Limelight (1952)

American composer and orchestrator for films. Credits include CRAZY HOUSE (1943), HAT CHECK HONEY and CHIP OFF THE OLD BLOCK (both 1944, both uncredited as composer), CITY ACROSS THE RIVER (uncredited composer) and JOLSON SINGS AGAIN (both 1949) and LIMELIGHT (1952, uncredited music arranger). From an interview with Russell Garcia from the archives of Soundtrack: "I also worked on Charlie Chaplin's film, LIMELIGHT. That was a big rhubarb later. Charlie Chaplin wrote the themes, the melodies. He was a real talent. The pianist that went to rehearse with Charlie -- Charlie would sing or play one finger on the piano and Ray Rasch was the pianist -- and he said, 'Ray, why don't you score this film? I've written all the melodies, why don't score it?' Ray said 'okay' But he didn't know how orchestrate, so he got me to work with him and I orchestrated the whole film. Of course we had to do a lot of composing with Charlie's themes, but they were all Chaplin's themes. Later, they gave a posthumous Academy award to Charlie Chaplin for this film, and they said 'Well, Ray Rasch has got scoring credit, but he passed away; somebody worked closely with him on this and did a lot of work, somebody by the name of Russell,' and somebody said 'I think it was Larry Russell' who was an arranger around town at that time, so they awarded the award to Ray Rasch, Charlie Chaplin and Larry Russell! Now I don't know if Larry Russell had anything to do with the film at all, it was actually me. And, I didn't make any rhubarb about it, you know. So Larry Russell had died in the meantime, so they couldn't check that out with him, either. A lot of things like that happen in this business."  Music Scoring Awards (Best Original Dramatic Score) 1972: LIMELIGHT (w. Charles Chaplin & Raymond Rasch) 1 nomination, 1 Award