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Nathaniel Shilkret (December 25, 1889 – February 18, 1982) was an American composer, conductor, clarinetist, pianist, business executive, and music director.
Shilkret was born in New York City to a musical family of Austrian immigrants. His father played a number of instruments, and made certain that Nat and his three brothers were all accomplished musicians at an early age. Nathaniel Shilkret's brother-in-law, Nathaniel Finston, was violinist in many organizations in his youth and was musical director for Paramount and later for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, at one time being Nathaniel Shilkret's boss.
Shilkret moved to Los Angeles in late 1935 and there contributed music scores and musical direction for a string of Hollywood films for RKO (as musical director from 1935—1937), Walter Lantz Productions (one of the studio's musical directors during 1937) and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (as a musical director from 1942—1946). His films included Mary of Scotland (1936), Swing Time (1936), The Plough and the Stars, and Shall We Dance? (1937) and several films of Laurel and Hardy. He also received an Oscar nomination for his work scoring the film version of Maxwell Anderson's stage drama Winterset (1936).
In 1939, he conducted a group of soloists (including tenor Jan Peerce) and the Victor Symphony Orchestra for RCA Victor's multi-disc tribute to Victor Herbert, which were recorded following a special NBC radio broadcast, and he recorded a number of other albums in 1939 and 1940. Due to a serious abdominal operation for cancer removal, he did not conduct for most of 1941.
In 1944–45, Shilkret led the collaborative project that created Genesis Suite, a work for narrator, chorus, and orchestra based on the events in the biblical Book of Genesis. This collaboration involved Shilkret, plus six other composers who immigrated to the United States from Europe – most of whom were Jewish – contributing one movement each: Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Darius Milhaud, Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, Alexandre Tansman and Ernst Toch. Shilkret tried to involve also Béla Bartók into the collaborative project, but this was unsuccessful.
He worked at RKO-Pathe, making short films from 1946 through the mid-1950s. During this same period he recorded at least 260 transcriptions for SESAC. He was the pit orchestra conductor for the Broadway show Paris '90 in 1952. He lived in his son's home in Franklin Square, NY, from the mid-1950s until his death in 1982 and was a Great Uncle of actress Julie Warner.
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