Art by Jon McCormack.
This episode was written and produced by Andrew Anderson.
The melodic fanfare that introduces every 20th Century Fox movie was first composed almost a hundred years ago. Since then, it's become one of the most enduring and recognizable pieces of music in modern history. It's survived company acquisitions, competition from television, and changing trends in Hollywood. But nothing lasts forever. Featuring interviews with Academy Award-nominated composer David Newman and film historian Aubrey Solomon.
MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE
Dance of Felt by Piano Mover
Hardboil by Banana Cream
Shade Ways by Duck Lake
Um Pepino by Orange Cat
The Tale of Tomfoolery Tom by Martin Landstrom
Hipcat Swagger by Ritchie Everett
Bip Bop Baby by The Best Ofs
Nap Time by Josef Falkensköld
Evangelish by Ondolut
Something New by Bytheway-May
U Don’t Love Me (Instrumental) by Kylie Odetta
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View Transcript ▶︎
You’re listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz.
[Music clip: first drum roll of the Fox fanfare]
After just one second, you can probably guess what this is.
[Music clip: second drop roll]
It has introduced thousands of films.
[Music clip: long drum roll]
And for millions of people, it means one thing: It’s movie time.
[Music clip: Fox fanfare - melodic part]
[Fanfare end + music in]
David: It's so exciting, because movies were such a part of our lives growing up.
That’s David Newman, a Hollywood composer and conductor. David has written scores for movies like Matilda, Ice Age, The Sandlot, Dr. Doolittle, Jingle All The Way, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, and tons more.
But David’s not the only composer in his family. Everyone in Hollywood knows the Newman name. His cousin is Randy Newman, the composer behind the music of the Toy Story movies, Cars, James and the Giant Peach, and so many more.
David’s brother Thomas composed the scores for Finding Nemo, The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption, Skyfall… and we haven’t even gotten to Emil Newman, Lionel Newman, or Maria Newman. All together, the Newman family has won 12 Oscars, and been nominated for another ninety three – more than twice as many as any other family.
David: My mom was the one that made us train. We all played violin from like age seven, and piano. And we had a lot of theory and counterpoint when we were 12 and 13… So it just didn't seem all that abnormal, our family.
That’s because their father was also a legendary film composer. His name was Alfred Newman.
[music out]
Alfred composed the scores to over two hundred classic movies, including The Hunchback of Notre Dame [SFX], The Mark of Zorro [SFX], and The Grapes of Wrath [SFX]. On top of that, Alfred was the one who actually wrote the 20th Century Fox Fanfare. To tell that story, we need to go back more than a hundred years, to the earliest days of Hollywood.
[SFX: projector / film rewinding]
[music in]
The first movie shot in Hollywood was The Count of Monte Cristo, in 1908. A decade later, more than 20 studios had opened in Los Angeles, or relocated there from the East Coast. One of these studios was Fox Film.
Aubrey: Fox Films was founded in 1915 in New York by a Hungarian immigrant, William Fox.
That’s Aubrey Solomon. Aubrey’s a film historian who has written several books on 20th Century Fox.
Aubrey: When production began moving to Los Angeles for the benefit of better weather, Fox bought an existing studio facility and quickly added outdoor stages to it. At that time, most of the stages were outdoor. They were called glass stages because the sunlight was used for lighting. They didn't have enough artificial lighting at the time.
[music out]
But sunshine wasn’t the only thing drawing these studios to LA. They also moved out there to get away from the companies that controlled film production.
Aubrey: At this time, all motion picture production was controlled by a monopoly called the Motion Picture Patents Company which owned all exclusive rights to cameras, films, and processing laboratories.
The MPPC was also called the Edison Trust, since Thomas Edison owned many of the patents for film technology. This combine of companies was super restrictive: for instance, they set the maximum length for a movie at two reels, which at the time was just twenty minutes total. They didn’t think audiences could enjoy anything longer than that. They also wouldn’t let actors be identified, since they knew that actors who became popular would end up costing more.
Eventually, a few filmmakers decided to fight back.
Aubrey: William Fox along with Carl Leammle, who's founder of Universal Pictures, sued the combine, and won the right for any producer to make his own films.
Once they were finally free from the vice grip of the MPPC, Fox Film started cranking out movies.
Aubrey: Fox quickly ramped up production to over 50 films a year, many of them very successful and many others now long forgotten.
[music in: Silent Film piano music]
In the silent film era, most movie theaters had a live pianist—or sometimes even a small orchestra—that would perform alongside the movie. Later, in 1926, movies got sound. The first movie with a prerecorded, synchronized soundtrack was called Don Juan.
[Music clip: Don Juan clip]
Suddenly, Hollywood was in desperate need of composers to write music for their movies. That worked out well for people like Alfred Newman, who had been playing music since childhood.
