Biography
Hugo Friedhofer was an American composer and cellist known for his film scores. Born in San Francisco, California, he began playing the cello at the age of 13 and studied harmony and counterpoint at the University of California, Berkeley. He worked as a cellist with the People's Symphony Orchestra before moving to Hollywood in 1929.
He was employed as an orchestrator at Warner Bros., where he worked on more than 50 films, largely with Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. His first full-length score as composer was for The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938). He later composed for films including Lifeboat (1944), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Original Score, Gilda (1946), Ace in the Hole (1951) and An Affair to Remember (1957). He received a total of nine Oscar nominations.
