Women’s History Month: An Architect Looks at Film Composers

The 92nd Academy Awards (on February 9, 2020) will probably be remembered mostly for awarding its most prestigious award, for Best Motion Picture, to the South Korean film Parasite, the first time a non-English-language movie has won the top award. But the event saw another landmark selection when Hildur Guenadóttir won the Oscar for her music for Joker, making her the first woman composer to win in the Best Original Score category. Her competition—all men, of course—was formidable: John Williams, with 52 Academy Award nominations; Randy Newman, with 22 nominations; Thomas Newman, with 15; and Alexandre Desplat, with 11. While Guenadóttir isn’t the first woman composer to win an Oscar, she is the first to win for an original dramatic score. (Her predecessors, Rachel Portman and Anne Dudley, won for Best Original Musical or Comedy Score.)

Most of the so-called technical award categories have historically been dominated by men, although there are exceptions: For Costume Design, for example, women have been well represented; in just the past 20 years, 79 women have been nominated, with 17 winning Oscars [1]. More surprising is the category for Best Film Editing. Since 1934, a total of 556 editors have been nominated; 69 of those have been women, 13 of whom went home with Oscars [2].

At the other extreme is Best Cinematography, which has been awarded since the first ceremony in 1928 (and twice each year from 1936 through 1966, for black-and-white and color films). A total of 662 men have been nominated and just one woman: Rachel Morrison for Mudbound (2017).

The statistics for women being nominated for best score are nearly as bleak: Since 1934, there have been 1,000 nominations [3] for best original music score [4], and only 11 have been women. However, in the past 30 years, some of the best film composers have been women, and with March being Women’s History Month, I think it’s appropriate to recognize their achievements.

Let’s start with Hildur Guenadóttir (b. 1982), who may also be—I didn’t check, but really, do I need to?—the first Icelandic-born composer to win an Oscar [5]. Like many of today’s film composers, she received classical training (as a cellist) but played in rock bands. Her first film score was for the 2011 movie The Bleeding House, but she caught the attention of the film music world with her music for the mini-series Chernobyl (2019), which won an Emmy and a Grammy Award. For Joker, she not only won an Oscar [6] but also a Golden Globe and a BAFTA award [7].  

Of all today’s women composers, Rachel Portman (b. 1960) has the strongest résumé. She has composed music for 64 theatrical moves, 18 made-for-TV movies or mini-series, and 37 television episodes. She began in the early 1980s composing music for British television, as well as some early Mike Leigh and John Madden films, and has been working consistently on Hollywood movies since the mid-1990s. She was the first woman composer to win a music Oscar (for Best Music, Original Musical or Comedy Score) for Emma (1996), and was nominated twice for Best Original Score, for The Cider House Rules (1999) and Chocolat (2000). Among her other excellent scores are Nicholas Nickleby (2002), Oliver Twist (2005), Never Let Me Go (2010), The Vow (2012), Belle (2013), and Race (2016). She was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2010, which in the UK is a really big deal.

Anne Dudley (b. 1956) began her career in the 1980s as a founding member and keyboard player/strings arranger of the British band Art of Noise. In the late 1980s she started scoring for films, including Say Anything . . . (1989) and The Crying Game (1992). Her Oscar—and so far her only Academy Award nomination—was for Best Original Musical or Comedy Score for The Full Monty (1997). Some of her better scores are the British TV series Poldark (2015), the mini-series The 10th Kingdom (2000), and the movies Pushing Tin (1999) and Tristan + Isolde (2006).

Ann Ronell (1905?1993) is most famous for co-writing the song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” for the Disney short “Three Little Pigs” (1933), but she was also the first woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for a film score—for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture for G.I. Joe (1945). She composed music for just three other movies, but she still stands out as a pioneer.

Another one-time nominee is Mica Levi (b. 1987), the youngest of the composers we’re looking at here. Under the stage name Micachu, she’s performed with the band Good Sad Happy Bad since 2008. Her Best Original Score nomination was for Jackie (2017). She has composed music for just five theatrical moves and one made-for-TV movie.