[SFX: student learning piano]
David: He was a child prodigy pianist, first generation from Ukraine. He was one of 10 kids with a father that wasn't making any money, and a very strong mother.
Alfred’s mother was determined to support her son’s interest in music.
David: And the mother saw in him this ability at the piano and got him trained almost miraculously, with no money and he started doing vaudeville playing for singers when he was 13, 14, 15 and sort of matriculated into Broadway in the early '20s.
In the 1920s, Alfred’s career took off.
David: So all through the roaring '20s Alfred Newman was one of the best known Broadway conductors.
Once movies with sound became all the rage, Hollywood started poaching talent from Broadway.
David: By 1930 it was clear that movies were going to be talking, they needed music directors. So they went to Broadway, and they hired Alfred Newman.
[music out]
When Alfred arrived in Hollywood, studios were still figuring out how to use music in films.
David: If you ever go back and watch any early '30s movies, you can see it's all over the place. Some films just have music all the way through. But it doesn't really comment on the story. It's just sort of like silent film music, it's not very nuanced.
Here’s a clip from an early 30s western called Fighting Caravans.
[SFX clip: Fighting Caravans Clip]
Notice how the music is just kind of… there, continuously, underneath the dialogue?
[SFX clip continues: Fighting Caravans Clip]
The whole movie is like that. But Newman and other Broadway composers took a more subtle approach. In just a few years, these composers revolutionised the way music was used in movies.
David: They created what they called “commentative music,” which is what we would think of as underscore for a film now. In other words, you would use themes, motives, you’d vary the themes.
This is common in opera, where every character might have their own theme that plays when they come on stage.
David: And they kind of commandeered that, and then made it into their own so that you got this golden age of film music.
Soon enough, Newman’s talent caught the attention of an up and coming writer and producer named Darryl Zanuck.
[music in]
Aubrey: Zanuck was a dynamo of creative energy, able to spin stories and scenarios at a record speed. He was considered a boy wonder of Hollywood.
He was also a bit of a character who was known for bringing a horse whip into meetings [SFX: whip crack].
Aubrey: He was a great polo player and a very active outdoors man, so he had that macho energy.
Darryl had recently started his own studio called 20th Century Pictures, and asked Alfred to help with the music for their biggest movies.
Aubrey: Newman was hired to write the music for the 20th Century movies.
Aubrey: Newman was obviously versatile. He was quick, and he understood where music was needed, where it was not. And obviously, this was important to Zanuck who spent most of his time working with scripts and editing.
[music out]
But there was another type of composition that Darryl needed help with. At the time, studios had also started making short pieces of music that would identify their company, called fanfares.
Aubrey: Nobody really invented the fanfares. They pretty much evolved from simple title cards that would list the production company or the producer's name.
David: It's like what people try to do when they're writing commercials. You have 5, 10 seconds to make a statement.
Aubrey: One of the first visually was Leo the Lion for Metro Goldwyn, which later became Metro Goldwyn Mayer in the mid '20s.
[SFX clip: Leo the lion roar]
Aubrey: Paramount's image was a mountain with 23 stars in a semi-circle over it, and that came in in the late 1920s. That was reputedly representing the 23 cents that founder, Adolf Zucker, came to America with in his pocket.
Paramount’s original fanfare isn’t the one we recognize today. [SFX] Here’s what it sounded like back then.
[Music clip: Paramount fanfare]
Aubrey: Universal Pictures had an airplane circling the globe. You heard the sounds of the engine.
[SFX clip: Universal Airplane]
And Fox Film also had its own fanfare.
[Music clip: Fox Films fanfare]
Darryl asked Alfred to write the fanfare for his new company, 20th Century Pictures. The piece he came up with will immediately sound familiar, but it doesn’t have the same ending we’re used to.
David: He starts with this big percussion thing.
[Music clip: 20th Century Fanfare original version drum roll]
David: Then there's just this phrase that you could imagine, Roman legions going to war.
[Music clip continues: 20th Century Fanfare original version]
David: There's something peculiarly New York tough American about that logo
David: It's heralding something, that I think is what makes it so exciting.
By the mid thirties, Fox Film was in financial trouble, and ended up merging with 20th Century Pictures. The newly-formed company was called “20th Century Fox.” After the merger, Alfred recorded a higher-quality version of the fanfare.
David: They spent hours figuring out where to put mics, what instruments should play, what works with this technology. The technology is so terrible and yet the orchestra sounds so good.
[Music clip: 20th Century Fox 1935 version]
David: You have to work at that to get players to do that. So that at every note that they play, they know where they're going with it. They're not just playing notes, they're playing phrases.
