Victor Baravalle

Victor Baravalle (1885–1939) was an Italian born composer and conductor. He conducted the orchestra for the Broadway premiere production of Show Boat in 1927, as well as for the original stage productions of nine other Jerome Kern shows, among them The Cat and the Fiddle, Music in the Air, and Roberta. He also conducted the orchestra for the sound prologue in the 1929 part-talkie film of "Show Boat", and for the entire 1936 film version of the show. Among the other stage musicals that he conducted was the first American production of White Horse Inn.

He was the musical director for three of the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers films, A Damsel in Distress in 1937, Carefree in 1938 (which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Musical Scoring, although it was Irving Berlin who wrote the actual songs in the film) and 1939's The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, which is the last film Astaire and Rogers made together at RKO.

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