Hollywood Composers
The Legends of American Music series concludes in 1999 with separate tributes to Hollywood Composers and Broadway Songwriters. The series began in 1993 with the issuance of the Elvis stamp, which was also part of the Rock & Roll/Rhythm & Blues set issued later that year. Other music genres celebrated in the series include Broadway Musicals, Popular Singers, Jazz and Blues Singers, Songwriters, Jazz Musicians, Big Band Leaders, Country and Western, Opera Singers, Classical Composers and Conductors, Folk Musicians and Gospel Singers. The Hollywood Composers stamps honor composers Max Steiner, Dimitri Tiomkin, Alfred Newman, Bernard Herrmann, Franz Waxman and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. These Academy Award-winning composers wrote some of the best loved scores in Hollywood films from the 1930s through the 1960s. From the early days of sound motion pictures, these composers were instrumental in the growth and popularity of "talkies" by creating original music to lend excitement and sustain drama. These stamps, and the Broadway Songwriters set, were illustrated by Drew Struzan.