Mechanicville composer would have turned 100 today The name Ray Heindorf may be seldom spoken in Saratoga County today, but the three-time Oscar winner was better known for his musical arrangements and conducting for Warner Bros. studios than for hailing from one of the smallest cities in New York – Mechanicville. Heindorf, who died Feb. 3, 1980, would have celebrated his 100th birthday today. The Mechanicville High School graduate left the city in the 1920s for Hollywood, where he would eventually claim three gold statues. “He was one of the most important music directors in the history of Hollywood,” said Jon Burlingame, professor of film music history at the University of Southern California and regular contributor to the show-business trade paper “Variety.” As a teen, Heindorf played piano in the now-demolished State Theater in Mechanicville before traveling to New York City where he met musician Arthur Lange. The two would later travel to Los Angeles, where Lange would become the head of the music department at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Heindorf would also work for MGM until he found a home at Warner Bros., where he stayed for nearly four decades. “He was a utility man, meaning he could do anything,” Burlingame said. Heindorf’s greatest training, however, may have come from his time playing for the State Theater, which then stood on North Main Street in Mechanicville. According to Burlingame, performing during a silent movie helped Heindorf hone his dramatic sense. “You’re down there in the pit watching the movie unfold,” Burlingame said. “Even if the music is in front of you, it’s the emphasis on certain phrases, the way you translate those notes on paper into living, breathing music makes a huge impact on the audience.” After “The Jazz Singer” helped popularize sound cinema in 1927, Heindorf would switch to arranging music for “talkies.” According to Mechanicville Historian Paul Loatman’s article “How Soon They Forget: Mechanicville’s ‘Unsung’ Star,’ ” Heindorf’s manager left for Hollywood to capitalize on the new medium, and Heindorf followed soon after. After a short stint playing piano on the road with stage and screen star Lupe Velez, Heindorf secured work with MGM. “Ray’s big break may have come when (famous 1930s singer) Rudy Vallee praised him on nationwide radio as a ‘brilliant young musical genius,’ ” Loatman wrote. “Soon afterward, he became the top musical director for Warner Brothers Films. From that point on, the awards and recognition followed.” Heindorf’s credits include Errol Flynn pictures such as “The Sea Hawk” and “Gentleman Jim,” the Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney picture “The Roaring Twenties,” and the Kirk Douglas and Doris Day film “Young Man With a Horn.” Though Heindorf conducted or arranged music for genres as diverse as horror and comedy, he was perhaps best known for orchestrating music on Busby Berkeley musicals such as “The Gold Diggers of 1935” and the Michael Curtiz and James Cagney musical “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” “He was at Warners from late ’31 to ’32, right through to the early 1960s,” Burlingame said. “Almost every Warner Bros. musical in that period of time benefited from Ray’s talent either as an arranger or an orchestrator or a conductor, or simply as the administrator of the music department.” According to Burlingame, Heindorf worked on several films for which he did not receive credit – something not unusual during the height of the studio era in Hollywood. And, while Heindorf was also a talented composer with song titles such as “Some Sunny Day” and “Hollywood Canteen” to his credit, he was better known for arranging and conducting. “What that means is taking someone else’s music and fleshing it out with the right musical approach, the right rhythm, harmony and making it a full-fledged musical composition rather than a single line tune,” Burlingame said. “It’s kind of the detail work of music for films, but he could arrange, orchestrate, conduct and all of those things made him the total musician, the total creative package that made those musicals sound as great as they did.” Heindorf also battled with the bureaucracy of the studio system by suing Warner Bros. in 1954 for not allowing him to be credited on screen with the title of musical director. The Director’s Guild of America, however, argued that the word “director” could not appear on screen except for the director of the picture. Although Heindorf lost the legal battle, it was the struggle that counted. “He stood up for the music community by doing that,” Burlingame said. “It was nothing personal against Warner Bros., it was a statement he had to make. He was considered a hero.” While Heindorf may have fought a fight straight out of a Frank Capra picture, his 18 Oscar nominations spoke more for his talent than his on-screen billing. He took home the award for “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” in 1943, “This is the Army” in 1944 and “The Music Man” in 1962. Relative John Heindorf recalled in a telephone interview on Friday a story his grandfather Charles Heindorf, Ray Heindorf’s cousin, shared about the soon-to-be-famous musician. “My grandfather told me, and I don’t know how true this is, that he used to be out playing football, and (Ray) would be inside playing the piano, and (Charles) would say, ‘Why doesn’t that guy come out and play football with us? Well, we used to snicker, but we’re not snickering any more,'” John Heindorf said. While Heindorf’s legacy may seem lost except in music circles, Loatman’s article on Heindorf remains linked from Mechanicville’s Web site,
, for anyone wanting to survey a brief glimpse of his career. Much of the article was based on a booklet published in 1953 by the Mechanicville Chapter of the American Federation of Musicians to commemorate its 50th anniversary. Committee member Ida Mae Fisher prepared an article for the booklet called “The Story of Ray.” Heindorf himself returned to Mechanicville for the group’s celebration. “He kept in touch with people back home,” Loatman said. “The (Mechanicville) High School students who performed with him were quite taken by how gracious and down to earth he was. He did not forget where he came from.” Heindorf had a son, Michael, who also became an established film composer. Coincidentally, Michael Heindorf wrote music for the 1960 television show “The Roaring ’20s,” inspired by the film his father worked on 21 years earlier. According to Loatman, many remembered Heindorf as a man who was not only talented, but kind and generous. “The thing that impressed people was that the guy was about as down to earth as you could get,” Loatman said. Burlingame agreed that Heindorf had a combination rare for Hollywood. “I know people who did know him, and by all accounts, he was a great guy,” Burlingame said. “Not just talented, but nice as well.” Loatman said that Heindorf welcomed anyone who happened to be from Mechanicville into his home in California. “Don’t you love that?” Burlingame asked.