I first became aware of Debbie Wiseman (b. 1963) for her delightful music for the British TV series Father Brown. Her work has been mostly for British television, including Wolf Hall (2015) and Dickensian (2015), but she’s composed excellent scores for the films Wilde (1997), Adventures of Arsene Lupin (2004), and Flood (2007). She was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2018. She has composed music for 23 theatrical moves, 65 made-for-TV movies or mini-series, and nearly 400 television episodes.

Pinar Toprak (b. 1980) is a Turkish-American composer who has won three International Film Music Critics Awards (for The Lightkeepers (2009), The Wind Gods (2013), and The Tides of Fate (2018)). Her work until recently has been on independent movies many of us haven’t heard of, but she has also composed music for Captain Marvel (2019) and for 20 episodes of the TV series Krypton.

Shirley Walker (1945?2006) was a piano soloist with the San Francisco Symphony while she was still in high school. She began her career composing music for TV series such as Lou Grant (1980), Cagney & Lacey (1986), and Falcon Crest (1984?1989) before specializing in animated superhero TV series, including Viper (1994), Batman: The Animated Series (1992-1995), Todd McFarlane’s Spawn (1997-1998), The New Batman Adventures (1997-1999), Superman: The Animated Series (1997-2000), and Batman Beyond (1999-2001). Her scores for the John Carpenter movies Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992) and Escape from L.A. (1996) were unusual, since Carpenter typically composes his own music for his movies.

Two women composers were pioneers not only for being women but also for being transgender women. Angela Morley (1924-2009) is a two-time Academy Award nominee. She transitioned in 1972 after an undistinguished 20-year career of composing for movies and television as Wally Scott. Her first film score as a woman was The Little Prince (1974), for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Music, Scoring Original Song Score and/or Adaptation. Three years later she was nominated for the same category for The Slipper and the Rose: The Story of Cinderella (1977). With the exception of a few theatrical movies, such as Watership Down (1978), her work was primarily writing for American primetime soap operas, such as Hotel (1984?1986), The Colbys (1985?1987), Dynasty (1984?1987), Falcon Crest (1988?1989), and Dallas (1985?1990). She was nominated for 11 Primetime Emmy Awards and won three.

Wendy Carlos (b. 1939) first gained fame, as Walter Carlos, for the recording Switched-On Bach (1968), on which she played Bach favorites on the then-new Moog synthesizer. The record was a hit (and won three Grammy Awards) and led to her composing music for A Clockwork Orange (1971). Her first film score after transitioning to Wendy Carlos was for The Shining (1980) [8], followed by Tron (1982) and Woundings (1998), her last film score to date.

(Two other women were nominated for a best music Academy Award, but in both cases wrote the song lyrics and shared the nomination with their male composing partners. Marilyn Bergman (b. 1929) with composer Michel Legrand (best known for his scores for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Summer of ’42) won the Oscar for Yentl (1984), and Lynn Ahrens shared her nomination for Anastacia (1997) with David Newman, who wrote the score, and Stephen Flaherty, who wrote the music for the songs. Ahrens was also nominated for Anastacia’s song “Journey to the Past”; She was beaten by Titanic’s “My Heart Will Go On,” but she should’ve won.)

Film composers, in general, are not famous people. John Williams and Ennio Morricone are exceptions, perhaps along with John Barry and Henry Mancini. However, other than among the relatively small number of film score aficionados [9], most people don’t recognize the names of most film composers. But women film composers are even more obscure, even among other film composers (as evidenced by their few Academy Award nominations).

Take Rachel Portman. She’s as good as any film composer working today (except for Williams and Morricone, who are on a level above anyone in their profession). So why isn’t she a regular Academy Award nominee? I can think of two reasons. First, she has worked mostly on small, independent films, so it’s been perhaps easy to overlook her. When she did work on a movie that should have been a hit (e.g., The Manchurian Candidate (2004)), it flopped. Second, while she’s worked with top-notch directors (e.g., Lasse Hallstrom, Roman Polanski, and Robert Redford), she has never become the go-to composer for one, as Williams did with Steven Spielberg, Morricone with Sergio Leone, and Henry Mancini with Blake Edwards. Similarly, she never became associated with a popular film series, unlike Williams with Star Wars and Harry Potter, Barry with James Bond, and Mancini with the Pink Panther.

