Rick Victor
Richard Victor was born on December 10, 1950 in Maryland, U.S.
Rick Victor was a lover of music soundtracks, especially those produced by Fox (20th Century Fox), he worked as a projectionist at Fox Studios for a number of years and was secretly recording/copying as many Fox scores to open-reel audio tape as possible for preservation purposes...he had an acutely attuned ear for preservation work, he was truly gifted.
When his superiors at Fox found out what he was doing he was dismissed and his collection was confiscated. The studio found out later that Victor owned the raw audio tapes so they were returned to him...degaussed (erased).
At some point Fox started a program that would preserve those Fox soundtracks/scores and release them to CD and re-hired Victor to supervise many of the audio transfers. Unfortunately, when Fox degaussed the original Victor recordings they destroyed the last salvageable references to some of the soundtracks and the originals were beyond saving.
One of his last dream projects was to preserve the soundtrack to the original Lassie TV series (the haunting, whistled theme was composed by Les Baxter). He worked with the company that owned the masters to Lassie, they searched diligently to find the originals and in the end they found them. The studio made all sorts of promises to help release the soundtrack but it ultimately fell through and no soundtrack was released.
Rick Victor died on July l2, 2005 from cancer in Sylmar, Los Angeles, CA.
I want to give a hearty thank you to Ed Nassour, Bill Wrobel, Joshua Sloane, David Schecter for providing a small insight into Mr. Victor's passion.
Film
Star Wars~1977 - Jawa voices (along with Ben Burtt)
Film Music - Recording Engineer/Preservationist
Anna and the King of Siam (1946: Bernard Herrmann)~2000 - Producer
Prince of Foxes (1949: Alfred Newman)~1999 - Producer, Mixing, Editing, Assembly
All About Eve (1950: Alfred Newman)/Leave Her to Heaven (1949: Alfred Newman)~2000 - Producer, Editing, Mixing, Assembly
The Song of Bernadette (1943: Alfred Newman)~1999 - Producer, Editing, Mixing
Broken Arrow (1956: Hugo Friedhofer)~1999 -
Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947: Bernard Herrmann)~1997 - Editing, Mixing, Assembly
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951: Bernard Herrmann)~ - Technical Consultant
Garden of Evil (1954: Bernard Herrmann)/King of Kyber Rifles(1953: Bernard Herrmann) - Project Consultant
Forever Amber (1947: David Raksin)~ - Editing, Mixing
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968: Strass, Strauss, Ligeti, Khachaturian)~1996 - (Rhino) Producer
The Robe (1953: Alfred Newman)~ - (Fox) Technical Consultant
State Fair (1962: Richard Rodgers)~ - Assembly
Stormy Weather (1943: Alfred and Emil Newman)~ - Editing, Mixing
TV Sound Department
The Making of 'Star Wars'~1978 (doc)
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