[music in: Hipcat Swagger (Epidemic)]
Aubrey: I think it became an iconic theme probably in the '30s and '40s when everybody was going to see newly released 20th Century Fox movies, and It was an audience grabber. I mean, it got you into the movie. It sort of announced that whatever was going to follow was going to be the greatest movie ever, which was really Darryl Zanuck's thesis. He always believed that whatever he was doing was the greatest. It may not have been, but going into a movie, he believed in it, and he threw all his energy into it, and the music reflects that.
This was the Golden Age of Hollywood. In the early 40s, 60% of Americans went to see a movie at least once a week. But over the next decade, that number went down fast. By the early 50s, it had dropped to less than 30%. [music cut out] The culprit was television.
[SFX: old school TV turn on + 50s music]
Of course, Hollywood wasn’t going to give up without a fight. In the 50s, studios started experimenting with all kinds of gimmicks and new technology to get people back in theater seats. At the same time, Alfred added a whole new ending to his fanfare, and created the version we recognize today. Eventually, one movie cemented this fanfare’s place in film history forever.
That’s coming up, after the break.
[music out]
MIDROLL
Jai: [singing] Oh….what was the drums?
[SFX: 1st drums]
The 20th Century Fox fanfare is one of the most recognizable pieces of music ever.
[SFX: 2nd drums]
If you ask almost anyone to sing it,
[SFX: 3rd drums]
you’ll probably hear something like this.
Group: [singing melody]
Joel: wait no it keeps going…
Group: [singing badly]
Colin: I think that’s how it goes.
[music in]
Alfred Newman wrote that piece in the early 30s. This fanfare was heard by millions of people as 20th Century Fox released hit movie after hit movie. But by the late fifties, the Golden Age of Hollywood was coming to an end. Most Americans had a TV in their home, and people were going out to the movies less and less.
In response, Hollywood came up with all kinds of gimmicks to get people’s attention. Some of these worked better than others. On the one hand, 3D movies were a minor success.
[SFX Clip]: The Maze is the first picture in three dimension that delves into the weird and terrifying world of the supernatural.
On the other hand, you had Smell-o-Vision, where scents were sprayed into the theatre along with the movie. That idea only made it into one movie, called Scent of Mystery. The film used thirty different smells, including shoe polish, peppermint, brandy, and pipe tobacco. Some people left the theater feeling sick, and after that the idea was dropped.
[music out]
One innovation that did stick was called CinemaScope.
Aubrey: CinemaScope was a process that was developed by 20th Century Fox to counteract the effect of television. It was a process of squeezing the image onto the frame, and then unsqueezing it in projection, so you've got an image that was 2.35 times as wide as it was high.
This new technology was game changing, and today, almost everything we watch is in widescreen. The head of 20th Century Fox, Darryl Zanuck, believed in CinemaScope so strongly that he even filmed a promo video for it.
[SFX clip: Darryl Zanuck: We refuse to settle for something secondary, or something somebody claims is almost as good as CinemaScope. We believe the theatre goers of the world, if they are to continue to patronise American motion pictures, are entitled to the best.]
To help promote CinemaScope, Darryl asked Alfred Newman to create a longer version of the studio’s fanfare. The first half would play over the famous 20th Century Fox logo, while the second half would play over the new CinemaScope logo. This was the first version in stereo, and it was recorded with a 60 piece orchestra. It started the same way, then added a whole new melodic section to the second half that ended in a big crescendo.
[Music clip: Fox Fanfare 1954 version]
Finally, the entire melody was complete—and was all thanks to widescreen.
[music in]
Alfred continued to win Oscars for his scores through the 1960s. But while he was still in demand as a composer, his fanfare was being used less and less.
David: By the time you get to the '60s the logo sort of fell out of favor and logos weren't used very much.
There was a new generation of directors—people like Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorcese and Stanley Kubrick—and these directors didn’t always want a big, loud drum roll at the start of their movies.
David: Think of the early '70s and The Godfather and Easy Rider and Bonnie and Clyde.
David: It all really changed.
In some movies, you still see the 20th Century Fox logo, but without any music.
Aubrey: Depending on the film, the logo visual was used without any soundtrack. It had definitely lost some of its cachet.
[music out]
But as luck would have it, one of these new directors ended up saving the 20th Century Fox theme. His name was George Lucas, and his movie was called Star Wars.
David: When John Williams did Star Wars, released 1977, he used the logo [Music clip: Fox Fanfare] as not just a fanfare, but as a call to the movie itself. So the fanfare is in the key of B flat. And then there's the silence where the thing rolls.
[SFX clip: Classic Movie Voice Over: A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away…]
David: and then, bang, [Music clip: Star Wars Theme] that chord comes in. It's the same chord as the first chord of the logo after the drum beat. So it's used as a heralding of this massive story. It's part of the score.
