Alex North - A Streetcar Named Desire

Alex North (December 4, 1910 – September 8, 1991) was an American composer who wrote the first jazz-based film score (A Streetcar Named Desire) and one of the first modernist scores written in Hollywood (Viva Zapata!).

Born Isadore Soifer in Pennsylvania, North was nominated for 14 Oscars but unsuccessful each time. North and Ennio Morricone are the only film composers to receive the Lifetime Achievement Academy Award. He won the 1968 Golden Globe award for his music to The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968).

His best-known film scores include The Rainmaker (1956), Spartacus (1960), The Misfits (1961),The Children's Hour (1961) Cleopatra (1963), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), The Devil's Brigade (1968), and Dragonslayer (1981).
Though North is best known for his work in Hollywood, he spent years in New York writing music for the stageIt was in New York that he met Elia Kazan (director of Salesman), who brought him to Hollywood in the '50s. North was one of several composers who brought the influence of contemporary concert music into film, in part marked by an increased use of dissonance and complex rhythms.

A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1951 American romantic drama film adaptation of the 1947 play of the same name by Tennessee Williams. It was directed by Elia Kazan, who had also directed the original stage production, and stars Marlon Brando, Vivien Leigh, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden; all but Leigh were chosen from the Broadway cast of the play, while Leigh had starred in the London West End production.

A Streetcar Named Desire marked as the first film ever to win three out of four acting categories at Academy Award, including Best Actress for Leigh, Best Supporting Actor for Malden, and Best Supporting Actress for Hunter. Only Brando's performance as Stanley Kowalski did not win the Oscar.

The music score, by Alex North, was a radical departure from the major trend in Hollywood at that time, which was action-based and overly manipulative. Instead of composing in the traditional leitmotif style, North wrote short sets of music that reflected the psychological dynamics of the characters. For his work on the film, North was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Music Score. The American Film Institute ranked North's score for A Streetcar Named Desire #19 on their list of the greatest film scores.

" The above text is a mashup from Wikipedia."