Name:
Location: Seattle, Washington, United States

What you have here is an old guy. In education for 30 years, started teaching elementary, ended as library and media director of community college. I've enjoyed mountain climbing, sports car rallying, was pipe major of a bagpipe band, played guitar and sang during the folk revival, walking and hiking later in life. Now fairly sedentary. Enjoy reading, esp. mysteries and fantasy, but my reading is pretty eclectic. Enjoy movies, giving Netflix a workout.

Monday, August 16, 2004

Laura: Today’s newspaper brought the news of the death of composer, David Raksin. He was 92 years old. He composed music for Charlie Chaplin’s silent film, Modern Times. But I revere him for writing the memorable tune, Laura, for the motion picture of the same name. It’s one of my favorite songs and I have several different renditions in my record and CD collection. Not by happenstance, it is also one of my favorite movies. The 1944 movie starred Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney and Clifton Webb and was directed by Otto Preminger. I was driving in my car this early evening and the jazz program to which I was listening played the Stan Kenton version of the song. It’s a wonderful arrangement. It occurs to me that I should pull out my videotape of the movie and view it again, my silent salute to the movie and the wonderful theme song.

1 Comments:

Blogger Ivan G Shreve Jr said...

I will join you in lamenting the loss of David Raksin. Frank. He supplied the score for my all-time favorite film noir, Force of Evil (1948) with John Garfield. An extraordinary talent that will be missed.

6:16 AM  

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