Hollaender, Viktor

Hollaender, Viktor, German conductor and composer, brother of Gustav Hollaender; b. Leobschütz, Silesia, April 20, 1866; d. Los Angeles, Oct. 24, 1940. After training in Berlin with Kullak, he was a theater conductor in Hamburg, Milwaukee (1890), Berlin, Chicago, and London (1894–1901). Returning to Berlin, he was musical director at the Metropoltheater (1901–08) and the Thalia-Theater (1908–09), where he brought out various revues. His more ambitious light theater scores included San Lin (Breslau, Jan 28, 1898), Der rote Kosak (Berlin, Dec. 21, 1901), Der Sonnenvogel or Der Phönix (St. Petersburg, Aug. 22, 1903), Die schöne vom Strand (Berlin, Feb. 5, 1915), and Die Prinzessin vom Nil (Berlin, Sept. 18, 1915). He had his finest success with the incidental music he composed for the pantomime Sumurun (Berlin, 1910). In 1934 he emigrated to the U.S. His son, Friedrich Hollaender (b. London, Oct. 18, 1896; d. Munich, Jan. 18, 1976), was a composer. He was a student at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik and of Humperdinck. After composing revues, operettas, and other light theater scores, he became best known as a composer of film scores. Among his finest film scores were Der blaue Engel (1930), Die grosse Sehnsucht (1930), One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937), Destry Rides Again (1939), The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942), and Das Spukschloss im Spessart (1962). His autobiography appeared as Von Kopf bis Fuss, mein Leben mit Text und Musik (Munich, 1965).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire