Table of Contents

Contents
Foreword by Daniel Goldmark
About the Companion Website
Introduction
Part I: Selznick in the Studio System
1. In the Selznick Family Tradition
2. "Drama Rising Like Might Music": Selznick and Steiner at RKO
3. Variations on a Theme: Selznick and Stothart at MGM
Part II: Musically Independent
4. The Start of Selznick International Pictures
5. Music Director Differences: Artful Arbitration through Selznick International's Busiest Years
Part III: Music for Hollywood's Prestige Producer
6. Gone with the Wind, Part I: Producing the Score
7. Gone with the Wind, Part II: The Music of "Max Steiner and Co."
8. "I know just what she's going through": Rebecca's Music for Interiors
9. "Together" for the Last Time in Since You Went Away
10. Success in Spite of Itself: The Trouble with Spellbound
Part IV: Postwar Experiments
11. From the Ranch to the Drawing Room: Duel in the Sun and The Paradine Case
12. "Our Valedictory to Wild Extravagance": The Curious Portrait of Jennie
13. Selznick Beyond Hollywood
14. Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Select Bibliography

About the Author

Nathan Platte teaches music history at the University of Iowa.

Reviews

"Platte has provided an attractively-written and compelling book that offers not only an endlessly fascinating musical portrait of Selznick himself but also a window on the practices of studio-era music-making. It will, I am sure, be a staple of bibliographies of film-music history for many years to come." -- Music, Sound, and the Moving Image
"Engagingly written and with a companion website that offers exemplary film clips, Making Music in Selznick's Hollywood expands the scholarly literature on film musicology, which has tended to focus primarily on composers, to consider the important contributions of others in the studio music department. As such, Platte challenges our understanding of how music was conceived for films and encourages us toward a deeper understanding of the scoring process, making
this book a significant addition to any film music collection." -- Journal of the Society for American Music
"Nathan Platte has written a meticulously researched but accessible book that demonstrates the important role that Selznick played in shaping the music for his films. Platte shows how Selznick managed his composers--some of the best-known in Hollywood--to get the musical treatment that he wanted, and his account of music in Selznick's films brings much light to the evolving process of scoring films in the studio era."-James Buhler, Professor of Music Theory,
The University of Texas at Austin and co-author of Hearing the Movies
"Nathan Platte compellingly demonstrates what he calls 'the glorious fuzziness of authorship' in Selznick's Hollywood film music. His book is anything but fuzzy--original, brilliantly researched, witty and wise."-Claudia Gorbman, Professor Emerita of Film Studies, University of Washington Tacoma, and author of Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music.
"Platte's achievement is in showing us Selznick's, forcing us to recalibrate the model of Hollywood film scoring to accommodate the reality of production practices, the nature of collaboration, and the sheer force of Selznick. Mining the archives, thoroughly conversant with scholarship, and with access to production records, music notes, and the scores themselves, Platte produces a masterwork."-Kathryn Kalinak, author of Settling the Score: Music and the
Classical Hollywood Film
"Platte engages the reader by bringing together the historical context, the creative and production processes, music expectations, and more for Selznick's films by following the producer's career through sweeping collaborations with composers such as Herbert Stothart, Max Steiner, Miklos Rozsa, and Dimitri Tiomkin...Making Music in Selznick's Hollywood is not only a pleasure to read, it is a significant and compelling addition to film music literature.
The back of the book jacket contains critical praise from three leading scholars with varied backgrounds in music theory, English/Romance Languages and Literature, and film studies: James Buhler ("meticulously
researched but accessible"), Claudia Gorbman ("original, brilliantly researched, witty and wise"), and Kathryn Kalinak ("Platte produces a masterwork")." --Warren Sherk of DimitriTiomkin.com
"In this meticulous study, which entailed archival research, Platte (music history, Univ. of Iowa) introduces readers to the overlooked others who were responsible for creating Selznick's scores, for example, music editor Audray Granville, who worked on Spellbound. Emphasis is on films that were produced by Selznick himself; therefore, for example, I'll Be Seeing You (1944), produced by Selznick International, is not included. The first in-depth,
book-length study to explore Selznick's own role in film scoring, this volume offers early history on Selznick's musical experiments while at Paramount in the 1920s, music examples, transcriptions of Selznick's
memos to rewrite music, film stills, premiere programs, and pictures of family members and those who, like Granville, worked behind the scenes...Essential." --Choice