Ray Heindorf

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Ray Heindorf (August 25, 1908 – February 3, 1980) was an American songwriter, composer, conductor, and arranger. Born in Haverstraw, New York, Heindorf worked as a pianist in a movie house in Mechanicville in his early teens. In 1928, he moved to New York City, where he worked as a musical arranger before heading to Hollywood. He gained his first job as an orchestrator at MGM, where he worked on Hollywood Revue of 1929, and subsequently went on the road playing piano for Lupe Vélez. After completing this engagement, he joined Warner Bros., composing and/or arranging and conducting music exclusively for the studio for nearly forty years. Heindorf, along with Georgie Stoll at MGM, were jazz aficionados well known in the black entertainment community for employing minority musicians in their studio music departments. He undertook the musical direction of Judy Garland's comeback film A Star is Born (1954) and made a cameo appearance as himself in t...