David Raksin - Laura

David Raksin (August 4, 1912 - August 9, 2004) was an American composer born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. With over 100 film scores and 300 television scores to his credit, he became known as the "Grandfather of Film Music." One of his earliest film assignments was as assistant to Charlie Chaplin in the composition of the score to Modern Times (1936).

He is perhaps best remembered for the haunting theme to the 1944 movie Laura, starring Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews , which became the 1945 song "Laura". Johnny Mercer put lyrics to this theme, and during Raksin's lifetime this was said to be the second most-recorded song in history following only Stardust by Hoagy Carmichael and Mitchell Parish. He also wrote the theme song for (and scored the pilot of) Ben Casey.

It has since become a jazz standard with over four hundred known recordings.The best known versions are by Ella Fitzgerald, Dick Haymes, Charlie Parker, J. J. Johnson, Woody Herman, Frank Sinatra and Julie London.

The film Laura was directed by Otto Preminger and in 1999, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The American Film Institute ranked the film #73 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills, the score #7 in AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores, and it was ranked the fourth best film in the mystery genre in AFI's 10 Top 10.

" The above text is a mashup from Wikipedia."