People
Frank Skinner
Sound · follow into films and chains
Biography
Frank Skinner (December 31, 1897 – October 9, 1968) was an American film composer and arranger. Skinner was born in Meredosia, Illinois. A graduate of the Chicago Musical College (now known as the Chicago Conservatory of Music), 16-year-old Frank found employment in vaudeville and began playing in local areas with his brother Carl Skinner of Meredosia Illinois on drums. They were billed as the Skinner Brothers dance band. From there they began playing on the steamboats that went up and down the Illinois River. It was during this time that he began writing and arranging music for dance bands. This work brought him to New York, where from 1925 to 1935 he arranged about 2000 popular songs for Robbins Publishing. By the time he left Manhattan for Hollywood, he had written two books on arranging for dance bands. After a short period at MGM, working on musical settings for The Great Ziegfeld (1936), Skinner was hired by Universal Studios. Over the course of his 30 years there, he composed music for more than 200 films. Although he continued to work on musicals, he quickly mastered the art of dramatic scores, eventually earning five Academy Award nominations (1938–43). He died in Beverly Hills, California, leaving behind his wife Dolly Repine Skinner. His distinctive approach to scoring horror films, such as Son of Frankenstein (1939) and The Wolf Man (1941), has been characterized as a ‘passion for chromatic lines … mirrored contours … [and] restrained, yet ominously mythical orchestrations’ (Marcello). He gained new recognition in the 1950s for his lush romantic scores, including those for such Douglas Sirk films as Magnificent Obsession (1954) and Written on the Wind (1956). Despite many changes in the film industry, his book Underscore (1950) has survived as an excellent introduction to film music composition. In 2014, Dallas pre-swing orchestra, The Singapore Slingers released a fifteen-track CD homage to Skinner's arrangements.
Notable films
Where to start
Highlights from credits and KinoChain journeys.
The Wolf Man
Appears in a KinoChain journey
All That Heaven Allows
Appears in a KinoChain journey
Imitation of Life
Appears in a KinoChain journey
Saboteur
Original Music Composer
Son of Frankenstein
Original Music Composer
The Black Shield of Falworth
Original Music Composer
Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon
Original Music Composer
Invisible Agent
Music
Chains
KinoChain journeys
Public chains that pass through their films — or name them as a bridge.
The Melodrama They Never Let Us Keep
Rachel Morrison's Love of Your Life arrives as a reminder: the woman's picture was never a lesser form. It was grief, desire and colour, and the Europeans knew...
8 films
Fur and Fangs
From the eerie moors of England to the neon streets of Tokyo, this chain of eight films reveals the werewolf as a creature of endless reinvention, embodying hor...
8 films
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Related people
Collaborators & neighbours
Music
Back Street
1961
Imitation of Life
1959
All That Heaven Allows
1955
The Black Shield of Falworth
1954
The Naked City
1948
Gung Ho!
1943
Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon
1942
Arabian Nights
1942
Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror
1942
Saboteur
1942
The Wolf Man
1941
The Invisible Woman
1940
Black Friday
1940
The Invisible Man Returns
1940
Tower of London
1939
Son of Frankenstein
1939