Who is the best film composer ever?
Alfred Newman If international movie blockbusters and Academy Awards count for anything, then the most successful film composer of all time is the late Alfred Newman, whose remarkable career spanned from music director on Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights in 1931, through to composing the score for Airport in 1970, as well as dozens and dozens of other famous films in between. Across those 40 years, Newman’s music earned him nine Academy Awards, as well as being nominated an extraordinary 45 times in total. Newman’s countless film scoring credits include Wuthering Heights [1939] and The Hunchback of Notre Dame [1939], through to How the West Was Won [1963] and The Greatest Story Ever Told [1965]. Coming a close second to Alfred Newman in the Oscar race is classic contemporary film scorer, John Williams. Of course, Williams’ extraordinary catalogue includes everything from Valley of the Dolls and Goodbye Mr. Chips in the 1960s, Star Wars, Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind in the 1
