William Axt
William Axt (April 19, 1888 – February 13, 1959) was an American composer of nearly two hundred film scores.
William Axt
Chicago Rapid Transit Company. · eBay item photo front photo back · Public domain
- Name
- William Axt
- Born
- April 19, 1888
- Birthplace
- New York City, New York, U.S.
- Died
- 13 February 1959
- Place of death
- Ukiah, California, U.S.
- Occupation
- Composer
- Education
- DeWitt Clinton High School National Conservatory of Music of America University of Chicago
- Nationality
- United States.
- Languages
- English.
Encyclopédie VALÉORINE
Le dossier documentaire
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William Axt apparaît dans les notices d'autorité de la Bibliothèque nationale de France et de la Deutsche Nationalbibliothek comme pianiste, compositeur et musicien (19 avril 1888 – 13 février 1959).
Vie
William Axt naquit à New York, NY (19 avril 1888) et mourut à Ukiah, California. (13 février 1959).
Institutions citées
Bibliothèque nationale de France · Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
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Documentary connections
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Documentary evidence
Documentary basis
Authority files
wikidata · Q509538 · wikipedia · William Axt
In this article
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — William Axt • Born — April 19, 1888 • Birthplace — New York City, New York, U.S. • Died — 13 February 1959 • Place of death — Ukiah, California, U.S. • Occupation — Composer • Education — DeWitt Clinton High School National Conservatory of Music of America University of Chicago
Life and career
Life and career
Born in New York City, Axt graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in The Bronx and studied at the National Conservatory of Music of America. He earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Chicago in 1922. He studied in Berlin under Xaver Scharwenka. Axt made his American debut as a conductor on December 28, 1910. He served as an assistant conductor for the Hammerstein Grand Opera Company and was a musical director for the Capitol Theatre in Manhattan before joining the music department at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1929. Axt retired from the film industry to raise cattle and breed horses in Laytonville, California. He died in Ukiah, California, and had at least one son (Edward).
Selected filmography
Selected filmography
• Theodora (1921; with Erno Rapee) • The Prisoner of Zenda (1922) • Greed (1924) • The Big Parade (1925; with David Mendoza) • Ben-Hur (1925; with David Mendoza) • The Merry Widow (1925) • La Bohème (1926) • Don Juan (1926; with David Mendoza) • The Scarlet Letter (1926) • Camille (1927) • The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927; with David Mendoza) • Our Dancing Daughters (1928) • Show People (1928) • The Trail of '98 (1928) • White Shadows in the South Seas (1928) • A Woman of Affairs (1928) • The Duke Steps Out (1929) • The Flying Fleet (1929) • The Kiss (1929) • The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1929) • Madame X (1929) • Our Modern Maidens (1929) • Where East Is East (1929) • A Free Soul (1931) • Private Lives (1931) • Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) (1931) • Faithless (1932) • Grand Hotel (1932) • The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932) • The Washington Masquerade (1932) • The Wet Parade(1932) • Broadway to Hollywood (1933) • Clear All Wires! (1933) • Dinner at Eight (1933) • Eskimo (1933) • Gabriel Over the White House (1933) • Hell Below (1933) • Penthouse (1933) • The Secret of Madame Blanche (1933) • Sons of the Desert (1933) • Storm at Daybreak (1933) • Reunion in Vienna (1933) • Forsaking All Others (1934) • Manhattan Melodrama (1934) • Men in White (1934) • Operator 13 (1934) • Sadie McKee (1934) • The Thin Man (1934) • Tarzan and His Mate (1934) • A Wicked Woman (1934) • You Can't Buy Everything (1934) • Buried Loot (1935), short • Rendezvous (1935) • David Copperfield (1935) • Libeled Lady (1936) • Tarzan Escapes (1936) • We Went to College (1936) • Beg, Borrow or Steal (1937) • London by Night (1937) • Parnell (1937) • Under Cover of Night (1937) • Everybody Sing (1938) • Woman Against Woman (1938) • Yellow Jack (1938) • Sergeant Madden (1939) • Tarzan Finds a Son! (1939) • Tell No Tales (1939) • Untamed (1940) • Little Nellie Kelly (1940) • Tarzan's Secret Treasure (1941) • Madame Curie (1943)
Identity
Identity
William Axt is recorded as composer, conductor, director, pianist and musician.

Identifier: bellvol25telephonemag00amerrich (find matches)
Internet Archive Book Images · https: Source book page

Identifier: bellvol25telephonemag00amerrich (find matches)
Internet Archive Book Images · https: Source book page
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 1 entries
1959
William Axt died.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
New York City.
Birth place
Ukiah.
Death place
Literature
Literature
Literature
Axt, William L, Oxford Music Online, 2001
Axt, William L, Oxford Music Online, 2019
Scholarly footprint
Literature
Scholarly footprint
A count of publications is evidence of attention, not of standing, and is given here only as a measure.
Text attribution
Licensing
Text attribution
Part of the biographical narrative on this page reuses licensed material. Its origin, revision and licence are recorded here.
The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article William Axt, revision 1373442603 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Music Notes. The New York Times. 14. October 13, 1922.
- 2.Wm. Axt Conducts 'Naughty Marietta'. The New York Times. 16. December 29, 1910.
- 3.Film Musician William L. Axt Dies at Ukiah. The Los Angeles Times. 9. February 14, 1959.
- 4."Theodora" Film at the Shubert. The Boston Globe. 7. November 22, 1921.
- 5.May, Richard P. Restoring "The Big Parade". The Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists. University of Minnesota Press. 5. 2. 142. 2005. 1532-3978.
- 6."Ben Hur" Pictured at the Colonial. The Boston Globe. 18. February 23, 1926.
- 7.William Axt. British Film Institute.
- 8.Anderson, Gillian B. The Presentation of Silent Films, or, Music as Anaesthesia. The Journal of Musicology. University of California Press. 5. 2. 292. 1987. 0277-9269.
- 9.Platte, Nathan. Dream Analysis: Korngold, Mendelssohn, and Musical Adaptations in Warner Bros.' A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935). 19th-Century Music. 34. 3. 229. 2011. 0148-2076.
- 10.McCormick, Rick. Sex, Politics, and Comedy: The Transnational Cinema of Ernst Lubitsch. Indiana University Press. 167. 2020. 978-0-253-04834-9.
- 11.Yang, Mina. Orientalism and the Music of Asian Immigrant Communities in California, 1924-1945. American Music. 19. 4. 408–9. 2001. 0734-4392.
- 12.[Untitled]. The Boston Globe. 10. May 13, 1933.
- 13.Film and Video Programs. MoMA. 2. 6. 19. 1999. 0893-0279.
- 14.Henderson, Clara. "When Hearts Beat like Native Drums:" Music and the Sexual Dimensions of the Notions of "Savage" and "Civilized" in Tarzan and His Mate, 1934. Africa Today. 48. 4. 98. 2001. 0001-9887.
- 15.[Untitled]. The Boston Globe. 17. March 20, 1933.
- 16.Barham, Jeremy. Recurring Dreams and Moving Images: The Cinematic Appropriation of Schumann's Op. 15, No. 7. 19th-Century Music. 34. 3. 284. 2011. 0148-2076.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
reference work
Wikidata, structured authority record Q509538: William AxtWikimedia Foundation
Secondary witnessreference work
Secondary witness
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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