George Bassman

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George Bassman
Birth nameGeorge Bassman
Born(1914-02-07)February 7, 1914
OriginNew York City, New York, U.S.
DiedJune 26, 1997(1997-06-26) (aged 83)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation(s)Composer, arranger

George Bassman (February 7, 1914 – June 26, 1997) was an American composer and arranger.

Biography

Born in

Boston Conservatory
while still a boy.

He studied orchestration and composition formally[citation needed], but in his teens he left home against his father's wishes to play piano in an itinerant jazz group, and subsequently worked as an arranger for Fletcher Henderson in New York.

Through that gig, he became part of the burgeoning swing/big band scene and was soon writing songs as well. Bassman peaked in that career when he and Ned Washington wrote "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You" for the bandleader Tommy Dorsey. Bassman also worked in radio as an arranger for Andre Kostelanetz, and made the move to Hollywood in the mid-1930s.

Among his earliest film jobs was orchestrating the

The Wizard of Oz (for which he orchestrated the background music used in the tornado scene, poppy-field scene and many of the Emerald City sequences), Babes in Arms, and For Me and My Gal. During his work at MGM, he returned to RKO to supervise the adaptation of the Richard Rodgers/Lorenz Hart musical Too Many Girls to the big screen. He also worked on dramas, including Vincente Minnelli's The Clock and Tay Garnett's The Postman Always Rings Twice
.

Bassman's career was interrupted in the midst of the

Communist
party (it was virtually a family legacy, his mother apparently having been a dedicated Communist in the 1910s, when it had a very different meaning than it did in the 1950s).

Bassman left

Guys and Dolls (with Ted Royal), and also composed music for various shows and revues. Although Hollywood was closed to him, Bassman was able to work in television in its early days, as a composer for various live shows and also as a conductor; he eventually composed the music for the live television anthology series Producers' Showcase as well. He also quietly kept his hand in movies, where independent producers were willing to hire him. Among his best scores during this period was his music for The Joe Louis Story (1955); he also got hired to write some music for the Hollywood movie Marty (1955), and Columbia hired him in 1958 to score Middle of the Night
.

Bassman had seemingly beaten the blacklist, and without too much inconvenience, but then his professional luck ran out, oddly enough upon his return to MGM for the first time in more than a decade. He clashed with the makers (including director Sam Peckinpah) of what could have been a triumphant comeback, on Ride the High Country (1962). He closed out his film career with Mail Order Bride (1964), and saw several of his scores (including one for Bonnie and Clyde) rejected.

In 1961 he arranged all the music for Mitzi Gaynor's very first nightclub act which debuted at The Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas.

Late in his career, he re-orchestrated the 1922 one-act jazz opera by George Gershwin and Buddy DeSylva, Blue Monday. This version has been recorded.[according to whom?]

In the late 1960s, he acquired ownership of and operated the Savoy Club, a contract bridge club located on Sunset Strip catering to Hollywood personalities and local bridge professionals.[1]

Death

Bassman's died in Los Angeles surrounded by his loved ones in 1997.

External links

References

  1. ^ Paul Groman, ed. (1968). "The Club Where Hollywood Plays Bridge". Popular Bridge. 2 (2). Encino, CA: Behn-Miller Publishers: 54–60.