In these chapters theoretical concerns, such as the relationship between music, subjectivity, and gender, gain nuance when set against the backdrop of creative collaboration. The scores for Spellbound (1945), The Paradine Case (1947), and Portrait of Jennie (1948) bear intricate collaborative tensions-often involving director Alfred Hitchcock-and receive a chapter each, allowing ample space to explore the aesthetic controversies surrounding each score’s production, promotion, and reception. Inspection of Symphony of Six Million (1932), Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936), and Since You Went Away (1944) further reveals Selznick’s indebtedness to musical practices of the silent cinema. Analysis of King Kong (1933), The Young in Heart (1938), Gone with the Wind (1939), and Rebecca (1940) shows Selznick’s growing involvement in the film scoring process and also highlights the savvy mediation of composers and music directors. Selznick’s collaboration with composers Miklós Rózsa, Max Steiner, Dimitri Tiomkin, and Franz Waxman forms the centerpiece of this study, with select scores receiving special emphasis. Rather than depicting Selznick as a producer-auteur who merely imposed his ideas on composers, this dissertation views the scores from his films as sites of artistic contestation in which musical decisions made before, during, and after composition alternately reflect instances of negotiation and resistance. Close study reveals that interpretive arguments concerning these films are best grounded in a thorough knowledge of the film scores’ collaborative construction. Drawing from extensive archival research, I examine the producer’s memos, composers’ scores, and various correspondences to trace streams of influence that shaped the musical rhetoric of Selznick’s most significant films. Selznick, a producer whose close attention to music distinguished him from Hollywood competitors. This dissertation investigates the collaborative process of film scoring as practiced in the films of David O.
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