MOVIE MUSIC UK

Composer, arranger, musical director and producer Saul Chaplin died in Los Angeles on November 15, 1997, at the age of 85, from injuries sustained in a fall.

One of the great behind-the-scenes craftsmen of Hollywood’s golden-age musical, Chaplin worked on some 60 films and won three Academy Awards, for An American in Paris, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and West Side Story.

Chaplin was born Saul Kaplan in Brooklyn, New York, on February 19, 1912. He studied accounting at New York University but spent his spare time playing piano and writing songs. After graduation he teamed with lyricist Sammy Cahn, beginning a highly successful Tin Pan Alley partnership whose songs included “Please Be Kind,” “Until the Real Thing Comes Along” and the English-language version of “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen,” which became an enormous hit for the Andrews Sisters.

Chaplin entered Hollywood during the 1940s, working at Columbia before moving to MGM in 1949. His expertise lay less in conventional dramatic scoring than in adapting, arranging and reshaping existing songs for the screen. He provided vocal arrangements for Al Jolson in The Jolson Story (1946), worked on Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra’s On the Town (1949), and arranged Judy Garland’s celebrated performance of “Get Happy” in Summer Stock (1950).

His first Academy Award came for Vincente Minnelli’s An American in Paris (1951), for which he and Johnny Green adapted and supervised George Gershwin’s music, culminating in the film’s famous extended ballet. The picture won six Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Scoring of a Musical Picture.

Chaplin subsequently worked on Kiss Me Kate (1953), cleverly incorporating Cole Porter’s songs into MGM’s exuberant adaptation, before sharing his second Oscar with Adolph Deutsch for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954). He also served as musical director on Interrupted Melody and High Society (1956), the latter earning him another Academy Award nomination. For High Society he helped revive Porter’s “Well, Did You Evah?” as a memorable duet for Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra.

By the late 1950s Chaplin had moved increasingly into production. After Les Girls and Merry Andrew, he served as associate producer and music supervisor on Can-Can (1960) before joining Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins on West Side Story (1961). Chaplin helped translate Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s Broadway masterpiece to the screen and shared his third Academy Award with Johnny Green, Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal. The film won ten Oscars, including Best Picture.

His association with Wise continued on The Sound of Music (1965), where Chaplin served as associate producer, and Star! (1968), starring Julie Andrews as Gertrude Lawrence. Later projects included Man of La Mancha (1972) and That’s Entertainment, Part 2 (1976). He also worked on Academy Awards broadcasts and published his memoir, The Golden Age of Movie Musicals and Me, in 1994. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1985.

Chaplin is survived by his second wife Betty Levin, his daughter Judith Chaplin Prince, two grandchildren and a great-grandchild.