1948: Best Musical Score

How does one rate a score? True, this entire exercise is one of subjectivity (I'm sure there are Agnes Moorehead fans tsk-tsking), but how does one sit down, watch any of the five films listed today, and argue, "Well, clearly what Victor Young does with The Emperor Waltz is of a far superior quality, due respect, to what Alfred Newman is tasked to accomplish with When My Baby Smiles at Me?"

It'd be one thing if we were ranking the songs (that, I suspect, is why this category eventually became Best Song Score and went to the songwriters rather than music adaptors, but we'll save that for next month); we could very easily discuss the merits or otherwise of these particular Irving Berlin or Cole Porter scores. But this is more...complicated. This isn't about the songs but about the underscoring between songs, the dance breaks within those songs, and the opening credits made from the songs. It's not just about whether or not you like Berlin, but about whether what Green & Edens do with Berlin is effective enough to keep you entertained when you aren't hearing the lyrics.

To that end, here we go - the nominees for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture...

1946: Musical Score

Back in the 40s, musical films were so ubiquitous, they needed their own category to honor the underscore! The category has gone through a lot of name and qualification changes since, from Adaptation and/or Treatment Score (like Marvin Hamlisch doing Scott Joplin riffs for The Sting) to Original Song Score (like Yentl) to its current designation, the unused Original Musical. 

In 1946, it was simple: Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture was the category name. And these were the nominees:

Cinema '62: Best Adapted Score

Our first category is Adapted Score, or as it was known at the time, Scoring of Music - Adaptation or Treatment. Four of these nominees are musicals, while one of them is an "adaptation" (read: orchestration) of a score by Jackie Gleason. The nominees:

Day Three: Song and Musical Score, 1968

Usually, I like to group the Score categories together - Musical/Adapted/Song Score with Original/Comedy or Dramatic Score - since, you know, they're sister categories. For 1968, I decided to do things a little differently and pair Musical Score with Original Song, mainly because it's only natural for there to be overlap (and there is!); even better, it saves me room on the tags.

Some great music...and some dull music! All after the jump.

Musical Score, 1953

Oh dear Lord, with these categories!