1894-c. 1921 (Kremenchuk and St. Petersburg, Russia)
Dimitri
Zinovich Tiomkin was born in Kremenchuk
on May 10, 1894. His mother, Marie (née Tartakovsky), was a music teacher and his father, Zinovie, a physician.
A student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, he excelled as a solo
pianist under the tutelage of Felix Blumenfeld and Isabelle Vengerova, and also
studied with composer Alexander Glazunov, the conservatory's director.
In his spare time, Tiomkin frequented the "Homeless
Dog" café, fraternizing with other avant-garde bohemian artists,
including fellow student Serge Prokofiev and dancer Mikhail Fokine.
Tiomkin's professional debut in film music came in St. Petersburg's cinemas, where he accompanied Russian and French silent films. He also provided piano accompaniment for the ballerina Thamar Karsavina on army post tours and improvised on the piano during performances by the comedian Max Linder. These experiences and the skills he gained helped lay the foundation of his American film music career. Even Tiomkin's interest in American popular music began in Russia, where he first heard Irving Berlin's Alexander's Ragtime Band at the "Homeless Dog," and where he was exposed to ragtime, blues, and early jazz through one of his piano students, a black minstrel-show singer from New Orleans who had remained in Russia after a vaudeville tour.
In St. Petersburg, Tiomkin's early life was marked by such political events as the overthrow of the Tsar, the Russian Revolution, and the rise of Soviet Russia. His whereabouts from 1919 to 1921 are unclear. He apparently was involved in the music direction of the 1920 reenactment of "The Storming of the Winter Palace." This massive pageant featured thousands of performers, including 500 musicians and 125 ballet dancers.
Sensing a bleak future in music, Tiomkin decided to leave Russia and boarded a freighter bound for Germany, where his father had taken up residence in Berlin with his stepmother. (Fortunately, Tiomkin spoke both German and French.)
c. 1921-1923 (Berlin, Germany); 1924-1925 (Paris, France)
In Berlin, Tiomkin studied with pianist Ferruccio
Busoni and his disciples (Egon Petri and Michael Zadora), worked
as a concert pianist, and wrote light popular and classical music,
including etudes, fox-trots, marches, and waltzes. His appearance
with the Berlin Philharmonic for Liszt's second piano concerto helped
further his reputation as a pianist. At the urging of roommate and
fellow pianist Michael
Kariton, both Tiomkin and Kariton left for Paris to perform
programs featuring two pianos, which were fashionable at the time.
Russian singer Feodor Chaliapin regaled Tiomkin with stories of
America, including the well-paying vaudeville circuit and the demand
for European touring musicians. That eventually led to an offer
from Broadway theater magnate Morris Gest, another Russian immigrant,
for the piano duo to join a vaudeville tour in the United States.
1925-1929 (New York, New York)
Tiomkin arrived in New York in 1925. He and Kariton
played the Keith/Albee
and Orpheum circuits accompanying a ballet troupe headed by
Albertina Rasch, an Austrian-born ballerina and choreographer. Over
time the professional relationship became a personal one as well,
and Tiomkin married "Albertinotchka" in 1927.
In early 1927 Tiomkin had parted ways with Kariton to embark on a coast-to-coast tour with "Albertina Rasch and her American Ballet." He served as music director and arranger for the company of 30 dancers. The movement inherent in ballet would later influence Tiomkin's film-scoring sensibilities, as he came to think of the movement of people within the film frame as dancers on a stage. Later that year he performed a Carnegie Hall recital that introduced contemporary works by Alexander Scriabin, Francis Poulenc, Alexandre Tansman, and Maurice Ravel to American audiences, as well as his own composition, Quasi-Jazz. While Tiomkin continued to perform in concert as a solo pianist, Albertina produced dance acts and staged lavish musical productions. At one of these, George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue was on the program, featuring Tiomkin at the piano.
The newlyweds traveled to Paris in 1928, where Tiomkin performed at the Paris Opera. The program included the Rhapsody and the European premiere of Gershwin's Concerto in F. Gershwin himself was in attendance. Returning to the United States, Tiomkin launched a national concert tour, playing French impressionistic music with a few jazz numbers mixed in. It was to be his last tour, as the Wall Street stock market crash of 1929 curtailed work for both Tiomkin and Rasch. An invitation to perform at a Hollywood film premiere inspired the couple to move to California and seek work in the burgeoning field of musical sound films.
1929-1967 (Hollywood, California)
The "Broadway Nights" prologue at the world premiere
of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Broadway Melody at Grauman's Chinese
Theatre in February 1929 showcased the Albertina Rasch Dancers,
"brought from New York and Europe to Los Angeles for the first time
by Sid Grauman exclusively for this presentation." The program also
featured the "Romantic Ballet" with music by Tiomkin and choreography
by Rasch, performed by her dance troupe. By the end of the year,
Rasch had choreographed production numbers for three MGM musicals.
