---
name: "Victor Schertzinger"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/victor-schertzinger"
roles: ["Composer","Director"]
born: "8 April 1888"
died: "26 October 1941"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 2
average_over: 1
updated: "2026-09-19T22:41:24.338729+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Victor Schertzinger

Composer and director. Born 8 April 1888 in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, USA. Died 26 October 1941.

## Details

- **Work:** Composer, Director
- **Born:** 8 April 1888, Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, USA
- **Died:** 26 October 1941
- **Active:** 1929–1934
- **Also known as:** Victor L. Schertzinger
- **Titles on Fi1m:** 2: 1 directing, 1 crew
- **Academy Awards:** 1 Oscar nomination
- **Fi1m score by decade:** 1920s 76 (1), 1930s 73 (1)
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Schertzinger, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q707999, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006276/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/148849

## Fi1m on Victor Schertzinger

> A violinist who took up directing and never stopped composing, Victor Schertzinger treated a song as a scene rather than a break between scenes. The films around the songs are often plain; the songs themselves, and the way he lets them run, are why he matters.

The scene to know is the café in *One Night of Love* (1934). Grace Moore starts a song for a room full of diners, the diners join in one by one, and the film does not cut away until it is finished. It is a small thing and it is most of Victor Schertzinger's method. We grinned through that number like a fool, at a table of strangers singing along with a soprano, and it was the warmth of the café rather than the size of the voice that did it. That kind of gathered-round-the-piano feeling almost never survives being filmed. It survives here because he trusted the number to hold the screen on its own.

He was a musician before he was anything else. He trained as a violinist and conductor, wrote the first original orchestral score for a feature film with *Civilization* (1916), and turned director the following year, making twenty-one silents with Charles Ray. When sound arrived he did both jobs at once, composing the songs and scores for the films he directed and freelancing through the 1930s on musicals and whatever else came along. He had opinions about how the studios used music: some of what he had seen in Hollywood, he told the New York Times in 1929, "would make Wagner turn over in his grave."

*One Night of Love* is the one we have reviewed, and it is the case for him in full. The plot could have been assembled from a kit. What he brings is a light hand, a musician's sense of when a scene has gone on long enough, and the nerve to let Moore sing whole numbers when other directors would have trimmed them. He wrote the non-operatic songs with Gus Kahn; Johnny Mercer was among his lyricists later. He put James Cagney in a musical, *Something to Sing About* (1937), writing and producing as well as directing; he put Gilbert and Sullivan into Technicolor with *The Mikado* (1939); and he started the Road series with *Road to Singapore* (1940), a job that mostly asks a director to keep out of Hope and Crosby's way, which he did. *The Fleet's In* (1942) came out after his death and left behind two standards, "I Remember You" and "Tangerine".

The limits are real. He had no dancer and no wit on the payroll, and beside the musicals being made at the same time his look a little plain. His camera does what the music needs and rarely more, and when the music stops the films tend to wait politely for it to start again. Later opera films by other hands were stiffer than his, which is praise of a sort, but nobody goes to a Schertzinger picture for the dialogue.

He is little remembered now, which is odd for a man who wrote music for the screen before the screen could carry sound and was still writing it the year he died. If you want to know why the songs in a 1940s musical stopped feeling like interruptions, he is part of the answer, and the café is where to start.

## Biography

Victor Schertzinger (8 April 1888 – 26 October 1941) was an American film director, composer, producer and screenwriter. Born in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, he studied music at the University of Brussels and began his career as a violinist and composer before entering the film industry in the silent era.

He directed *One Night of Love* (1934), for which he also composed the music, and co-directed *Paramount on Parade* (1930). Other directing credits include *Something to Sing About* (1937), *Road to Singapore* (1940) and *Road to Zanzibar* (1941). He composed songs such as "I Remember You" and "Tangerine", both featured in *The Fleet's In* (1942).

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, catalog.afi.com, allmovie.com.*

## On Fi1m (2)

### Directed (1)

- *One Night of Love* (1934), Fi1m 73, Director, Music — [page](https://film.one/film/one-night-of-love.md)

### Crew (1) — the average rests on these

- *The Love Parade* (1929), Fi1m 76, Songs — [page](https://film.one/film/the-love-parade.md)

