The Subject is Film Music

David Raksin
 conducting the music for LAURA

Composer, writer and host of his own KUSC program, The Subject is Film Music, in the 1970s


Recordings courtesy of the Raksin Estate

David Raksin, the Oscar-nominated composer of LAURA, THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL and dozens of other film and television scores, was writer and host of his own KUSC program in Los Angeles, The Subject is Film Music, in the 1970s. It included tribute shows to Korngold, Steiner, Newman… who were then gone, but had live hour interviews with those Raksin could round up including Rozsa, Fielding, Friedhofer, Kaper, Mancini, Bernstein etc. Raksin would introduce the show and the guest and then they would usually go over a chronology of the composer’s work, stopping occasionally to play a music cue illustrating the work in question. The music usually came from the limited LP soundtrack examples for each or, in some cases, Charles Gerhardt’s RCA series.