(Tiomkin had continued to supply the Albertina Rasch Dancers with
music. As he put it, "If you can't make a sale to your wife, all
is hopeless.") Rasch mentioned Dimitri's Mars Ballet to MGM
executives, who commissioned him to score two Rasch-choreographed
numbers. In the fall of 1929, the studio signed Tiomkin. Over the
next two years, he composed music for Rasch's ballet sequences in
Devil-May-Care, The Rogue Song, and Lord Byron
of Broadway.
Tiomkin was hired by Universal in 1931 to score
the Russian-themed Resurrection, his first effort at a nonmusical
film. In the fall of 1932, Tiomkin was back in New York, producing
the short-lived Broadway run of the Montague Glass play Keeping
Expenses Down. Tiomkin was dabbling in several Broadway ventures
and wrote the music for an unproduced play and musical. The following
year he returned to California, and it was Paramount's Alice
in Wonderland that offered Tiomkin his first chance at composing
and arranging the underscore and songs for a major motion picture.
Film music assignments continued sporadically until he met director
Frank Capra at a party and a personal friendship blossomed. The
two first worked together on Lost Horizon (1937). That score
helped make Tiomkin's reputation as a creator of music on a grand
scale for large symphonic and choral forces - a fortunate development
given his interest in rich orchestrations. (His lifelong fascination
with musical color led him to use unusual combinations of instruments
and to write around the dialogue, so that the instrumentation interacted
with the range and timbre of the actor's voice.) Tiomkin's music
for Lost Horizon was nominated for an Academy Award, although
the nomination itself went to the head of the music department.
The Capra-Tiomkin partnership continued with You
Can't Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
(1939), Meet John Doe (1941), and It's a Wonderful Life
(1947). During World War II Capra recruited Tiomkin to score the
"Why We Fight" series of training and indoctrination films produced
by the Army Signal Corps. Music for a dozen documentaries, including
The Negro Soldier (1944) and The Battle of San Pietro
(1945), was the result.
Friendships formed while scoring the Army films
brought more work Tiomkin's way. For producer Stanley Kramer he
scored So This Is New York (1948), Champion (1949),
Home of the Brave (1949), Cyrano de Bergerac (1950),
and The Men (1950). However, it was the film High Noon
(1952), produced by Kramer and directed by Fred Zinnemann, that
changed the course of Tiomkin's career. The unorthodox score, incorporating
a song with lyrics, "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin'," fueled a
theme-song craze. Songs written for films - as opposed to preexisting
songs used in films - grew in popularity. Over the next dozen years,
Tiomkin himself wrote a title song or ballad for nearly every picture
he scored, often collaborating with Ned Washington or Paul Francis
Webster. A number of Oscar-nominated songs followed: "Thee I Love"
from Friendly Persuasion, the title song from Wild Is
the Wind, "Strange Are the Ways of Love" from The Young Land,
"The Green Leaves of Summer" from The Alamo, the title song
from Town Without Pity, and "So Little Time" from 55 Days
at Peking. His songwriting talent, combined with his scoring
expertise, led to song compositions that graced their films with
a dramatic narrative.
A gift for melody is part of Tiomkin's enduring legacy. As an artist, he followed his instincts, which perhaps contributed to his success. Production manager Henry Henigson said, "He yesses everybody but does what he believes." Tiomkin's musical talent, endearing personality, and broken English (he reflected on his inability to master the language without an accent in his 1959 autobiography, Please Don't Hate Me) may have enabled him to get away with this in Hollywood. Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Waxman, and other European émigré composers also made their mark in Hollywood; however, Tiomkin is the only Russian composer to do so.
His long-term relationships with Capra, Kramer,
and other filmmakers are a testament to Tiomkin's interpersonal
and business skills. For Alfred Hitchcock he scored Shadow
of a Doubt (1942), Strangers on a Train (1951), I
Confess (1953), and Dial M for Murder (1954). The fruits
of his 20-year collaboration with Howard Hawks include Only Angels
Have Wings (1939), Red River (1948), The Thing
(1951), The Big Sky (1952), Land of the Pharaohs (1955),
and Rio Bravo (1959).
Even though he scored Westerns such as Duel
in the Sun in the 1940s, he is most closely associated with
the genre because of his work on High Noon; the John Wayne
films Red River, Rio Bravo, and The Alamo; Giant
(1956); and the theme for the television series Rawhide.
Two of his most impressive Western scores, The Westerner
(1939) and Friendly Persuasion (1956), directed by William
Wyler, are lesser known but equally notable.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, Tiomkin was at the
height of his popularity, having received four Academy Awards in
the six-year period from 1952 to 1958. His fame as a film composer
was nearly unprecedented. He claimed two Oscar statuettes (for score
and song) for High Noon and earned two more best score Oscars
for The High and the Mighty and The Old Man and the Sea.
The lush, lyrical musical strains of the latter was inspired by
his fishing trips with his old friend Frank Capra. Tiomkin's large-scale
scores continued with The Guns of Navarone (1961) and in
his collaborations with producer Samuel Bronston for 55 Days
at Peking (1963), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964),
and Circus World (1964).
