Dimitri Tiomkin - High Noon

Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin (May 10, 1894 – November 11, 1979) was a film score composer and conductor. He is considered to be one of the most productive and decorated composers in Hollywood. Tiomkin was born of Jewish parents in Kremenchuk, Russia, and educated at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in Russia, where he studied piano, harmony and counterpoint.

His first significant film score project was for Paramount's Alice in Wonderland in 1933. Although influenced by Eastern European music traditions, he was able to score typical American movies like Frank Capra's Lost Horizon (1937), It's a Wonderful Life (1946), and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). He also worked on Cyrano de Bergerac (1950), the first screen version in English of Edmond Rostand's classic French play. He won the Academy Award for best original score of the John Wayne film The High and the Mighty (1954).

Tiomkin scored four films for Alfred Hitchcock: Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Strangers on a Train (1951), I Confess (1953) and Dial M for Murder (1954). He was one of few composers, the other main two being Franz Waxman and Bernard Herrmann, who scored multiple films for Hitchcock.

Many of his scores were for Western movies, including High Noon (1952), Giant (1956), Friendly Persuasion (1956), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), Rio Bravo (1959), and The Alamo (1960). Tiomkin also composed the music for Land of the Pharaohs (1955), The Guns of Navarone (1961), Town Without Pity (1961), 55 Days at Peking (1963), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), and The War Wagon (1967).

He was the first composer to receive two Oscars (score and song Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin'” (“The Ballad of High Noon”)) for the same dramatic film, Fred Zinnemann's High Noon (1952). The film uses a song to introduce the film and the lyrics tell the whole story in under 2 minutes and 30 seconds.

He also composed the music to the song "Wild Is The Wind". It was originally recorded by Johnny Mathis for the 1957 film Wild Is the Wind. It is mostly well-known as a jazz singer Nina Simone's standard. Dimitri Tiomkin died in London, England, UK, in 1979.

High Noon is a 1952 American western film directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. The film tells in real time the story of a town marshal forced to face a gang of killers by himself. The screenplay was written by Carl Foreman.In 1989, High Noon was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", entering the registry during the latter's first year of existence. The film is #27 on the American Film Institute's 2007 list of great films. The American Film Institute ranked Tiomkin's score for High Noon #10 on their list of the greatest film scores.

" The above text is a mashup from Wikipedia."