Douglass Fake, Prolific Soundtrack Producer, Has Died at 72
Douglass Fake, an independent record producer (with over 700 credits) and a champion of classic film music restoration for four decades, died after an extended illness on Saturday morning, July 13, in Richmond California.
Mr. Fake’s many producing credits include the first complete restoration of Leonard Bernstein’s On the Waterfront, a massive 5-CD release of Elmer Bernstein conducting his music from The Ten Commandments and the premiere of a half-dozen Henry Mancini underscores including Breakfast at Tiffany’s (previously only available in abridged pop recordings). He also supervised the re-recording of a dozen albums of classic film music, most recently Bernard Herrmann’s music for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, as well as Miklos Rozsa’s Ivanhoe, Julius Caesar, and Spellbound.
Mr. Fake was born on February 23, 1952, in Massachusetts to Charles and Jeanne Fake, an Air Force family that moved frequently from east to west coast and back again. Colonel Fake served as an SAC wing commander, and notably pushed the launch button on John Glenn’s historic orbital mission in 1962. That also placed Douglass, his older brother, Glenn, and younger sister, Peggy, in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis at Patrick AFB south of Cape Canaveral. His experience would be immortalized musically in one of the record albums he produced, Jerry Goldsmith’s Matinee.
Like many fans turned professional, Mr. Fake’s passion emerged at an early age. His sister Peggy recalls, ”We shared a bedroom in grade school, and Doug played the soundtrack to Taras Bulba on repeat endlessly, while slashing the air (conducting most likely) with his plastic sword.” The theaters on base changed programs almost daily, so he spent more time at the movies than watching TV, studying the credits on screen, scrutinizing the posters hung in the lobby and humming the tunes he heard as he searched the small record shop at the base PX. He bought every soundtrack LP he could find, but many film score he sought were unavailable.
Mr. Fake was a boxer and trumpet player in high school, and enrolled in the University of Colorado to study music in 1970. His brass instructor was Hugh “Mac” McMillan, a fearsome professor who reputedly told a young Glenn Miller that he “had no future in music.” Fake survived the ordeal, and met a fellow band student by the name of Mary Ann Jacobs—after a “meet cute” involving the schools’ real life and stuffed Buffalo mascots, they became friends and eventually married in 1974.
While in college, Douglass wrote and recorded a number of symphonic band pieces, and for a while it looked as though Mr. Fake might follow in Mac’s footsteps as a music teacher. His then-current job at the Discount Records chain was not enough to support the family, so when Mary Ann was offered a job as a CPA, they relocated to San Francisco.
Mr. Fake soon set up shop with a table of used and rare soundtrack LPs in a movie poster shop called Cine Monde on Vallejo street. But over the course of a few years, his sales were sufficient to assume the store’s lease and rename the shop Intrada. The only problem? There was a vast, unreleased catalog of film music that he and other aficionados sought to hear apart from the movies. So, in 1985 he assembled a small band of investors and cold-called composer Basil Poledouris, who had risen to prominence after writing the score to Conan the Barbarian. He introduced them to MGM music supervisor Harry V. Lojewski and a deal was struck to release the label’s very first soundtrack—Red Dawn starring Patrick Swayze and Lea Thompson.
That LP sold for a whopping $40 at the time, but it proved that there was a market for albums more focused on underscore than pop songs. More importantly, it led to a crucial introduction that would launch the fledgling label and a lifelong friendship.
Mary Ann Fake recalled the stunned look on her husband’s face as she handed him the receiver over the dinner table. “Doug, Jerry Goldsmith is on the phone. Yes, that Goldsmith!” The storied composer of Patton and Chinatown had learned that Intrada was willing to release his next score, Poltergeist II, and wanted to talk to the producer personally. It was a huge financial risk for Fake, but it led to 85 releases of Goldsmith music, many produced shoulder-to-shoulder by the two men. Notably, they premiered three favorite scores in new recordings, including Islands in the Stream, which led to an ongoing series of albums presenting music otherwise lost to the ages.
