Alex North: 

Music for the Movies

Music for many of the top movies of the 20th Century was composed by Alex North, a man who also mentored many composers — including John Williams.

“You’d make a hell of a composer,” North often told a young Williams.

North, who had a home on Great Hill Road for a dozen years, earned Oscar nominations for 14 of his films and in 1986 was the first composer to receive a Lifetime Achievement Academy Award for his body of work.

Born in 1910 in Chester, Pa., North studied piano at the Curtis Institute of Music, Juilliard, and the Moscow Conservancy. He also studied with Aaron Copland. 

North wrote ballet and classical music in the 30s and 40s – Benny Goodman performed his Revue for Clarinet and Orchestra. 

During World War II, he spent several years in the U.S. Army, service that included being the officer in charge of entertainment for recuperating soldiers in hospitals throughout the U.S. He also wrote music for two dozen government documentaries related to the war.

His first movie score, for Elia Kazan’s “A Streetcar Named Desire,” in 1951 won him an Academy Award nomination, and he was eventually nominated 13 more times. 

He wrote the music for dozens of leading films, including “Death of A Salesman” (1951), “Viva Zapata!” (1952), “The Rose Tattoo” (1955), “The Rainmaker” (1956), “Stage Struck” (1958), “The Sound and the Fury” (1959), “Spartacus” (1960), “Cleopatra” (1963), “Cheyenne Autumn” (1964), The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1968), 2001: A Space Odyssey, “The Shoes of the Fisherman” (1969), “Willard” (1971), “Dragonslayer” (1981), “Prizzi’s Honor” (1985), “Good Morning, Vietnam” (1987), and “The Last Butterfly” (1990).

As a young musician, John Williams played piano in North’s orchestras.  “For those of us coming of age in the 1950s, and seriously interested in film music, Alex North was an inspiration, a role model and a hero,” Williams wrote the foreword to Sanya Henderson’s 2003 biography, “Alex North, Film Composer.” “He was then and remains so today.”

North also wrote much music for TV and won an Emmy for the score to “Rich Man, Poor Man” in 1976. In 1949 he wrote the music for Broadway’s “Death of A Salesman.” He won a Golden Globe for his score for “The Shoes of the Fisherman.” 

North's song, "Unchained Melody," from the film “Unchained,” became a pop music classic. More than 1,500 different recordings of  “Unchained Melody” have been made by more than 670 artists. In 1955, when it first appeared, three versions of the song (by Les Baxter, Al Hibbler, and Roy Hamilton) made the Billboard Top 10. Probably the best-known version, however, was by the Righteous Brothers.

North may have been introduced to Ridgefield through Marthe Krueger, a noted dancer in the 30s and 40s, who in 1942 opened the Marthe Krueger School of Dance on Branchville Road. North and she had collaborated on three dance pieces, and Kruger invited him to teach at her school.

North bought a home here in 1950 and continued to use it until the early 1960s. In 1954, he made some local news when he joined his neighbor, Time magazine chief Henry Luce, and Ridgebury conservationist Daniel M. McKeon in successfully suing the town to stop a development along Great Hill Road.

He died in 1991 at the age of 80 in Los Angeles. John Williams offered a eulogy at his funeral.

Samuel A. Coe: 

‘Mayor of Ridgebury’

Many men who lost an arm in battle might figure that’s enough public service. Not “Uncle Sam” Coe. The battle-worn veteran of the Civil War came to Ridgefield and led an unusually long life of helping his community in many ways — so much so, he was often called the “mayor of Ridgebury.”

“To say that he was much revered, respected and beloved in no way expresses how deeply the inhabitants of Ridgefield felt about Mr. Coe,” wrote The Ridgefield Press at his death in 1936. “His friends are legion, and they all mourn as one the passing of a true friend.”

Samuel Augustus Coe was born in 1843 in the Peach Lake section of North Salem, the son of Quakers whose ancestors helped settle that town  in the early 1700s. (His great-great-grandmother was said to be the first white child born in the Oblong, the 1.75-mile-wide by 50-mile-long slice of Connecticut ceded to New York in 1731.)

At the age of 19, he enlisted in the Union Army at Brewster, and became a member of the 6th Heavy Artillery, Company G, of New York Volunteers. 

“Mr. Coe saw hard service in the Maryland and Virginia campaigns,” The Press reported. “In different battles he was near death many times. Bullets struck his clothing, one burned his neck, another his cheek, and another cut a furrow through his hair, but no blood was drawn then. Later, he was wounded at the siege of Petersburg in May 1864 where he was under fire for 30 days.”

That wound at Petersburg caused the loss of part of his left arm, “thus depriving him of his dream of becoming a shoemaker.”

He was taken to New York City to recuperate under the care of the Sisters of Charity, an order of nuns founded by St. Elizabeth Seton (Ridgefield’s church named for her is just up the road from Coe’s Ridgebury farm). 

After the war, Coe married Susan Cable of North Salem and by around 1890 the couple had moved to Ridgebury, buying a 100-acre farm at the corner of Ridgebury Road. Their house on Old

Stagecoach Road had been built in 1782 by Captain Henry Whitney, whose son-in-law, David Hunt, established a Ridgebury-to-Norwalk stage line that left from the Whitney homestead at 2:30 in the morning. That house later became the home of Daniel and Louise McKeon, who called their spread Arigideen Farm. It’s now the equestrian Double H Farm, whose owner moved the enlarged Whitney/Coe/McKeon house to face Ridgebury Road at the corner of Old Stagecoach.

