Conrad Salinger - Recognition

Recognition

Although many of the films that Salinger worked on were Oscar-nominated for the adaptation of the music featured in them, according to industry practices at the time, nominations usually went to the musical directors/conductors of the music (such as Adolph Deutsch or Andre Previn), and not to orchestrators. 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, who conducted the George Gershwin music heard in the film, and not to Salinger. Green won that year; Salinger never received an Oscar.

Despite this lack of popular recognition during his lifetime, Salinger was highly-regarded within the film music industry; working steadily and occasionally uncredited (e.g. The Big Country for Jerome Moross). He was content to collaborate with some of the more jazzier arrangers on the lot, most frequently Skip Martin and once memorably with Nelson Riddle for High Society (1956). Salinger orchestrated for film the music of all the major popular composers of the mid-20th century, including Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart and Cole Porter. His work on the 1948 biopic Words and Music, led Richard Rodgers to publicly applaud the way their songs were orchestrated and presented. Barbra Streisand insisted on reusing his original orchestrations when they could be found and colleagues, including Stanley Donen, Johnny Green and Andre Previn, have subsequently paid tribute to his musical abilities.

Salinger's contributions have gained wider public recognition since the 1970s with the release of the That's Entertainment! compilation films and many of the original soundtracks of his scores on compact discs. The British conductor John Wilson has also been repopularizing his work in a series of concerts featuring reconstructions of the original orchestrations of the MGM classics.