Many Scores and Several Years Ago

David Raksin--the composer of memorable scores for films such as “Laura,” “The Bad and the Beautiful” and “Forever Amber,” and widely considered the dean of Hollywood movie music--turns 90 Sunday, and he approaches the milestone with a predictable measure of good humor.

How does it feel?

“One year better than turning 89,” he quips.

Seated in the living room of his modest Encino home, surrounded by books, papers, CDs and a calendar still filled with commitments, Raksin is almost as busy as ever and seems to be enjoying life.

“I occupy a kind of special position in my profession,” he says with evident satisfaction. “I rarely work at it anymore. But I’m sort of an honored elder citizen, which is a nice way to live. I’m deferred to and all that. And as one of my old friends in Philadelphia would say in this respect, ‘That and a nickel will get you a bus ride.’ ” Raksin is the last surviving major composer of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Although he has just two Oscar nominations (for “Forever Amber” in 1947 and “Separate Tables” in 1958), several of his other scores have attained classic status, including “Force of Evil” (1948), “The Bad and the Beautiful” (1952) and “Carrie” (1952). He also composed the theme for TV’s “Ben Casey” (1961) and the music for the much-watched TV movie “The Day After” (1983).

But Raksin will always be best known as the composer of “Laura.” Written in 1944 for the Gene Tierney-Dana Andrews detective drama, it was a hit (with lyrics by Johnny Mercer) and spawned an estimated 400 recordings over the succeeding half-century.

Raksin’s symphonic arrangement of “Laura” is being played more than a dozen times this year in commemoration of the composer’s birthday. The Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra will perform it tonight at Royce Hall, and John Mauceri will conduct it with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra later this summer.

Cole Porter once said that, of all the tunes that he didn’t write but wished he had, “Laura” topped his personal list. What made it so popular, and why has it endured? Raksin’s not sure, even after all these years.

“If there’s an answer, I don’t know,” he says. “It has certain qualities that make it memorable.”

He insists that he’s not bothered by the notion that people remember “Laura” but don’t remember any of the other 120-plus scores he’s written for movies. “It’s one of those things where you’ve got to accept what people decide about you. The world is full of composers who have written stuff, some of it probably better than this, and nobody even knows who they are. So I am very, very glad to be remembered.”

But Raksin’s not just sitting around collecting the royalties for “Laura.” He’s spent the past couple of years writing a book titled “If I Say So Myself.”

“It is an autobiography, in a sense. An autobiography is when you try to tell the truth. A memoir is when you try not to lie too often,” he adds with a laugh. He’s nearly finished and says he’s looking at different publishers. He’s hoping it will be accompanied by a CD or two of his music.

He also continues to teach in the film-scoring program at USC, and to compose, although he hasn’t written movie music since TV’s “Lady in a Corner” in 1991. “From time to time I will write a new song, or come up with a melody that I think is worth writing down,” he says.

His last major work was for the concert hall, the result of an Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation commission and performed at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., in 1986. “Oedipus Memneitai,” Latin for “Oedipus Remembers,” was a 38-minute piece for six-part mixed chorus, 17-piece chamber ensemble and bass-baritone soloist.

It depicts the classic Greek tragedy figure on the last day of his life. “Oedipus exemplifies the kind of person,” Raksin says, “who has an amazing fame, or notoriety, despite the fact that he was a transgressor. I loved the idea of that.”

He is proud of the work (“it was very interesting and very odd”) and of the fact that the Library of Congress has also asked for his papers, an unusual perk for a composer best known for his movie music. “It’s a very rare honor. I have so much junk,” he says with a wink, “it will be in good hands, instead of winding up under a lot of dust.”

In fact, the Raksin house is top-to-bottom with letters, scores, photographs and memorabilia for the Library of Congress--missives from Aldous Huxley, Adlai Stevenson, Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky; tapes of many of his radio appearances, including his 64-part 1970s public radio series “The Subject Is Film Music”; scores for his film and TV music, concert pieces and his 1946 Broadway musical, “If the Shoe Fits,” based on the Cinderella story; and even sketches by Charlie Chaplin.

Chaplin was the reason he came to Hollywood in 1935, from a background of dance-band playing and arranging for Broadway and radio. Raksin collaborated with him on the music for “Modern Times,” writing down Chaplin’s hummed and whistled tunes and arranging them into an orchestral score.

Chaplin soon fired him for insubordination--Raksin was 23 at the time--but music director Alfred Newman, who saw what Raksin was writing, persuaded Chaplin to reconsider, and the composer and the comedian eventually became fast friends.

That high level of self-confidence, and his tendency to say what was on his mind, seems to have been a common thread throughout his career. It cost him jobs because producers, directors or studio executives “were not willing to be offended by a guy who said, ‘I think we can do better than that.’ I was considered a bit too independent.” Still, he adds, “I got my way a great deal of the time.”

He got out of the business “because I was very disheartened by the way in which demands were put and jobs were offered. What they wanted was something really rather cheap and vulgar, and I was not about to do that on purpose when I was in danger of doing it accidentally,” he says, laughing.

In conversation he often mentions his family, with whom he says he will spend his birthday: son Alex (an editorial writer for The Times who recently won a Pulitzer Prize), daughter Tina and grandchildren Tobias, 3 1/2, and Amelia, 6 months.

Raksin says he would like to be remembered “as a fellow who did the best he could; who had an honorable attitude toward his work, and who was respected for that. I think I had a gift for melody. I think my music was unusual and a little original for its time. I’m very pleased to believe that.”

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“Laura,” Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra, tonight, 8 p.m., Royce Hall, UCLA, free. (310) 845-1900; it will also be played Aug. 30 and 31, Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood. $1-$76. (323) 850-2000.