## Complete filmography (100)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *The Woman from Tangier* (1948), Original Music Composer
- *Gilda* (1946), Additional Music
- *I Love a Mystery* (1945), Additional Music
- *The Fleet's In* (1942), Director
- *Birth of the Blues* (1941), Director
- *Kiss the Boys Goodbye* (1941), Director
- *Road to Zanzibar* (1941), Director
- *Rhythm on the River* (1940), Director
- *Road to Singapore* (1940), Director
- *The Mikado* (1939), Director
- *Something to Sing About* (1937), Director
- *The Music Goes 'Round* (1936), Director
- *Love Me Forever* (1935), Director, Story, Original Music Composer
- *Let's Live Tonight* (1935), Director
- *One Night of Love* (1934), Director, Music — Fi1m 73, [page](https://film.one/film/one-night-of-love.md)
- *Beloved* (1934), Director, Music
- *My Woman* (1933), Director, Original Music Composer
- *Cocktail Hour* (1933), Director, Producer, Music, Songs
- *The Constant Woman* (1933), Director, Producer
- *Uptown New York* (1932), Director
- *Strange Justice* (1932), Director, Original Music Composer
- *Friends and Lovers* (1931), Director, Original Music Composer
- *Caught Plastered* (1931), Music
- *The Woman Between* (1931), Director, Original Music Composer
- *Heads Up* (1930), Director, Songs
- *Safety in Numbers* (1930), Director
- *Paramount on Parade* (1930), Director
- *The Laughing Lady* (1929), Director
- *The Love Parade* (1929), as Songs — Fi1m 76, [page](https://film.one/film/the-love-parade.md)
- *Redskin* (1929), Director, Producer
- *Fashions in Love* (1929), Director
- *The Wheel of Life* (1929), Director
- *Betrayal* (1929), Story
- *Nothing but the Truth* (1929), Director
- *Forgotten Faces* (1928), Director
- *The Showdown* (1928), Director
- *The Secret Studio* (1927), Director
- *The Heart of Salome* (1927), Director
- *Stage Madness* (1927), Director
- *The Return of Peter Grimm* (1926), Director
- *The Lily* (1926), Director
- *Siberia* (1926), Director
- *The Golden Strain* (1925), Director
- *Thunder Mountain* (1925), Director
- *The Wheel* (1925), Director
- *Zander the Great* (1925), Original Music Composer
- *Man and Maid* (1925), Director
- *Flaming Love* (1925), Director
- *Bread* (1924), Director
- *A Boy of Flanders* (1924), Director
- *Chastity* (1923), Director
- *The Man Life Passed By* (1923), Director, Writer
- *Long Live the King* (1923), Director
- *The Scarlet Lily* (1923), Director
- *The Man Next Door* (1923), Director
- *Refuge* (1923), Director
- *Dollar Devils* (1923), Director, Producer
- *The Kingdom Within* (1922), Director
- *Scandalous Tongues* (1922), Director
- *Robin Hood* (1922), Original Music Composer
- *The Bootlegger's Daughter* (1922), Director
- *Mr. Barnes of New York* (1922), Director
- *Head Over Heels* (1922), Director
- *Beating the Game* (1921), Director
- *Made in Heaven* (1921), Director
- *The Concert* (1921), Director
- *What Happened To Rosa* (1920), Director
- *The Slim Princess* (1920), Director
- *The Blooming Angel* (1920), Director
- *Pinto* (1920), Director, Writer
- *Jinx* (1919), Director
- *The Peace of Roaring River* (1919), Director
- *Upstairs* (1919), Director
- *Other Men's Wives* (1919), Director, Music
- *When Doctors Disagree* (1919), Director
- *The Lady of Red Butte* (1919), Director
- *The Homebreaker* (1919), Director
- *The Sheriff's Son* (1919), Director
- *Extravagance* (1919), Director
- *Hard Boiled* (1919), Director
- *Quicksand* (1918), Director
- *String Beans* (1918), Director
- *Coals of Fire* (1918), Director
- *A Nine O'Clock Town* (1918), Director, Story
- *The Claws of the Hun* (1918), Director
- *His Own Home Town* (1918), Director
- *Playing the Game* (1918), Director
- *The Family Skeleton* (1918), Director
- *The Hired Man* (1918), Director
- *His Mother's Boy* (1917), Director
- *The Son of His Father* (1917), Director
- *Sudden Jim* (1917), Director
- *The Clodhopper* (1917), Director
- *The Millionaire Vagrant* (1917), Director
- *The Pinch Hitter* (1917), Director
- *Princess of the Dark* (1917), Music
- *Civilization* (1916), Original Music Composer
- *Hell's Hinges* (1916), Music, Original Music Composer
- *The Three Musketeers* (1916), Music
- *The Lonely Road*, Director

## Gallery

- ![Victor Schertzinger](https://film.one/media/person/1225101/gallery-ab226c6ab631.jpg) Victor Schertzinger — Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Victor_schertzinger.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Victor Schertzinger, filmmaker (1923)](https://film.one/media/person/1225101/gallery-6bac9bde4475.jpg) Victor Schertzinger, filmmaker (1923) — Frans Studio, LA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Victor_Schertzinger_-_Wid%27s_Weekly_1923-11.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![American film director Victor Schertzinger on page 66 of the January 1921 Film Fun.](https://film.one/media/person/1225101/gallery-9beb45362157.jpg) American film director Victor Schertzinger on page 66 of the January 1921 Film Fun. — Unknown photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Victor_Schertzinger_-_Jan_1921_Film_Fun.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)

## Awards

### Academy Awards — 0 won, 1 nominated

- 1935: Best Director (nominated), for *One Night of Love*

*From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.*

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/victor-schertzinger