Coe became very active in his new community. He was a Ridgefield selectman for the eight years from 1894 to 1902, a state representative from 1911 to 1913, and a member of the Board of Assessors for 20 years. He served on the Board of Relief  — the elected agency that heard complaints that taxes were too high or unfairly levied — until he was 90 years old.  

He was a deacon of the Ridgebury Congregational Church for 35 years, and religiously passed the collection plate — a long-handled one — until a few years before his death. He retired from public service in 1933 and moved to Patterson, N.Y., to live with a friend. He died in 1936 at the age of 92.

“Mr. Coe retained the vigor of his youth for many years and in his declining years was a man of unusual vitality,” The Danbury News said at his death. “His eyesight and hearing remained as keen as when he was a boy and a month ago, he slapped his Ridgefield friends on the back as unceremoniously and with as much vim as he had done 20 years before.”

He was also sharp of mind, The News said. “He recalled the events of bygone days as clearly as if they had happened yesterday and kept in close touch with events of the modern world. On his last chat with friends in Ridgefield, he talked with heightened interest of the 1936 presidential election campaign. He was a Republican and expected to cast his 1936 vote for the GOP.”

He didn’t make it to the polls, however, dying in April. 

William Winthrop: 

Mr. Ridgefield Lakes

William “Willie” Winthrop was one of the most influential  — and colorful — characters in 20th Century Ridgefield. Responsible for the town’s largest development, he frequently clashed with town officials and even ran into problems with the law. 

In 1932, Winthrop came to Ridgefield and within 10 minutes of seeing the Fox Hill Lakes, a large subdivision planned around several man-made lakes, he placed a deposit on the development which he renamed “Ridgefield Lakes.” He then spent the next four decades developing the region, involved in the building of more than 325 houses and creating lots for even more. 

Many of the houses were constructed as summer cottages, but virtually all have since become year-round homes. 

He envisioned The Ridgefield Lakes as “a true haven for people who wanted a home they could afford and a haven for a potential area for their retirement years.”

A native of Minneapolis, William Lawrence Winthrop was born in 1895 and served as a gunnery sergeant with an aviation unit of the U.S. Marine Corps during World War I. He became an attorney, but he did not practice law in Ridgefield.

When he came to town, Ridgefield had neither zoning nor planning. “I hired an engineer and surveyor to plan and lay out this property,” he said in 1966. “Unlike so-called ‘planners,’ I knew this

could not be done in three weeks. I did get a plan suitable to my dream for this place in two years and I changed it repeated to achieve a real plan which would not only be suitable for homes but provide for the comfort and recreation of those who chose to build a home there.”

Winthrop maintained that “long before the alleged planners and zoners dreamed up the open space and recreation areas of which they prate, I dedicated by use and deed more than 125 acres of lakes and another 30 acres for open spaces.”

Especially after zoning arrived in 1946, he maintained running battles with the town. He fought zoning and planning officials, complaining that their rules were keeping the little people out of Ridgefield and making it more difficult for the poor to find homes. 

When planning — which included the control of the design of subdivisions — was proposed in the 1950s, he said it was “an expression of extreme snobbery, and is designed to eliminate ... the men in overalls.”

He doggedly opposed most of the town’s school building projects, calling them extravagant. 

Conflicts between Winthrop and town officials were sometimes quite public and often colorful such as at a Planning and Zoning Commission public hearing on a Winthrop proposal, at which he fought with commission Chairman Daniel M. McKeon over when he could speak.

“Mr. Winthrop, you’re out of order,” said McKeon. “Take your seat.”

“What?!” replied Winthrop.

“Take your seat!” McKeon repeated.

“What was that?” Winthrop asked.

“Please sit down!” demanded McKeon.

“Why?” asked Winthrop.

“Please sit down!” McKeon said again.

Winthrop turned to the audience and declared, “He robs me of a half a million dollars and wants me to sit down!”

Then he turned to McKeon and added, “You never had to work for yours.”

A by-now irate McKeon shouted: “You’re out of order — sit down!”

Ambling to his seat, Winthrop turned toward McKeon and said, “To hell with you!”

Coleman London, who was sitting in the audience, leaned over to Karl Nash, who was covering the meeting for The Ridgefield Press, and said, “THAT was worth the price of admission.”

Winthrop was more liberal in his views on national and international affairs, however, and,

though he was a Republican, he was an admirer of Presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy. Among his interests were American Indians, and he once proposed a national holiday honoring them.

He also had some run-ins with authorities. He was arrested in 1937 and 1952 for writing fraudulent checks, and was brought to court by the town for zoning violations. In 1967, he was charged with drunken driving after his car on Danbury Road turned  toward Limestone Road, and into the path of an oncoming police cruiser, sending the officer to the hospital.

He died in 1971 at the age of 75.

Winthrop’s wife was Frances Ney Winthrop, a graduate of the Chicago School of Ballet, who was a dancer in several Broadway shows. They included the 1920 and 1921 versions of the revue, “George White’s Scandals,” with music by George Gershwin, as well as William B. Friedlander’s “Frivolities of 1920.” She died in 1982 at the age of 84 and is buried alongside her husband at Fairlawn Cemetery.