Twenty Thousand Hertz Latest Episode: The Iconic Sound Of The 20th Century Fox Fanfare

 In this week's episode, Twenty Thousand Hertz takes a trip through more than 100 years of Hollywood history. The podcast's latest episode reveals how the 20th Century Fox Fanfare became one of the most recognizable pieces of music in the world... With those instantly iconic drum rolls and orchestral blasts of horns, the fanfare has introduced thousands of films, and for millions of people it means one thing: movie time. But between the rise of streaming and the acquisition of the brand by Disney, host Dallas Taylor wonders what the future holds for the influential melody.

Art by Jon McCormack

 

Through interviews with film historian Aubrey Solomon and composer/conductor David Newman - whose legendary father Alfred Newman wrote the 20th Century Fox fanfare (and whose family has earned more Oscar nominations than any other) - the episode traces the evolution of this emblematic theme. Beginning before sound came to movies, the story goes on to discuss how the fanfare first developed from the vision of dynamo studio head Darryl Zanuck. 

The music declared that whatever the audience was about to see would be the greatest movie ever. It was a tactic that worked through the 1930s and '40s, but when TV started eating into ticket sales in the '50s, it was the innovation of widescreen CinemaScope that helped Hollywood (and the fanfare) survive. Later, when auteurs like Coppola, Kubrick and Scorsese began to abandon this loud musical introduction in their films, George Lucas brought it back in vogue by deploying it at the beginning of the original Star Wars movie. 

Now, in the age of short audio logos from platforms like Netflix, HBO and Disney+, those epic crescendos might become a relic of the past. For decades, the 20th Century Fox fanfare helped demonstrate the emotional and unifying effects that sound can have. 

 

As Dallas Taylor says in the episode, "For a lot of us, going to the movies and hearing that iconic fanfare was such an important part of our lives. It meant you were about to laugh, or cry, or be amazed by what you saw on screen. It also meant you were about to share that experience with everyone around you."

Twenty Thousand Hertz is an award-winning podcast with tens of millions of downloads, dedicated to revealing the stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds.

 

The podcast's analysis of the 20th Century Fox Fanfare continues a recent streak of wildly entertaining, illuminating episodes rooted in the sonic power of pop culture: they previously uncovered the origins of Netflix's "Ta-Dum" for the first time ever, in addition to exploring the auditory worlds of Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Hamilton, Looney Tunes, Seinfeld and beyond. 

Listen to "20th Century Fox" Here