Georgie Stoll
Encyclopedia
Georgie Stoll was a musical director, conductor
Conducting
Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...

, composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 and jazz violin
Jazz violin
Jazz violin is the use of the violin or electric violin to improvise and perform utilizing scales and chord progressions unique to the compositions of Jazz musicians . The earliest references to jazz performance using the violin as a solo instrument was during the first decades of the 20th century...

ist, associated with the Golden Age of MGM musicals and performers from the 1940s to 1960s. Born George Martin Stoll, he was also later credited as George E. Stoll (sometimes without the middle initial).

Violin Prodigy

Stoll made his musical debut as a boy violin prodigy, gaining nationwide fame. He toured North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

 as a jazz violinist on the Fanchon and Marco circuit and was part of the Jazzmania Quintet, appearing with Edythe Flynn in an early 1927 sound short. In San Diego, he became an orchestra and trio leader (his Rhythm Aces) and started to feature with Jack Oakie
Jack Oakie
Jack Oakie was an American actor, starring mostly in films, but also working on stage, radio and television.-Early life:...

 on radio programs, such as Camel Cigarette
Camel (cigarette)
Camel is a brand of cigarettes that was introduced by American company R.J. Reynolds Tobacco in the summer of 1913. Most current Camel cigarettes contain a blend of Turkish tobacco and Virginia tobacco. Early in 2008 the blend was changed as was the package design.-History:In 1913, R.J...

and NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

's Shell Oil Program. In 1934, Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....

 selected Stoll as his musical director for the second series of the CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

 Woodbury radio programs. For Decca
Decca Records
Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....

, Georgie Stoll and His Orchestra accompanied Crosby and Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....

 in the successful 1936 recordings of Pennies from Heaven
Pennies from Heaven (1936 film)
Pennies from Heaven is a 1936 musical comedy film starring Bing Crosby and featuring Louis Armstrong in a supporting role. The movie was directed by Norman Z. McLeod and the screenplay was written by Jo Swerling from a story by William Rankin based on the novel The Peacock Feather by Katherine...

. Stoll and his orchestra appeared on screen the same year in MGM's Swing Banditry.

MGM Musical Director

In 1937, he joined the MGM music department and was the musical director (frequently conductor too) for titles such as Honolulu, Ice Follies of 1939 and the Rooney-Garland hit Babes in Arms
Babes in Arms (film)
Babes in Arms is the 1939 film version of the 1937 Broadway musical of the same name. The film version stars Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Charles Winninger, Guy Kibbee, June Preisser, Grace Hayes and Betty Jaynes.-Production:...

. He conducted the stage band which toured with Judy Garland
Judy Garland
Judy Garland was an American actress and singer. Through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years and for her renowned contralto voice, she attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage...

 and Mickey Rooney
Mickey Rooney
Mickey Rooney is an American film actor and entertainer whose film, television, and stage appearances span nearly his entire lifetime. He has won multiple awards, including an Honorary Academy Award, a Golden Globe and an Emmy Award...

 on the release of The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...

. He was given a single "Ruby Slipper" by Judy Garland upon completion of the Wizard of Oz. At the studio Stoll worked frequently with the director Edward Buzzell
Edward Buzzell
Edward Buzzell was an American film director whose credits for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer included Honolulu , the Marx Brothers films At the Circus and Go West , the musicals Best Foot Forward with Lucille Ball and Neptune's Daughter with Esther Williams, and Easy to Wed, starring Van Johnson,...

 and producers Arthur Freed
Arthur Freed
Arthur Freed was born Arthur Grossman in Charleston, South Carolina. He was a Jewish American lyricist and a Hollywood film producer.- Biography :Freed began his career as a song-plugger and pianist in Chicago...

, Roger Edens
Roger Edens
Roger Edens was a Hollywood composer, arranger and associate producer, and is considered one of the major creative figures in Arthur Freed's musical film production unit at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during the "golden era of Hollywood".-Early career and work with Judy Garland:Edens was born in...

 and Joe Pasternak
Joe Pasternak
thumb|right|250px|Pasterrnak receiving his star on [[Hollywood Boulevard]] from [[Johnny Grant |Johnny Grant]] with [[Gene Kelly]] on the left on July 29, 1991....

. He was also a favorite pinochle
Pinochle
Pinochle or Binocle is a trick-taking game typically for two to four players and played with a 48 card deck. Derived from the card game bezique, players score points by trick-taking and also by forming combinations of cards into melds. It is thus considered part of a "trick-and-meld" category...

-playing buddy of studio head Louis B. Mayer
Louis B. Mayer
Louis Burt Mayer born Lazar Meir was an American film producer. He is generally cited as the creator of the "star system" within Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in its golden years. Known always as Louis B...

.

Stoll kept his connection with the jazz world and visited clubs looking for rising talent. He recruited one of the first black arrangers at MGM, Calvin Jackson
Calvin Jackson
Calvin Jackson was an American jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader....

 with whom he worked on the original music for his 1945 Oscar-winning score for the Kelly
Gene Kelly
Eugene Curran "Gene" Kelly was an American dancer, actor, singer, film director and producer, and choreographer...

-Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...

 Anchors Aweigh
Anchors Aweigh (film)
Anchors Aweigh is a 1945 American musical comedy film directed by George Sidney in which two sailors go on a four-day shore leave in Hollywood, accompanied by music and song, meet an aspiring young singer and try to help her get an audition at MGM...

. Stoll also encouraged the teenaged Andre Previn
André Previn
André George Previn, KBE is an American pianist, conductor, and composer. He is considered one of the most versatile musicians in the world, and is the winner of four Academy Awards for his film work and ten Grammy Awards for his recordings. -Early Life:Previn was born in...

 and used him to write many arrangements.

In 1943, he conducted Garland through the first two of her Decca original cast albums from her popular movies, such as Girl Crazy
Girl Crazy
Girl Crazy is a 1930 musical with music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin and book by Guy Bolton and John McGowan. Ethel Merman made her stage debut in this musical production....

and Meet Me in St. Louis
Meet Me in St. Louis
Meet Me in St. Louis is a 1944 musical film from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer which tells the story of an American family living in St. Louis at the time of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition World's Fair in 1904...

, which included the hit single The Trolley Song
The Trolley Song
"The Trolley Song" is a song written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane and made famous by Judy Garland in the 1944 film Meet Me in St. Louis...

(#3 on Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...

's
Best Selling charts). His other recordings were quite eclectic: spanning the popular (often with harmonica
Harmonica
The harmonica, also called harp, French harp, blues harp, and mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used primarily in blues and American folk music, jazz, country, and rock and roll. It is played by blowing air into it or drawing air out by placing lips over individual holes or multiple holes...

 virtuosoes Leo Diamond or Larry Adler), easy listening
Easy listening
Easy listening is a broad style of popular music and radio format that emerged in the 1950s, evolving out of big band music, and related to MOR music as played on many AM radio stations. It encompasses the exotica, beautiful music, light music, lounge music, ambient music, and space age pop genres...

 orchestral (e.g. MGM's Hollywood Melodies album) to the postwar American sessions of the tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...

 Lauritz Melchior
Lauritz Melchior
Lauritz Melchior was a Danish and later American opera singer. He was the pre-eminent Wagnerian tenor of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, and has since come to be considered the quintessence of his voice type.-Biography:...

.

Later career

His career got a final innings boost when Pasternak hired him and his old colleague George Sidney
George Sidney
George Sidney was an American film director and film producer who worked primarily at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.-Career:...

 to work with Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....

 on some of his later and better pictures (e.g. Viva Las Vegas
Viva Las Vegas
Viva Las Vegas is a 1964 American romantic musical movie starring music icon Elvis Presley and actress/dancer Ann-Margret. This movie is regarded by many fans of these actors and by film critics as one of Presley's best movies, and it is noted for the apparent on-screen chemistry between Presley...

and Spinout
Spinout
Spinout is a 1966 musical film and comedy starring Elvis Presley as the lead singer of a band and part-time race car driver. The movie was #57 on the year end list of the top-grossing films of 1966.-Plot:...

). After 9 Oscar nominations (last in 1962 for Billy Rose's Jumbo
Billy Rose's Jumbo (film)
Billy Rose's Jumbo is an American musical film produced by MGM in Panavision and Metrocolor, and starring Jimmy Durante, Doris Day, Martha Raye, and Stephen Boyd. The film was directed by Charles Walters and featured Busby Berkeley's choreography...

), Stoll retired upon completing the original music for the Ann-Margret
Ann-Margret
Ann-Margret Olsson is a Swedish-American actress, singer and dancer whose professional name is Ann-Margret. She became famous for her starring roles in Bye Bye Birdie, Viva Las Vegas, The Cincinnati Kid, Carnal Knowledge, and Tommy...

 vehicle Made in Paris
Made in Paris
Made in Paris is a 1966 American romantic comedy film directed by Boris Sagal and starring Louis Jourdan, Ann-Margaret, and Richard Crenna.This was the last screen credit for veteran MGM musical director Georgie Stoll before retirement....

.

In September 2001, Stoll's Best Score Oscar was offered in an estate sale at the Butterfields auction house. The actor Kevin Spacey
Kevin Spacey
Kevin Spacey, CBE is an American actor, director, screenwriter, producer, and crooner. He grew up in California, and began his career as a stage actor during the 1980s, before being cast in supporting roles in film and television...

 later revealed that he anonymously secured it for $156,875 and subsequently returned it to the Academy
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a professional honorary organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of motion pictures...

.

In October 2009, Stoll's Amati violin was sold by Tarisio Auctions
Tarisio Auctions
- Tarisio Auctions :This is the main page for Tarisio Auctions, the online string instrument auction house. For the Italian violin collector, see Luigi Tarisio....

for $620,000, the current world record for a Nicolo Amati sold at auction.

External links

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