson's thugs kill Buzzy and dump his body in the lake at Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Buzzy comes back as a ghost and summons his bookworm twin, Edwin Dingle, to Prospect Park so that he can help the police nail Jackson.
Music Arranger
Helen Chernen pushes her younger sister Katherine into show business in order to escape their small town poverty.
Orchestrator
As bare-knuckled boxing enters the modern era, brash extrovert Jim Corbett uses new rules and dazzlingly innovative footwork to rise to the top of the boxing world.
Original Music Composer
A film of the life of the renowned musical composer, playwright, actor, dancer and singer George M. Cohan.
Orchestrator
The trustees of Midwestern University have forced three teachers out of their jobs for being suspected communists. Trustee Ed Keller has also threatened mild mannered English Professor Tommy Turner, because he plans to read a controversial piece of prose in class. Tommy is upset that his wife Ellen also suggested he not read the passage. Meanwhile, Ellen's old boyfriend, the football player Joe Ferguson, comes to visit for the homecoming weekend. He takes Ellen out dancing after the football rally, causing Tommy to worry that he will lose her to Joe.
Orchestrator
A married reporter's assignments carry him all over the world, which gives him ample opportunity to put the moves on the local females.
Orchestrator
After a newlywed's husband apparently dies in a plane crash, she discovers that her rival for his affections is pregnant with his child.
Music Arranger
Shipwrecked fugitives try to escape a brutal sea captain who's losing his mind.
Orchestrator
Biff Grimes is desperately in love with Virginia, but his best friend Hugo marries her and manipulates Biff into becoming involved in his somewhat nefarious businesses. Hugo appears to have stolen Biff's dreams, and Biff has to deal with the realisation that having what he wants and wanting what another has can be very different things.
Music Arranger
After his doctor informs him he will die in six months, Professor Henry Todhunter decides to spend his last days killing someone who contributes nothing but harm to society. When Henry learns that his friend Betty's husband, Michael, has been painting forgeries of ancient paintings for gallery owner Ketti Moret, he investigates the fraudulent dealer's life. Judging that Ketti is truly evil, Henry prepares to murder her.
Orchestrator
Noted writer Kenneth Bixby, in love with his witty secretary Anne Rogers, is on a book tour when he meets up with a former college fling with a loopy Danish girl which he barely remembers. She remembers him, very well.
Orchestrator
Four married sisters face motherhood, financial, marital and family issues together.
Orchestrator
The story of legendary Notre Dame football player and coach Knute Rockne.
Music
Amelia is a gifted violinist who is in danger of quitting the Brissac Academy of Music. Julius arranges to have a scholarship given to her through his employee Tony so that Julius can escort Amelia to every musical event in the city. The trouble begins when he cannot meet her one night and Tony goes in his place. Tony believes that Julius and Amelia are a couple and then son Paul thinks that Tony and Amelia are a couple as he is sending her the money. The worst part is that Amelia might leave classical music for swing music with classmates Dusty, Joy and the band.
Music Arranger
A hardened crook behind bars comes up against a reform-minded warden.
Orchestrator
In this sequel to Four Daughters, Ann struggles to move on after the death of her husband as she falls in love with Felix, but on the day of her engagement discovers that she carries Mickey's child.
Original Music Composer
After World War I, Armistice Lloyd Hart goes back to practice law, former saloon keeper George Hally turns to bootlegging, and out-of-work Eddie Bartlett becomes a cab driver. Eddie builds a fleet of cabs through delivery of bootleg liquor and hires Lloyd as his lawyer. George becomes Eddie's partner and the rackets flourish until love and rivalry interfere.
Orchestrator
A young man just released from a reformatory moves to a new neighborhood with his sister, intending to start a new life. However, he gets mixed up with the local mob boss and corrupt politicians and soon finds himself being framed for an arson and murder he didn't commit.
Orchestrator
Nan Masters, a single mother living with her four marriageable daughters, plans to marry Sam Sloane, businessman. Out of the blue her 1st husband Jim returns after deserting the family 20 years earlier. The worldly wanderer Jim gets a cool family reception at first but his warm personality gradually wins the affections of his four daughters. In fact, youngest daughter Buff, who has her eye on a maverick of her own in Gabriel Lopez, is pleased when Jim grants his stamp of approval on her relationship. Buff plans to elope with Gabriel on her mother's wedding day, but 'unpredictable' is Gabriel's middle name.
Orchestrator
Linda works at an advertising agency, but, unlike the other women in the secretarial pool, she hopes to succeed in the business rather than just find a husband. She rises through the ranks, becoming a copywriter, and attracts the attention of Jimmy, an amorous coworker who wants to marry her. But Jimmy is jealous of Linda's career and of Harry, a radio executive who works with Linda, and their marriage gets off to a very rough start.
Music
After losing a coveted role in an upcoming film to another actress, screen queen Mona Marshall (Lola Lane) protests by refusing to appear at her current movie's premiere. Her agent discovers struggling actress Virginia Stanton (Rosemary Lane) -- an exact match for Mona -- and sends her to the premiere instead, with young musician Ronnie Bowers (Dick Powell). After various mishaps, including a case of mistaken identity, Ronnie and Virginia struggle to find success in Hollywood.
Music Arranger
Two starving songwriters will only get funding if they get British actress Jane Clarke to star in their show.
Music Arranger
A Broadway show is forced to bow to the whims of a talentless, whacky, but rich, Broadway actress with a contract.
Music Arranger
Neurotic Broadway star Al Jackson faces professional ruin when he loses his voice. While recuperating in the country, he falls in love with farm girl Ruth Haines, the pretty aunt of precocious little Sybil Haines.
Music Arranger
Musical about dingaling millionaire businessman Cedric Ames and his various employees
Original Music Composer
Dan Bellows finds former stage star Joyce Heath a penniless drunk and takes her to his Connecticut home for rehabilitation. Unaware that she is married to Gordon, he asks his fiancée Gail to free him and offers to sponsor Joyce in a play. When Gordon refuses to give Joyce a divorce, she runs the car into a tree crippling him for life. Joyce urges Dan return to Gail, opens her play, and begs Gordon for forgiveness.
Music Arranger
A taxi driver travels to Venice and poses as a gondolier to land a radio singing job.
Orchestrator
Idiosyncratic new recruit Francis "Ike" Farrell tries to help the Cubs to the pennant with his pitching and hitting.
Orchestrator
An irresponsible Broadway star gets mixed up with gambling and gangsters.
Music Arranger
Romance strikes when a vacationing millionairess and her daughter and son spend their vacation at a posh New England resort.
Music Arranger
A midwest band leader and his lead singer share a love-hate relationship as they try for success in New York.
Original Music Composer
Bob Halsey is a first-rate pilot who's in love with stewardess Judy Wagner. He's ordered to deliver a secret formula to Washington, D.C., but a spy hears about the assignment and sabotages it by murdering Bob's fellow flyers and making off with the liquid. While the government conducts a vast search for the formula, the spies entangle Judy in their web of deceit, causing Bob to set off on his own in an effort to save his sweetheart and retrieve the missing mixture.
Original Music Composer
A bitter woman who thinks she'll never love again marries, only to fall for a brash young man.
Original Music Composer
A man meets the daughter of his lover and they begin to fall in love.
Orchestrator
Bulldog Drummond finds himself immersed in another adventure when he stumbles upon a corpse in the mysterious London mansion of Prince Achmed. Enlisting the help of his old friend Algy and the beautiful Lola, Drummond uncovers a scheme to ship illegal cargo into the country. He must rely on his cunning to survive when the prince offers a reward for his capture.
Orchestrator
Philo Vance, accompanied by his prize-losing Scottish terrier, investigates the locked-room murder of a prominent and much-hated collector whose broken Chinese vase provides an important clue.
Music Arranger
A fledgling producer finds himself at odds with his workers, financiers and his greedy ex-wife when he tries to produce live musicals for movie-going audiences.
Orchestrator
In the 1860s, Mary Marlowe defies her father's wishes to marry a British lord and runs away with clerk John Carlton as he heads West to make his fortune. Mary and John endure the difficult journey and settle into a small cabin, then face the hostilities of a cattle rustling gang, as well as the tragic loss of their only son. With Mary's help, John defeats the gang, which propels him to political power that, over the years, gradually erodes the once-happy marriage.
Music Arranger
A producer puts on what may be his last Broadway show, and at the last moment a chorus girl has to replace the star.
Orchestrator
A New York tramp falls in love with the mayor's amnesiac girlfriend after rescuing her from a suicide attempt.
Music
Two destitute New Yorkers meet cute in Central Park and then separate and independently get tangled up with some gangsters only to be reunited again in the end.
Music Arranger
Although Vivian Revere is seemingly the most successful of a trio of reunited schoolmates, she throws it away by descending into a life of debauchery and drugs.
Original Music Composer
An Indiana boy comes into an inheritance and moves to New York City, living it up with his girlfriend until he gets in over his head and someone gets killed.
Original Music Composer
Fame goes to a priggish singer's head and almost costs him his girlfriend.
Orchestrator
A medical researcher is sent to a plague outbreak, where he has to decide priorities for the use of a vaccine.
Himself
This short showcases composers and lyricists of songs that are now considered standards of American popular music. For several of these song writers, this is their only known appearance in a theatrically released film.
