Alexander Laszlo

Composer, pianist, conductor, producer and inventor educated at the Budapest Academy and a private music student of A. Szeny, A Kovacs, and V. Herzfeld. He was a piano soloist with the Bluthner Orchestra in Berlin in 1915, and gave piano recitals in Europe from 1921 to 1923. He invented the Colorlight device, a mechanism that reproduces music with color, which was first used at the Kiel Music Festival in 1924. Between 1925 and 1926 he gave recitals in opera houses throughout Germany, and the following year he became the music director at the Munich Cinema Art Studios, remaining until 1933. He was also a professor of film music at the German Stage and Film Academy, the head of the music department at the Hungarian Film Office, and the executive producer of documentary film for the Hungarian government from 1933 to 1938, at which point he came to the United States and became a music professor at the Institute of Design in Chicago, Illinois. He joined ASCAP in 1942 and became an American citizen in 1944, the same year he came to Hollywood to score films and become music director at NBC Radio.