From Sink to Success

Around the Hollywood studios, everyone used to call quiet Andre Previn "the kid." But not any more: all of a sudden he had grown up. Last week, just before his 19th birthday, M-G-M assigned him to compose, score and direct the music for a $3,000,000 musical.

Andre and his parents arrived in the U.S. ten years ago. As a conservatory student in his native Berlin, he learned about the old masters. In Los Angeles he heard a jazz record by famed Pianist Art Tatum and "went on a mad Tatum kick for four years." Jose Iturbi heard Andre playing boogie, got him to arrange the boogie pieces for his Holiday in Mexico. M-G-M signed Andre just after he graduated from high school, put him on studio chores-- everything from playing the piano for rehearsals to "watching sink" (synchronizing the film with the soundtrack).

Andre quickly learned the tricks of composing with a stopwatch in his hand. Last year, he got his first big breaks: scoring music for The Hucksters, playing piano in Frank Sinatra's It Happened in Brooklyn.

At 18, Andre has already acquired the occupational disease of Hollywood composers: a hurt attitude at the way other composers scorn them. Says he: "They don't realize what it is to compose 82 seconds of music for a guy falling downstairs&3151;when you have to have a drum when he hits the fourth step."

But he also wants to do "something worth while." So far, he has composed music for a one-act ballet, a rhapsody for violin and orchestra. Adds Andre: "There are a million things in music I know nothing about. I just want to narrow down that figure."

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