Heinz Roemheld may never have achieved the recognition accorded such colleagues as Bernard Herrmann, Miklos Rozsa, Max Steiner, Alfred Newman, or Erich Wolfgang Korngold, but in a 24-year career in Hollywood he scored or contributed to the scoring of over 400 feature films, some of them still very well-known to general audiences, cineastes, or genre enthusiasts. He was born in Milwaukee, WI, and was a child prodigy, taking up the piano at the age of four and graduating from Milwaukee's College of Music at 19. Roemheld desired to study in Europe and took up performing in theaters to earn the money that he needed. In 1920, he got to Berlin and became a student of Ferrucio Busoni and Egon Petri, among other notable musicians, and made his debut as a guest soloist with the Berlin Philharmonic at the age of 22. He returned to America and began earning part of his living as a movie theater pianist and conductor; it was at one such engagement, conducting the music to accompany Universal's 1925 horror blockbuster The Phantom of the Opera at a theater in Milwaukee, that Roemheld was noticed by Carl Laemmle Sr., the president of Universal Pictures. He was hired by the studio to manage the company's theaters, a job that later took him to Berlin. By 1930, however, he was back in America, in Hollywood, working for Universal's music department. The art of scoring movies had undergone a shattering devolution with the coming of talking pictures and in 1930 it was being learned all over again. Roemheld's first job was to score All Quiet on the Western Front, which became one of the great dramatic films and moneymakers of its era and remains one of the very few movies from that transitional era, from silents to talkies, that is fully watchable to modern audiences. During the 1930s Roemheld moved between Universal, Paramount, and Warner Bros. as a composer and music director. At Universal, he was responsible for writing some of the more memorable music for their 1930s horror output, including the score for The Invisible Man (which was later tracked into the studio's Flash Gordon serial) and Dracula's Daughter. At Warner Bros., although he never had anywhere near the prominence of Max Steiner or Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and worked on many B-pictures in the studio's output (including Nancy Drew, Reporter), he occasionally got higher profile movies to work on, including the screwball comedy It's Love I'm After starring Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, and Olivia De Havilland, and the crime-dramas Kid Galahad with Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart, and The Roaring Twenties starring James Cagney and Bogart. He also spent time at MGM scoring sections of Gone With the Wind, for which he received no credit. Roemheld finally achieved some recognition from his peers and before the public in 1942 when he won an Oscar for his work on Yankee Doodle Dandy and ten years later he wrote the pop standard {"Ruby" for the movie Ruby Gentry. Many of Roemheld's scores during the late '40s and early '50s were written for smaller films, but he still managed to put his musical mark on such movies as Orson Welles' The Lady From Shanghai and well-known action vehicles such as The Big Trees starring Kirk Douglas and the Abbott & Costello costume comedy-musical Jack and the Beanstalk. During the late '50s, he also moved into the scoring of horror and science fiction films, including The Mole People, The Creature Walks Among Us, and The Land Unknown. In 1964, after almost a quarter-century of scoring films, Roemheld retired from the movie world to return to Milwaukee and concentrate on serious composition, principally smaller-scale orchestral pieces and chamber music, and he occasionally conducted the city's symphony orchestra.
| Title | Year | Editors' Rating | User Rating | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Krakatoa, East of Java
Composer (Music Score) |
1969 | |||
|
Lad: A Dog
Composer (Music Score) |
1962 | |||
|
Ride Lonesome
Composer (Music Score), Musical Direction/Supervision |
1959 | |||
|
Decision at Sundown
Composer (Music Score) |
1957 | |||
|
The Monster That Challenged the World
Composer (Music Score), Musical Direction/Supervision |
1957 | |||
|
The Tall T
Composer (Music Score) |
1957 | |||
|
The World in My Corner
Composer (Music Score) |
1956 | |||
|
There's Always Tomorrow
Composer (Music Score) |
1956 | |||
|
Hell's Horizon
Composer (Music Score), Musical Direction/Supervision |
1955 | |||
|
The Square Jungle
Composer (Music Score) |
1955 | |||
|
The Moonlighter
Composer (Music Score), Musical Direction/Supervision |
1953 | |||
|
Jack and the Beanstalk
Composer (Music Score) |
1952 | |||
|
Ruby Gentry
Composer (Music Score), Songwriter |
1952 | |||
|
The Big Trees
Composer (Music Score) |
1952 | |||
|
Three for Bedroom C
Composer (Music Score) |
1952 | |||
|
Chicago Calling
Composer (Music Score) |
1951 | |||
|
Kill the Umpire
Composer (Music Score) |
1950 | |||
|
Rogues of Sherwood Forest
Composer (Music Score) |
1950 | |||
|
The Fuller Brush Girl
Composer (Music Score) |
1950 | |||
|
The Good Humor Man
Composer (Music Score) |
1950 | |||
|
Miss Grant Takes Richmond
Composer (Music Score) |
1949 | |||
|
The Lucky Stiff
Composer (Music Score) |
1949 | |||
|
Here Comes Trouble
Musical Direction/Supervision |
1948 | |||
|
I, Jane Doe
Composer (Music Score) |
1948 | |||
|
My Dear Secretary
Composer (Music Score) |
1948 | |||
|
On Our Merry Way
Composer (Music Score) |
1948 | |||
|
Siren of Atlantis
Musical Direction/Supervision |
1948 | |||
|
Station West
Composer (Music Score) |
1948 | |||
|
The Girl from Manhattan
Composer (Music Score) |
1948 | |||
|
The Lady from Shanghai
Composer (Music Score) |
1948 | |||
|
Who Killed Doc Robbin?
Musical Direction/Supervision |
1948 | |||
|
Christmas Eve
Composer (Music Score) |
1947 | |||
|
Down to Earth
Composer (Music Score) |
1947 | |||
|
Heaven Only Knows
Composer (Music Score) |
1947 | |||
|
It Had to Be You
Composer (Music Score) |
1947 | |||
|
The Flame
Composer (Music Score) |
1947 | |||
|
A Scandal in Paris
Composer (Music Score), Songwriter |
1946 | |||
|
Mr. Ace
Composer (Music Score) |
1946 | |||
|
O.S.S.
Composer (Music Score) |
1946 | |||
|
The Bachelor's Daughters
Musical Direction/Supervision |
1946 | |||
|
The Chase
Composer (Music Score), Musical Direction/Supervision |
1946 | |||
|
The Fuller Brush Man
Composer (Music Score) |
1946 | |||
|
Too Young to Know
Composer (Music Score) |
1945 | |||
|
Janie
Composer (Music Score) |
1944 | |||
|
Make Your Own Bed
Composer (Music Score) |
1944 | |||
|
Shine On, Harvest Moon
Composer (Music Score) |
1944 | |||
|
The Desert Song
Composer (Music Score) |
1943 | |||
|
Always in My Heart
Composer (Music Score) |
1942 | |||
|
Gentleman Jim
Composer (Music Score) |
1942 | |||
|
The Hard Way
Composer (Music Score) |
1942 | |||
|
The Male Animal
Composer (Music Score) |
1942 | |||
|
Yankee Doodle Dandy
Composer (Music Score) |
1942 | |||
|
Affectionately Yours
Composer (Music Score) |
1941 | |||
|
Blues in the Night
Composer (Music Score) |
1941 | |||
|
Four Mothers
Songwriter |
1941 | |||
|
Honeymoon for Three
Composer (Music Score) |
1941 | |||
|
Knockout
Composer (Music Score) |
1941 | |||
|
The Strawberry Blonde
Composer (Music Score) |
1941 | |||
|
The Wagons Roll at Night
Composer (Music Score) |
1941 | |||
|
Thieves Fall Out
Composer (Music Score) |
1941 | |||
|
A Child Is Born
Composer (Music Score) |
1940 | |||
|
British Intelligence
Composer (Music Score) |
1940 | |||
|
Brother Orchid
Composer (Music Score) |
1940 | |||
|
Brother Rat and a Baby
Composer (Music Score) |
1940 | |||
|
Invisible Stripes
Composer (Music Score) |
1940 | |||
|
It All Came True
Composer (Music Score) |
1940 | |||
|
My Love Came Back
Composer (Music Score) |
1940 | |||
|
No Time for Comedy
Composer (Music Score) |
1940 | |||
|
The Lady with Red Hair
Composer (Music Score) |
1940 | |||
|
King of the Underworld
Composer (Music Score) |
1939 | |||
|
Nancy Drew, Reporter
Composer (Music Score) |
1939 | |||
|
The Roaring Twenties
Composer (Music Score) |
1939 | |||
|
You Can't Get Away with Murder
Composer (Music Score) |
1939 | |||
|
Comet over Broadway
Composer (Music Score) |
1938 | |||
|
Four's a Crowd
Composer (Music Score) |
1938 | |||
|
I Met My Love Again
Composer (Music Score) |
1938 | |||
|
Men Are Such Fools
Composer (Music Score) |
1938 | |||
|
It's Love I'm After
Composer (Music Score) |
1937 | |||
|
Kid Galahad
Composer (Music Score) |
1937 | |||
|
Marked Woman
Composer (Music Score) |
1937 | |||
|
San Quentin
Composer (Music Score) |
1937 | |||
|
Stand-In
Composer (Music Score) |
1937 | |||
|
The Great O'Malley
Composer (Music Score) |
1937 | |||
|
The Perfect Specimen
Composer (Music Score) |
1937 | |||
|
Bullets or Ballots
Composer (Music Score) |
1936 | |||
|
Dracula's Daughter
Composer (Music Score) |
1936 | |||
|
The Golden Arrow
Composer (Music Score) |
1936 | |||
|
Two Against the World
Composer (Music Score) |
1936 | |||
|
Front Page Woman
Composer (Music Score) |
1935 | |||
|
The Man Who Reclaimed His Head
Musical Direction/Supervision |
1935 | |||
|
Bombay Mail
Composer (Music Score) |
1934 | |||
|
The Black Cat
Composer (Music Score), Musical Direction/Supervision |
1934 | |||
|
Captain of the Guard
Composer (Music Score), Songwriter |
1930 |






















