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Paul Lamkoff, (Plonsk, Russian Empire, 14 December 1888 - 11 March 1953) was a Polish-born American cantor and early Hollywood film composer. He is sometimes credited by the less anglicized name Paul Lampkovitz.
Many details about Lamkoff's early life prior to emigrating to the United States are uncorroborated, including his place of birth and his musical training, and professional engagements. His place of birth is listed variously as either Poland or Russia. He was said to have trained at the Petrograd Conservatory (now the St. Petersburg Conservatory), possibly at the same time as future fellow Hollywood composer Dimitrio Tiomkin and also under Glazunov and Rimsky-Korsakov. He may have conducted opera throughout eastern Europe, and played violin with the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, and cantored. [1]
In the 1922 he and his wife Eva Tisen emigrated to Cleveland, passing via Romania where in 1920 a daughter was born. In 1924 he settled in Los Angeles.
He also began working as a film composer, arranger, vocal coach, and music director. His earliest entry to the industry was the 1927 Warner Brothers film The Jazz Singer's Kol Nidre sequence, where he coached Jolson and arranged the choral background. Warner Brothers rehired him for the same role for the 1952 remake starring Danny Thomas. [2]
The popularity of "talkies" that exploded in the late 1920s allowed the professional musicians already established in Los Angeles, like Lamkoff, to profit on the burgeoning film music industry, although much of Lamkoff's work went uncredited. At one point he transcribed "by dictation" a symphonic work that Fred Fisher was composing for a film sequence. Along with other talents like Alfred Newman, Johnny Green, and Ray Heindorf, he established the practice of major film studios' music departments being led by professional musicians. [3]
Lamkoff is said to have been among the first to compose original music score for a Hollywood film, when he composed and copyrighted eight cues for the 1929 Lionel Barrymore film The Mysterious Island (though credit went to Martin Broones and Arthur Lange). Both he and Dimitri Tiomkin, a fellow graduate of St. Petersburg Conservatory, were working at MGM in 1930. Lamkoff orchestrated Tiomkin's Lullaby and Gypsy Song for the film Resurrection. [4]
In the 1930s he served as cantor and choral director in many Los Angeles organizations, including for Temple Beth El in Hollywood, and in Joseph Achron's Los Angeles chapter of MAILAMM. [1]
Lamkoff was actively involved overseas during World War II. The unpublished compositions Delia, Delia, From Manila and Down Leyte Way were copyrighted from Australia and from a US/APO warship address. [5]
Outside of film music, Lamkoff's compositions include a 1944 symphony titled Survival of a Nation, a set of Hebrew songs for voice and piano published in 1929, a Solomon Golub setting written for the United He brew Choral Societies of the United States and Canada in 1923, many Yiddish songs (some of which were championed by Sidor Belarsky), and many songs written for hire. [1]
In 1931, he married Sidon Goldman Kraus, who was born in Hlohovec, Hungary in 1887 and died in 1972.
Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin was a Russian and American film composer and conductor. Classically trained in Saint Petersburg before the Bolshevik Revolution, he moved to Berlin and then New York City after the Russian Revolution. In 1929, after the stock market crash, he moved to Hollywood, where he became best known for his scores for Western films, including Duel in the Sun, Red River, High Noon, The Big Sky, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Rio Bravo, and Last Train from Gun Hill.
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