Oscar Profile: Ray Heindorf

Born August 25, 1908 in Haverstraw, New York, Ray(mond) John Heindorf worked as a pianist in a silent movie house in Mechanicville in his early teens. In 1928, he moved to New York City, where he landed a job as a musical arranger before moving to Hollywood in February 1929.

Heindorf’s first job in Hollywood was as an orchestrator at MGM, where he worked on Hollywood Revue of 1929, after which he went on the road playing piano for Lupe Vélez. After completing his tour with Vélez, he joined Warner Bros., composing, arranging and conducting music exclusively for the studio for nearly forty years.

Prolific Heindorf worked on more than 200 films throughout his career. Among the many well-known films he worked on in the 1930s were Whoopee!, Street Scene, Arrowsmith, One Way Passage, Three on a Match, 42^nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933, Footlight Parade, Wonder Bar, Dames, Flirtation Walk, Gold Diggers of 1935, Captain Blood, Four Daughters, and The Roaring Twenties.

From 1940-1942, he worked on such popular films as It All Came True, Brother Orchid, The Sea Hawk, City for Conquest, Knute Rockne All American, The Strawberry Blonde, The Sea Wolf, The Great Lie, Kings Row, and Yankee Doodle Dandy for which he received his first Oscar nomination and first of three wins out of eighteen nominations.

Divorced from his first wife in 1938, Heindorf married second wife, actress Lorraine Grey, sister of Virginia Grey in 1942. He had a son with his first wife and two daughters with his second, with whom he would remain married until they divorced in 1963.

Heindorf won his second Oscar on his second nomination for 1943’s This Is the Army. He would receive an additional nine nominations through 1949, earning two in 1944, three in 1945, and one each in the remaining years of the decade. Among his credits for the remainder of the decade were such films as The Hard Way, Rhapsody in Blue, Night and Day, The Man I Love, Adventures of Don Juan, and Flamingo Road.

He was equally busy in the 1950s with such films as Young Man with a Horn, The Damned Don’t Cry, The Breaking Point, Storm Warning, Lullaby of Broadway, Goodbye, My Fancy, Strangers on a Train, A Streetcar Named Desire, I Confess, Calamity Jane (his fourteenth Oscar nomination), Them!, A Star Is Born (his fifteenth Oscar nomination), Young at Heart, Miracle in the Rain, The Spirit of St. Louis, The Pajama Game, The Helen Morgan Story, Marjorie Morningstar, Damn Yankees (his sixteenth Oscar nomination), Auntie Mame, and The Young Philadelphians.

Heindorf’s output was reduced considerably in the 1960s in which he worked mostly on television. His two big screen productions of the decade, however, brought him his last two Oscar nominations, the first of which was for The Music Man for which he won his third and final Oscar. The second was for 1968’s Finian’s Rainbow.

Heindorf’s last film was 1972’s 1776 which was produced for Warner Bros. honcho Jack Warner albeit at Columbia.

Ray Heindorf died February 3, 1980. He was 71.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

YANKEE DOODLE DANDY (1942), directed by Michael Curtiz

Nominated for 8 Oscars and winner of 3 including Best Actor James Cagney, Best Sound and Best Scoring which Heindorf shared with Heinz Roemheld, Yankee Doodle Dandy remains one of the most beloved films of all time, a perennial 4^th of July favorite. The biography of composer-playwright-actor-dancer-singer George M. Cohan, the film was a natural for Cagney who got to sing and dance most of Cohan’s most celebrated songs including “Give My Regards to Broadway”, “Over There”, “You’re a Grand Old Flag”, and “Mary’s a Grand Old Name”. Joan Leslie, Waler Huston, Rosemary DeCamp, and Jeanne Cagney co-star.

A STAR IS BORN (1954), directed by George Cukor

Nominated for 6 Oscars including Best Actress Judy Garland, Best Actor James Mason, Best Song “The Man That Got Away” by Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin and Weindorf’s Scoring, the definitive version of the oft-filmed Hollywood tale provided Garland with the role of her career. Her loss to Grace Kelly in The Country Girl is still considered one of the biggest shockers in Oscar history. Mason’s loss to his Julius Caesar co-star Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, on the other hand, was a given as was the film’s Best Song loss to the title song from Three Coins in the Fountain. Another musical, White Christmas was the year’s box-office champion.

DAMN YANKEES (1958), directed by George Abbott and Stanley Donen

Heindorf received the film’s sole Oscar nomination for his scoring of the film version of the Broadway smash in which Ray Walson and Gwen Verdon repeated their Tony Award-winning portrayals of the devil and his favorite seductress. Tab Hunter got to play the baseball player whose soul is at risk, replacing Broadway’s Stephen Douglass in the role. The film’s score includes “Goodbye Old Girl”, “(You’ve Gotta Have) Heart“, “Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets”, “A Little Brians, A Little Talent”, “Who’s Got the Pain”, and “Those Were the Good Old Days”. Heindorf also scored Best Picture Oscar nominee Auntie Mame this year.

THE MUSIC MAN (1962), directed by Morton DaCosta

Nominated for six Oscars and winner of one for Heindorf’s scoring, its nominations included one for Best Picture but not one for Robert Preston in his most famous role as a con man opposite recent Oscar winner Shirley Jones (Elmer Gantry) as the smalltown librarian he falls in love with. The score includes such songs as “Seventy-six Trombones”, “Goodnight, My Someone”, “Marian the Librarian”, “Till There Was You”, “Gary, Indiana”, “The Wells Fargo Wagon” (sung by a young Ron Howard), and “The Sadder but Wiser Girl for Me”. The supporting cast includes Buddy Hackett, Paul Ford, Hermione Gingold, and Pert Kelton.

FINIAN’S RAINBOW (1968), directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Heindorf’s final Oscar nomination for scoring was, along with sound, one of just two for the film version of the 1947 Broadway musical which finally made it the screen with Fred Astaire, who had retired from musicals some years earlier, singing and dancing once more in the title role, although the main roles in the film as in the stage version are his daughter played Petula Clark, her beau played by Don Francks, and a leprechaun who has followed them from Ireland to Iowa played by Tommy Steele. The score includes “How Are Things in Glocca Moora?”, “Look to the Rainbow”, “Old Devil Moon” and “When I’m Near the Girl I Love (I Love the Girl I’m Near)”.

RAY HEINDORF AND OSCAR

Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) – Oscar – Best Scoring of a Musical

This Is the Army (1943) – Oscar – Best Scoring of a Musical

Hollywood Canteen (1944) – Nominated – Best Scoring of a Musical

Up in Arms (1944) – Nominated – Best Scoring of a Musical

Rhapsody in Blue (1945) – Nominated – Best Scoring of a Musical

Wonder Man (1945) – Nominated – Best Scoring of a Musical

San Antonio (1945) – Nominated – Best Song – “Some Sunday Morning”

Night and Day (1946) – Nominated – Best Scoring of a Musical

My Wild Irish Rose (1947) – Nominated – Best Scoring of a Musical

Romance on the High Seas (1948) – Nominated – Best Scoring of a Musical

Look for the Silver Lining (1949) – Nominated – Best Scoring of a Musical