Clifford Vaughan

Clifford Vaughan was an orchestrator and composer in Hollywood for more than three decades, as well as a composer of music for the concert hall. Though he never achieved much visibility compared to such figures as Franz Waxman (to whom he was closely linked professionally), Bernard Herrmann, or Miklos Rozsa, his music, conducting, and orchestral scoring graced more than 100 films, including popular hits in a variety of genres: musicals, horror, science fiction, and family classics. Born in New Jersey in 1893, Vaughan manifested serious musical talent as a child, and at the age of 12 performed a piece by Beethoven under the auspices of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra. At 15, he enrolled in the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music, and was composing in his teens. He made his way as a pianist, conductor, and vocal coach in his twenties, in addition to working as a church organist. Vaughan became especially well known for his ballets, and he was one of the most successful musical arrangers in New York during the early '30s.

Although some of his music appeared in such early Vitaphone films as Waterfront (1928), Vaughan's career remained independent of the movies until 1933, when the economic impact of the Great Depression forced him to look to Hollywood for a potential living. The major studios suddenly found themselves in need of orchestrators, conductors, and composers to write and direct the music that audiences were starting to expect to hear in movies. Vaughan started out at RKO working on the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers vehicle The Gay Divorcee (1934), passed through Monogram to work on A Successful Failure, and Paramount on The President Vanishes before moving to Universal, where he functioned as both an orchestrator and composer on such pictures as The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935), and worked as the orchestrator to composer Franz Waxman on The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) -- the latter movie's music and Vaughan's scoring were some of the most memorable in cinema history.

Although his credits at Universal included a memorable score for the horror-thriller The Raven (1935), Vaughan's most important contribution was as an orchestrator for music written by Karl Hajos, Heinz Roemheld, and others -- but most notably Waxman. Vaughan was also responsible for re-orchestrating various composers' work for numerous Universal features that followed, particularly Waxman's music from The Bride of Frankenstein for use in the studio's Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials. Vaughan and Waxman were an on-going creative team, and as Waxman moved through Hollywood to different studios, he engaged Vaughan (as well as conductor Constantin Bakaleinikoff) to work with him on various projects, including the music for Captains Courageous and other movies. As a composer, Vaughan's best known work was his score for The Raven, which was tracked into dozens of subsequent features (often re-orchestrated by him) and the Wagnerian main theme for the 1936 serial Flash Gordon (the only original piece of music in the film).

Vaughan was primarily a freelancer, taking on projects as they suited his time, needs, and interests, which is one reason why he wasn't credited onscreen more often, and why he is less known today than many far less talented musicians of the same generation. He was never associated for any real length of time with a single studio, director, or producer; rather, he worked for Universal, MGM, Warner Bros., Disney, etc. Vaughan continued to compose for the concert hall with some success, and several of his pieces entered the concert repertory in California. He ended his screen career with Disney on such movies as Rob Roy, Old Yeller, and Tonka, and found time to write music for The Mickey Mouse Club and various TV specials. In the 1960s and '70s, amid the constantly renewed fandom of such movies as The Bride of Frankenstein and the other Universal horror features of the '30s, Vaughan's scoring was again widely heard. When recordings were made of the highlights from Waxman's score for that movie, they always used Vaughan's orchestration as their model. Vaughan died in 1987 at the age of 94.

~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide