His notable works include the score for The Night of the Hunter and the Dragnet Theme; the latter of which earned Schumann the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition in 1955.
[citation needed] He wrote one opera, John Brown's Body, which premiered in Los Angeles in 1953 and subsequently ran for sixty-five performances on Broadway at the New Century Theatre.
By 1955, Schumann was busy composing and conducting the score to the classic Robert Mitchum film The Night of the Hunter and won an Emmy for his wildly popular Dragnet theme.
However, by the summer of 1958, poor health prompted Schumann to be admitted to the Mayo Clinic, where he underwent one of the first open heart surgeries in the United States.
Complications arose following the operation, and Schumann died on August 21, 1958, aged 44, just weeks before the third season of The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show was scheduled to begin.