That may explain why Portman isn’t as well known as Williams, Morricone, Barry, or Mancini, but why isn’t she as well known as, say, Alexandre Desplat? Both are excellent composers who routinely produce beautiful scores. Both began their careers in the 1980s (Portman in the UK, Desplat in France). In both cases, they started with small, independent films. They’ve both worked with Hallstrom and Polanski. True, Desplat became the regular composer for Wes Anderson, but his films still qualify as small and independent. Yet, starting around 2007, Desplat began to be selected for major movies, the kind that make a lot of money (e.g., The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2010, 2011)) and the kind that get nominated for Academy Awards (e.g., The Shape of Water (2017) and Little Women (2019)). As a result, Desplat has 11 nominations and two wins (and deserved them all), while Portman hasn’t been nominated since 2000, despite her continuing to write excellent scores.  

I’ll leave it at that, because I don’t know any of the details. Perhaps Portman has turned down the chance to write music for movies that ended up being huge hits. Perhaps it only appears that the most recognized woman film composer in history has gotten fewer opportunities than her equally qualified male colleagues.  

In a 2017 interview on British radio station Classic FM, Portman said, “I’ve never felt that being a woman has held me back or has made any difference at all. . . . There are many more people coming through, training as film composers, many more women. It’s going to change, which will be great.” After admitting how hard it is for young women to break into the movie music business, she adds, “If you know that [composing film music] is what you really want to do, . . . stick with it and stay with it.”

“Stick with it and stay with it” is good career advice for anyone. It’s sad that for women to succeed, they apparently have to stick and stay with it harder than men.

Follow the author on Twiter @bill_schmwil.

[Footnotes]:

[1] From 1949 through 1978, Edith Head received 35 nominations and won eight Oscars for Best Costume Design. She was also the inspiration for the character Edna Mode in The Incredibles movies.

[2] Thelma Schoonmaker is tied for most nominations (8) and most Oscars (3) for Best Film Editing.

[3] Give or take a couple; I may have miscounted.

[4] The best music award has been called many things. When the award was started in 1935, it was called “Best Scoring,” followed, over the years, by “Best Music Score of a Dramatic Picture” (1942), “Best Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture” (1943?1962), “Best Music Score—substantially original” (1963?1966), “Best Original Music Score” (1967?1968), “Best Original Score—for a motion picture (not a musical)” (1969?1970), “Best Original Score” (1971), “Best Original Dramatic Score” (1972?1975), and again “Best Original Score” (1976?1995). This was followed by four years of presenting two awards, for “Best Original Dramatic Score” and “Best Original Musical or Comedy Score” (1996?1999). Since 2000, the award has returned to “Best Original Score,” the longest period of title stability.

[5] Okay, I did check. While there have been American, Argentine, Austrian, British, Canadian, Chinese, Dutch, French, French-Lebanese, German, Hungarian, Indian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, and Swedish Oscar winners, Guenadóttir is in fact the first Icelandic one.

[6] Making her, like Cher, Martin Scorsese, and John Williams, just a Tony Award away from being an EGOT—winner of an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award.

[7] BAFTA is the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (the British equivalent to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences). Guenadóttir and Lady Gaga are the only women to win its Best Original Music award.

[8] Two things worth noting here. First, as was typical with Stanley Kubrick, most of what Carlos composed for A Clockwork Orange and The Shining was replaced by pre-existing classical music (the complete Carlos scores have been released on CDs as Clockwork Orange Complete Original Score and Rediscovering Lost Scores Volumes 1 and 2). Second, a woman composed the original music for Full Metal Jacket (1987): Kubrick’s daughter Vivian, credited as Abigail Mead. A lot of her haunting music is heard during the film’s most dramatic moments.

[9] Among which I count myself (although I’m not in any way a musician). I even know when this passion began: Late one night in college, around 1975, I returned to my dorm room after the usual long hours in Crown Hall. My roommate was asleep, but he had left the radio on, tuned, as always, to WXRT (FM 93.1), then Chicago’s most progressive and eclectic rock music station. When I entered the room, I heard strange but beautiful music. For 15 minutes I sat on the bed listening, fascinated by the sounds. When it was over, the DJ said it was music from The Day the Earth Stood Still by Bernard Herrmann. I was immediately hooked on film music and remain so today.