Conrad Salinger

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Conrad Salinger (August 30, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American arranger, orchestrator and composer. He is credited with the orchestrations for nine productions on Broadway from 1931 to 1938, and over seventy-five motion pictures from 1931 to 1962.

Salinger was considered one of MGM's best orchestrators of musicals made between 1942 and 1962. He was noted for using a somewhat smaller orchestra than usual, but nevertheless achieving a rich, elaborately constructed sound in his arrangements. The fact that the orchestra that Salinger used was smaller in size than the normal huge studio orchestra was practically unnoticeable, except that the quality of the orchestral sound on films that Salinger worked on seemed greatly improved, with much less distortion than was common in the days before true high fidelity. However, in Hugh Fordin's The World of Entertainment: The Freed Unit at MGM, a 1975 book dealing with the MGM musicals, composer-conductor Adolph Deutsch, who worked with Salinger on more than one film, criticized his orchestrations for the Jerome Kern biopic Till the Clouds Roll By as being "too elaborate" for a composer like Kern (a criticism that Salinger reportedly did not take well) and recounted that he stated that he would only work with Salinger on the 1951 film version of Show Boat if he "simplified" his style of orchestration. (The two did work on the film, receiving a joint Academy Award nomination for it.)

Salinger orchestrated most of the musicals that MGM is famous for - among them, in addition to the 1951 Show Boat, were the 1943 version of Girl Crazy, Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Anchors Aweigh (1945), the 1949 film version of On the Town, the 1950 film version of Annie Get Your Gun, Singin' in the Rain (1952), the 1953 film version of Kiss Me, Kate, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), An American in Paris (1951), The Band Wagon (1953), and Gigi (1958).

Although many of the films that Salinger orchestrated were Oscar-nominated for the adaptation of the music featured in them, the nominations usually went to the composers of the music, not to Salinger. Only once was Salinger nominated, for his Show Boat orchestrations. Ironically, the film An American in Paris, which Salinger also orchestrated, was nominated for the same award that year, so the two films were competing against each other in the Oscar race. But in the case of An American, the nomination went only to Johnny Green, the composer of the music, and not to Salinger. Green won the Oscar that year. Salinger never won an Oscar.

Salinger died suddenly in 1961, under disputed circumstances. The Internet Movie Database states that he had a heart attack in his sleep, but it is claimed that Salinger committed suicide [1]. The last film that he worked on was Billy Rose's Jumbo, released in 1962. He also orchestrated the musical number "The Jitterbug", which was filmed, but cut, from the classic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz; however, he did not orchestrate the rest of the score.

Salinger also composed music for films and television. Among the film scores he wrote was the one for Lonelyhearts, and among the TV scores he worked on was the one for the series Wagon Train.