Biography
Alberto Colombo - Soundtrack, composer:
Born in New York in 1888, composer Alberto Colombo was the cousin of singer Russ Colombo He was a natural musician, and trained as a cellist and arranger. He played with the Manhattan Opera House orchestra in the early 20th century, and, in the 1920s, served as an arranger for Paul Whiteman. The coming of sound to movies brought Colombo into the film industry through RKO, first as a conductor and music arranger in New York and then in Hollywood, as a composer and music director. He made his credited debut as musical director on the studio's railway-based thriller The Silver Streak (1934), and subsequently served in that capacity on A Dog of Flanders (1935) and The Seven Keys to Baldpate (1935), among many other titles, while his music appeared in such productions as Anne of Green Gables (1934). Colombo joined Republic Pictures in 1936 and spent the next seven years there. The following year, he had the unusual distinction -- for someone at Republic, a "B" studio whose employees had few Academy Award aspirations -- of receiving an Oscar nomination for his work on Portia on Trial (1937). His music also turned up in such serials as The Fighting Devil Dogs (arguably the best serial that Republic ever released) and Dick Tracy Returns, and he wrote songs and incidental music on B-Western adventure stories such as Zorro Rides Again.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.