Tiomkin's independent personality was reflected in his music and business life. Unlike his contemporaries, he was never under a long-term studio contract, making him the most prominent independent composer during the studio system's heyday from the 1930s through the 1950s. In a magazine article he said, "If I have some success it is all on account of independent film." His free-agent status allowed him to negotiate contractual terms to his benefit, which in turn benefited other composers. He aggressively sought music publishing rights and formed his own ASCAP music publishing company, Volta Music Corporation (although he remained faithful to the France-based performing rights organization SACEM). He once told publicist Dave Epstein, "My fight...is just for certain amount of dignity. Not only for composer, but for all artists responsible for picture." To this end he fought for the placement of black musicians in orchestras. (He worked closely with many black musicians, notably Jester Hairston).
In light of all the wonderful scores and songs
written over a 40-year career, it may come as a surprise that Tiomkin's
fame was cemented by a single incident, thanks to the then-budding
medium of television. When Tiomkin accepted his Academy Award for
best score for The High and the Mighty in March 1955, he
wanted to mention his appreciation for the composers of classical
music. (Tiomkin recently had been acquitted in a plagiarism suit
due in part to the expert testimony of musicologist Sigmund Spaeth,
who had demonstrated that, taken to the extreme, nearly any musical
theme can be broken down into short motifs that have antecedents
in classical music.) In his fractured English he offered his "appreciation
to very factor which makes me successful and adds to quality of
this town..." When he started naming long-dead composers Brahms, Strauss,
Wagner, and Beethoven, the audience burst into laughter. In his
attempt to honor the musical past, they mistakenly believed Tiomkin
was acknowledging that film music borrowed freely from classical
music.
1968-1979 (London, England, and Paris, France)
Tiomkin's wonderful life in America came to an
end in 1967 with the death of his wife, Albertina Rasch. Upon returning
to his Windsor Square-Hancock Park home in Los Angeles after the
funeral, he was attacked and beaten by robbers. Tiomkin put the
house up for sale and returned to Europe. He executive-produced
and arranged the music for Tchaikovsky, which was nominated
for an Academy Award in the foreign language film category. Filmed
in Russia, this pre-glasnost American-Russian coproduction allowed
him to return to his homeland.
In 1972 Tiomkin wed Olivia Cynthia Patch in London. They maintained residences in London and Paris, where Tiomkin enjoyed playing classical music at the piano. Dimi, as he was known to friends, died in London on November 11, 1979. Tiomkin did not live to witness the proliferation of interest in film music recordings and concerts. Thanks to the preservation and restoration efforts of several institutions and individuals, overlooked themes and music from his lesser-known films have been made available, including original soundtracks for The Big Sky and 36 Hours, rerecordings of music fromTension at Table Rock and Tarzan and the Mermaids, and concert performances of suites from The Well, War Wagon, and The Westerner.
On celluloid and CD, Tiomkin's legacy and spirit live on through his music.
Dimitri
Zinovich Tiomkin
Tiomkin's first name can be transliterated
from Russian as Dmitri or Dmitrii, his surname as Tiomkine or Temkin.
His Russian patronymic name was Zinovich, meaning "son of Zinovie
[or Zinoviia]" (again, depending on the transliteration).
Kremenchuk
Located in the Poltava region of the Ukraine
approximately 200 km southeast of Kiev.
May
10, 1894
Many sources give Tiomkin's birth year as
1899, the year indicated on his passport. When Tiomkin left Russia
for Germany, his father, who had remarried and was living in Germany,
helped arrange for his travel papers. His father may have shaved
five years off Dimitri's age in an attempt to conceal his own age
from his second wife.
Felix
Blumenfeld
Felix Mikhailovich Blumenfeld (1863-1931)
was a pianist, composer, and conductor. He studied composition with
Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) at the St. Petersburg Conservatory.
Many sources incorrectly spell it Blumenthal.
Isabelle
Vengerova
Isabelle Vengerova (1877-1956) taught at
the St. Petersburg Conservatory from 1906 to 1920. She was musicologist
Nicolas Slonimsky's maternal aunt.
The
"Homeless Dog"
Alternately translated as the "Stray Dog,"
this gathering place for artists was located in a cellar in central
St. Petersburg from 1912 to 1915. It reopened for business in 2001.
See "Russia's Treasure-House," on prerevolutionary St. Petersburg
landmarks, in Smithsonian (May 2003), p. 78.
Michael
Kariton
Also known as Michel or Michail Khariton,
and as Raskov in Tiomkin's autobiography.
Keith/Albee
and Orpheum circuits
In Boston in the mid-1880s, Benjamin Keith
and Edward Albee introduced variety shows that eventually became
the Keith/Albee vaudeville circuit. In 1927 the Keith/Albee circuit
merged with its West Coast rival, the Orpheum circuit, to form the
Keith-Albee-Orpheum Circuit.
Please
Don't Hate Me
Dimitri Tiomkin and Prosper Buranelli.
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1959. See also Christopher
Palmer's Dimitri Tiomkin: A Portrait, London: T. E. Books,
1984.
