Gail Kubik
[1] He first gained widespread recognition for his scores for World War II documentary films, including Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress (1944).
[2] In the 1930s his mother and her sons formed the Kubik Ensemble (Gail on violin, Howard on piano, and Henry Jr. on cello) and toured the midwest.
[3][4][5] It is likely that Kubik played violin in Eastman's orchestra, taking part in the American Composers' Concerts and getting nationally broadcast on NBC.
In the 17 weeks before his contract expired in 1941, he contributed scores for the The World Is Yours and Great Plays series, and for the NBC 1940 Christmas program Puck.
In 1941 he composed the score the short documentary film Men and Ships, which was produced by George Gercke for the United States Maritime Commission.
This success lead to his 1942 recruitment by the Office of War Information's Motion Picture Bureau to be their Director of Music, working for Lowell Mellett.
[12] In 1943 he joined the Army Air Corps, attaining a rank of corporal, and worked in the First Motion Picture Unit in Culver City.
[12] In 1943, he was a board member of the Los Angeles-based Musicians' Congress Committee (along with Aaron Copland, Darius Milhaud, Lena Horne, William Grant Still and other musical luminaries).
This committee was formed and sponsored by Max Silver with a goal of promoting American art music during the war, and was suspected of being a Communist front.
Summarizing his own experiences, as well as those of his colleagues Copland and Thomson, he concluded that in the absence of creative or understanding Hollywood studio heads, documentaries offered the "serious" composer the only real opportunity to break into the film business.
The second was the score for UPA's Academy-award winning animated short Gerald McBoingBoing, produced by John Hubley, a former FMPU colleague.
Two years later, in an unprecedented move, Paramount returned the music rights to Kubik, and produced the recording of a new suite derived on the score titled Scenario for Orchestra.
Kubik refused to sign a contract unless he retained the music rights; however production (and funding) proceeded anyway on the score and recording with the London Symphony Orchestra.
[7] Between his 1952 Pulitzer Prize, and the success of his score for UPA's Gerald McBoing-Boing, his reputation was such that in 1953 he signed a lucrative guaranteed publishing contract with ASCAP's Chappell Music.
The musical trades positioned this deal as part of an ongoing competition between ASCAP and BMI (also mired in antitrust litigation at the same time) for the prestige of signing contracts with respected composers.
[22] He was artist in residence at Yaddo in 1948 (at same time as Patricia Highsmith, Marc Brandel, Bob White, Clifford Wright, Irene Orgel, Chester Himes, Vivien MacLeod, Harold Shapero, Stanley Levine, and Flannery O'Connor).
