Herbert Stothart was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He studied music in Europe and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he later taught. Stothart was first hired by producer Arthur Hammerstein to be a musical director for touring companies of Broadway shows, and was soon writing music for the producer’s nephew Oscar Hammerstein. He composed some of the music in the famous operetta, Rose Marie. Stothart soon joined with many famous playwrights including Vincent Youmans, George Gershwin and Franz Lehar. In 1929, Stothart was signed to a large Hollywood contract by another would-be playwright of the day, Louis B. Mayer. The last twenty years of his life were spent at MGM Studios, where he was under contract as a composer. One of the films that he worked on was the famous 1936 version of Rose Marie, starring Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. He died in Los Angeles, California at the age of 63. Herbert Stothart is credited as the composer of: *Devil-May-Care (1929)| *Rasputin and the Empress (1932)| *The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934)| *What Every Woman Knows (1934)| *Anna Karenina (1935)| *China Seas (1935)| *David Copperfield (1935 version)| *Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)| *Naughty Marietta (musical score only; the songs were by Victor Herbert, Rida Johnson Young, and Gus Kahn) (1935)| *A Night at the Opera (1935, which also used music by Giuseppe Verdi, Ruggero Leoncavallo, and Nacio Herb Brown, with some lyrics by Arthur Freed)| *A Tale of Two Cities| *After the Thin Man (1936)| *The Good Earth (1937)| *Idiot’s Delight (1939)| *The Wizard of Oz (Oscar: Best Original Score; songs by E.Y. Harburg and Harold Arlen)| *Northwest Passage (1940 film by King Vidor)| *Pride and Prejudice (1940 version)| *Blossoms in the Dust (1941)| *Mrs. Miniver (1942)| *Madame Curie (1943)| *National Velvet (1944)| *Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)| *Dragon Seed (1944)| *The White Cliffs of Dover (1944)| *The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)| *They Were Expendable (1945 World War II film by John Ford) (1945)| *The Green Years (1946)| *The Yearling (arrangement of Frederick Delius’s music) (1946)| *The Sea of Grass (1947) |
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