In the productions leading up to Gone with the Wind, Selznick tried working with different composers to cultivate a sustainable partnership. These efforts included trial productions with Alfred Newman (The Prisoner of Zenda) and Oscar Levant (Nothing Sacred), and ultimately led to Selznick’s hiring Lou Forbes as a permanent music director in 1937. Forbes’s responsibilities included securing permissions to use preexistent music, assembling preview scores (known now as “temp tracks”), supervising final scores, serving as a liaison between Selznick and the composer, monitoring recording sessions, and watching the budget. This chapter surveys the films leading up to Forbes’s tenure and his initial productions, which involved coordinating the collective efforts of multiple composers, including Hugo Friedhofer, Max Steiner, Robert Russell Bennett, and Franz Waxman. Forbes’s thoughtful contributions to films like Intermezzo illuminate the otherwise neglected role of the Hollywood music director.
