While still a teenager, Connecticut-born musician Lionel Newman secured a conductor's job with the Los Angeles-based Earl Carroll's Vanities. For several years thereafter, he was the accompanist for Mae West. Hired as rehearsal pianist at 20th Century-Fox in 1943, Newman spent the next four decades at that studio, working in such capacities as conductor, composer, arranger and musical supervisor. The recipient of eleven Oscar nominations, Newman was finally honored with the gold statuette for his scoring of 1969's Hello Dolly. His last screen assignment was 1984's Unfaithfully Yours, a remake of one of the few Fox films of the 1940s that he didn't work on. Lionel Newman was the brother of composer Alfred Newman and the uncle of musician Randy Newman.