Intrada’s success with Goldsmith opened the doors to many other partnerships, including Laurence Rosenthal, an Oscar nominee for Becket, with 19 albums on the label including The Miracle Worker and Clash of the Titans. Bruce Broughton, an Oscar nominee for Silverado, followed with 50 albums including the best-selling Tombstone, still in print. Oscar-winner James Horner of Titanic fame released 40 albums on Intrada, including Troy and several of his animated films. Sara Horner recalls the pleasure the association brought her late husband. “Doug meant a great deal to James. He always supported his music, both technically and artistically, with great care. For James, this support was invaluable.” This care extended even to Horner’s modest first score, The Lady in Red, which premiered on the label 45 years after the film’s debut.
Fake was generous with colleagues and competitors alike, often helping to source missing parts, explain historical anomalies, and tackle projects near and dear to his heart—even if they ended up on someone else’s label. “Doug was a true pioneer who kindled the passion for film music when it was a mere ember,” says Lukas Kendall, producer for Film Score Monthly. “He was also a mentor and collaborator who was endlessly knowledgeable with an incredible ear for detail. I will always remember his enthusiasm for a new album, score or composer.”
Considering his ear for soundtracks and musical skill, it may seem surprising that Douglass never seriously pursued composing for film. He got the opportunity from Jeff Johnson, his store manager since 1990, to write music for an indie feature called Holly vs. Hollywood. Johnson chuckles as he remembers, “The movie never got a proper release, but we sold a lot of copies of the soundtrack at the store! I told him that he could have a successful career in the industry, working as an orchestrator.” His success led to some interest from an agent in Los Angeles, but ultimately Douglass chose to focus on his family, which had now grown to include two daughters, his store and label.
Running a retail operation in the 1990s was harrowing, especially with traditional distribution methods that required shipping thousands of copies in small batches to stores around the world—only to wait months for reimbursement or, worse, returns of unsold, shopworn CDs. This led Mr. Fake and his team to close up shop in San Francisco, move to a new location in the Oakland Hills near his home, and take their business online. The resulting economies set the stage for his most prolific years, averaging 40 albums a year for a decade.
Big sellers like Alan Silvestri’s Back to the Future and Goldsmith’s Alien kept the operation afloat and enabled Mr. Fake to pursue more obscure favorites. In addition to being an artist-friendly label, Mr. Fake was scrupulous in all business dealings, so that he was able to work with every major film studio in Hollywood, starting with 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., Paramount, Sony, MGM/UA and Universal. His reputation even led to an unprecedented offer from Walt Disney—which customarily does not license soundtracks—but led to physical media releases of new titles like The Avengers and Toy Story 3 as well as chestnuts like Hocus Pocus and 20,000 League Under the Sea.
As the market for streaming music explodes, the collectors who prefer CDs cling to their physical media, and with good reason: more than half of Intrada’s output is still unavailable on streaming platforms, and may never be. But because of Mr. Fake’s efforts, the studios now possess pristine digital copies of what were often decaying, unplayable tapes, acetates and ancient film that have been lovingly restored and returned to their vaults. So maybe one day, it all could be available again.
But why does someone commit themselves to what must be acknowledged to be a niche market, and obscure interest? Millions of people enjoy the movies, but a relatively small percentage actually recall the underscore, if they notice it at all. No less an authority than Bernard Herrmann once said “No one knows why films need music, but no film is complete without it.” Douglass Fake had his reasons.
At the 30th anniversary celebration of his company, before a crowd of more than 100 composers, professionals and fans in LA’s Walt Disney Concert Hall, Fake said, “I had a disagreement with an instructor in college about film music vs. concert music. He actually threw me out of class when I proved that Ralph Vaughn Williams’ Seventh Symphony had its origins as a soundtrack (in Scott of the Antarctic). I vowed then to prove that film music was as substantial as any classical composition, and deserved to be brought from the background into the foreground. And that’s what we do.”
Today, there remains a healthy slate of projects in various stages of completion at Intrada, all bearing Douglass Fake’s influence if not direct participation. Roger Feigelson, VP of business affairs, says “We plan to continue operation of the store and label well into next year, to celebrate Intrada’s 40th anniversary. We’re excited to share some titles that have been in development for a long time. The business is healthy. the market is stable—it just won’t be as much fun without Doug. We miss him already.”
Mr. Fake is survived by his sister Peggy, his wife Mary Ann, daughters Regina and Veronika, and granddaughter Amelia. A celebration of his life and other tributes will be announced shortly.
Joe Sikoryak, July 15, 2024
