David Snell

From Wikipedia the free encyclopedia David L Snell 10 September 1897 Milwaukee Wisconsin 27 March 1967 Glendale California was a pianist conductor composer and music director He composed the music for over 170 shorts series or feature films Snell studied at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music Wisconsin College and the Meyer Conservatory of Music He formed his own orchestra and was the musical director for several stage productions He joined MetroGoldwynMayers music department in 1937 turning out music for a range of films from lowcost B movies to expensive features He would spend his entire film career with MGM He was conductor composer and music director for MGM for twentyone years The work could be high pressure In November 1938 Franz Waxman had just five days to put together the fiftyminute score for A Christmas Carol so it could be released in time for the holiday season Snell helped out writing the opening and closing credit cues and half a dozen other cues based on themes provided by Waxman Snell wrote music for many fulllength films shorts and Bmovie series such as Dr Kildare Maisie and The Thin Man His songs include Under The Stars Downstream Drifter Come Back Little Girl Of Mine and Once Over Lightly His scores often showed firstrate craftsmanship but his work has generally been ignored perhaps because in most cases he chose to simply underscore the dialog as opposed to contributing complementary musical ideas However for the 1947 Lady in the Lake based on the Raymond Chandler novel and set around Christmas time Snell chose to use a choir singing a cappella providing an austere and effective black and white score to accompany the stark black and white cinematography The moody music echoed Christmas carols David L Snell died in 1967