Sunset Boulevard: The Comeback (1950)
(Norma Desmond as Salome)

Near the end of Sunset Boulevard, Von Stroheim, flanked by Paramount Newsreel cameras, along with police and reporters, tells the demented Norma, “This is the staircase of the palace,” and Norma descends into madness and cinema history. Waxman accompanies her every step down the staircase transforming the tango theme into a grotesque parody of early film music ending in a cascading shower of notes.

Not all “those wonderful people out there in the dark” were happy with the final results. At an industry screening on the Paramount lot, MGM headman Louis B. Mayer told Wilder, “You have disgraced the industry that made and fed you. You should be tarred and feathered and run out of Hollywood.”  Wilder replied with an expletive!

Sunset Boulevard was nominated for eleven Oscars. It won three. Franz Waxman was one of the three. In 2005, Waxman’s score was listed as among the twenty-five most memorable film scores of all time by the American Film Institute.