Thanks to Star Wars, the 20th Century Fox Fanfare was popular again. It may have seemed corny to the directors in the 70s, but it was a perfect fit for the blockbusters of the 80s. Movies like Predator and Die Hard used it proudly. And of course it played at the start of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.
[music in]
Unfortunately, Alfred Newman wasn’t around to see the re-birth of his fanfare. He passed away in 1970, shortly after completing the last score of his career, for the movie Airport. His impact on the world of movies was enormous. Not only did he write that fanfare, and score hundreds of films, he also helped launch the careers of some of the most famous film composers of all time.
David: If you talked to John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Mancini, Alex North, Bernard Herrmann, they all got their start from him. All he had to do was recommend them, that was it.
David: He was a legend. He was one of a kind.
[music out]
Alfred may have been gone, but his fanfare was still being heard in theaters around the world. The version he recorded in 1954 was used up until the 1980s, when it was updated by his brother.
Aubrey: Alfred Newman's brother Lionel re-recorded it in 1982, then Bruce Brownton in 1994 with a 90 piece orchestra.
In the late 90s, 20th Century Fox renamed its famous scoring stage in the Newmans’ honor. A scoring stage is a fancy, decked-out studio where most of the music for a movie gets recorded. To mark the occasion, David was brought in to record a new version of his father’s fanfare.
The moment was captured by a TV crew from E! News.
[SFX Clip: Alfred’s son, composer David Newman, was on hand to conduct the new recordings.
Alfred: Here we go, ready? Ready?]
[Music clip: modern Fox fanfare recording]
For David, the experience was an honour – but it was also intimidating.
David: I always find it frustrating whenever I try to do anything of Alfred Newman. I just can't get up to that level. So I'm not super pleased with that recording to be quite honest.
David doesn’t really enjoy conducting any of his dad’s music. The bar is just too high.
David: It's so excellent the way that it was recorded, and the way it sounded, and the way he trained the orchestra, it's just almost impossible to do it now.
[music in]
Sadly, between the rise of streaming, and big changes to the company, the 20th Century fanfare might be on its way out.
These days, most of us spend a lot more time watching TV than we do at the movie theater. Of course, streaming platforms like Netflix [SFX], HBO [SFX] and Disney Plus [SFX] all have their own audio logos. But these are much shorter than movie fanfares, which makes sense. I mean, does anyone really want to hear the entire 20th Century theme eight times during a binge watch of The Mandalorian?
David: I get it, for a TV show that,10 episodes, the same music. I mean, I get that.
In fact, you won’t hear the 20th Century Fox fanfare in any of the new Star Wars movies. In 2012, Disney bought Lucasfilm, the company behind Star Wars. When Star Wars: The Force Awakens came out a few years later, it was the first Star Wars movie that didn’t begin with the fanfare.
Aubrey: The new Star Wars films actually are not Fox pictures anyways. They're Disney films, so there's no reason to have the Fox logo on them.
Five years later, Disney bought 20th Century Fox, and renamed it “20th Century Studios.” In the handful of movies they’ve released under that name, they’ve kept the fanfare in place. But of course, Disney also owns Marvel, Pixar, and a bunch of other companies that have their own sonic branding. Between all of them, it’s hard to say how often we’ll hear the 20th Century theme in the future. These days, more and more movies are being released on streaming and in theaters at the same time. Given the option, how many people will choose the theater over their own living room?.
[music out]
It’s always hard to predict the future, but in David’s opinion, the writing is on the wall for movie theaters. To him, that feels like a huge loss.
[music in]
David: I feel terrible about it.
David: I think it'll get figured out, but I don't think it's going to be going to movies and movie theaters, which I just think is a shame. As I said, I grew up on it.
For a lot of us, going to the movies and hearing that iconic fanfare was such an important part of our lives. It meant you were about to laugh, or cry, or be amazed by what you saw on screen. It also meant you were about to share that experience with everyone around you.
David: I remember waiting in line for Star Wars for three hours. And when that logo came on I mean, I'll never forget that as long as I live.
Aubrey: It's got a lot of personal feelings that go with it, a lot of history, all the movies that I've seen with my friends and my family, and the now dear departed who sat with me through these movies. It's an emotional thing. I can't explain it.
[music out]
[music in]
Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound, a sound design team dedicated to making television, film and games sound incredible. To hear what happens over there follow Defacto Sound on Instagram.
This episode was written and produced by Andrew Anderson, and me Dallas Taylor, with help from Sam Schneble. It was story edited by Casey Emmerling. It was sound edited by Soren Begin. It was sound designed and mixed by Nick Spradlin.
Thanks to our guests, David Newman and Aubrey Soloman.
What other themes or jingles do you think that we should cover? You can tell us on Facebook, Twitter, on our subreddit, or by writing hi at 20K dot org.
Thanks for listening.
[music out]
