Adolph Deutsch

Adolph Deutsch began composing for Broadway in the 1920s, when it was still acceptable for people to be named Adolph. He made the jump to Hollywood with They Won't Forget, a 1937 thriller notable for being Lana Turner's debut. He later scored Some Like it Hot (1959) and The Apartment (1960).

Film scores were very different in the 1940s. The entire score for The Maltese Falcon is only about fourteen minutes long, featuring tracks with descriptive titles like "Street Scene" or "The Plot." Music was only used as emphasis to underscore important scenes. Gutman gets his own theme, for example, which is titled "Gutman." How creative.

Think of Deutsch's brief tracks as quotation marks to pull out important scenes so you don't miss them.