Main Title, “God is Good”, and “Finale” from Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955) – composed by Alfred Newman
Beginning in 1940, composer Alfred Newman was appointed the head of the music department at 20th Century Fox – the latest milestone in a long association with the studio. In fact, Newman’s association with Fox goes to the very essence of the studio, as he composed the studio’s famous fanfare.
Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing is a romance starring William Holden and Jennifer Jones (in yellowface as a character who should be half-Asian), and Newman’s score revolves around the eponymous song composed by Sammy Fain and lyricist Paul Francis Webster. “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing” went on to become one of the most enduring songs in the Fain and Webster repertoire. With the title song drawing some inspiration from an aria from Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly, Newman recognized that the title song was fit for variations that could carry through the entire film score.
Newman, who could layer string lines into a romantic theme that few film score composers, goes all-in on this lush sound for the opening titles. Prior to the first and only choral performance of the title song to conclude the film is the cue “God is Good” (or “God Has Been Good”). It is a moment of personal tragedy for Jennifer Jones’ character, with strings – as they have been doing throughout – doing the heavy emotional lifting.
I got taken over by the exalted ttrpg brainworms that make you go ham on details so here's one of @butch-king-frankenstein‘s NPCs for our game: Ali aj-Nabia, Princess of Many Feathers, chieftain of the Nabia Delzhans, Conquer of the Jobari, and Bearer of the Eight Hundred and Eighty-Seventh Blessing of the Samawat
he’s the other half of Purse's boytoy4boytoy relationship, and I love him