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American conductor/musical arranger Ray Heindorf was fourteen when he took on his first film-related job as a pianist in his local movie house. Almost from the instant that the Vitaphone sound system was introduced in the late '20s, Heindorf was in Hollywood. After his first orchestration job for MGM's Hollywood Revue of 1929, Heindorf was put in charge of Warner Bros.' music department. This kept him busier than most of his contemporaries, since few studios relied as much on evocative background music as did Warners. Heindorf collected Oscars for his scores for the Warner musicals Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), This is the Army (1943) and The Music Man (1962). And when Jack L. Warner broke away from his own studio to become an independent producer, he chose Ray Heindorf to score his maiden independent effort, 1776 (1972).