By George Edmonston Jr.

Throughout the 20th century, Oregon State University enjoyed many alumni who became highly prominent in the entertainment industry, from Disney legends "Pinto" Colvig and George Bruns, to radio celebrity and "Hawaii Calls" creator Webley Edwards.

Lest we forget, it’s now time to add to the list of OSU luminaries the names Z. Wayne Griffin and his wife, Elinor Remick Warren, arguably one of the most talented couples to which our Beaver alumni family can stake a claim.

When Z. Wayne Griffin, '31, Hollywood and radio producer, and his wife, the noted composer Elinor Remick Warren, visited Honolulu last summer, Hawaiian newspapers considered the event big news.

According to a brief class news item in The Oregon Stater for March 1953, Wayne Griffin was a member of the class of 1931. Little is known of his days as a student in Corvallis, but presumably, he was a talented singer (a tenor) while in school. Allergies and bouts with asthma ultimately prevented him from pursuing a professional career in music. After leaving Oregon to begin his career in sunny and glamorous Los Angeles, he moved into radio, film and television, where he eventually produced for radio listeners The Burns and Allen Show and The Maxwell House Radio Hour. In the new (at that time) medium of television, Griffin was responsible for the GE Theater, hosted by Ronald Reagan.

His movie credits included Family Honeymoon (1948) with Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert; Key to the City (1950), featuring Clark Gable, Raymond Burr and Loretta Young; and Lonestar (1952), where Gable was joined by Ava Gardner, Broderick Crawford and Lionel Barrymore in the starring roles.

In 1936, Griffin married divorcee Elinor Remick Warren, a Los Angeles native who would go on to become one of America’s outstanding musical composers. The couple shared two children, Wayne, born in 1938, and Elayne, born in 1940.

Elinor Warren’s career spanned 75 years. Biographer Pamela Blevins, in a profile of the famous composer written for MUSICWEB in 2002, said: "In a 1970s survey of major American orchestras, it was revealed that Warren was one of the most performed women orchestral composers of the decade. She composed music of exceptional tonal color in a neo-Romantic style, creating sumptuous sound through her mastery of orchestration."

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, she produced some of her most important works, including The Sleeping Beauty, The Crystal Lake, Along the Western Shore, Singing Earth, Transcontinental, Suite for Orchestra and Abram in Egypt. Her compositions, almost without exception, were generally inspired from the writings of such literary giants as Carl Sandburg, Alfred Lord Tennyson and A.M. Sullivan. The idea for Abram in Egypt came after reading The Dead Sea Scrolls.

Other remembered compositions are The Frolic of the Elves, A Song of June, The Harp Weaver and, most importantly, The Legend of King Arthur, the world premiere of which took place in Los Angeles in 1940 and was performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, with famed British conductor Albert Coates at the baton. It was broadcast on national radio and caused a sensation.

By the 1950s, King Arthur had taken on a life of its own. Writes Blevin:

In 1952, the American composer Elinor Remick Warren approached the Three Choirs Festival in England with her choral symphony the Legend of King Arthur. The director, Herbert Sumsion, turned the work down without even looking at the score, not because Warren was a woman, but because the text by Tennyson was not considered "suitable" for a venue that kept largely to "sacred words."

Attitudes and rules change over time and the Legend of King Arthur was at the heart of the same Three Choirs Festival at Gloucester Cathedral in 1995 under the baton of Richard Hickox. With the British premiere of her masterpiece, Warren became the first American woman ever to have her work performed in this, the world's oldest surviving music festival. Horatio Parker (1863-1919) is the only other American composer to have such a large scale composition featured — his oratorios Hora Novissima in 1900 (the year of Warren's birth) and St. Christopher (Part III) in 1902.

But the British premiere carried with it a bittersweet note. One of Warren's dreams was to attend a performance of The Legend of King Arthur in England. Sadly, this was not to be. She died in 1991. Ironically, Herbert Sumsion died the same week that King Arthur received its premiere at Three Choirs.

Warren enjoyed many honors throughout her career. She was named "Woman of the Year" by The Los Angeles Times in 1953. She also received an honorary doctorate from Occidental College in her native "City of Angels" in 1954.

In describing Warren’s personality, Blevins states that "despite her high profile, she was not one to socialize, preferring to spend her rare leisure time with her family and a few close friends like Richard Crooks and his wife, and her neighbors, the Nelson Eddys."

Blevins continues:

She was an intensely private and introspective woman and a fully committed artist. "One must be prepared for a life of frequent periods of isolation, with no interruptions of the concentration required to attack the blank sheet of manuscript staring back from the work table," she once wrote. "Don't plan on going out to lunch. You will rarely see even the friends dear to your heart. No phone calls, either, to break the concentration. How can one listen to the inner voice except in aloneness?"

Wayne Griffin respected and understood his wife's work and did everything in his power to ensure that she have the time she needed to compose. He once jokingly admonished their children, "Only if you break a leg may you interrupt your mother when she's composing."

Despite her advancing years, Warren remained remarkably youthful in both appearance and attitude. In 1980, she and her husband spent months going over more than 60 of her published songs to choose 12 for a new collection from Carl Fischer, Selected Songs by Elinor Remick Warren. Unfortunately, it would be the last project the couple shared. After years of ill health, Wayne Griffin died from cancer shortly before the collection appeared in 1981.

Warren was devastated, but slowly resumed both composition and playing to sustain her in the aftermath of her loss. She appeared occasionally in programs of her songs. In the mid-'80s, Lance Bowling of Cambria Records in California approached Warren about recording her music. He convinced her to appear as the accompanist in a compact disc devoted entirely to her songs, marking the beginning of a comprehensive CD survey of her music. She was 86 years old.

Unlike many of her contemporaries in the United States and Europe, she never compromised her musical ideals to experimentation and trends. Warren possessed a passionate romantic soul and was deeply moved by nature, beauty and the sublime. Her music reflects her inner being and seems at times to come from a secluded, distant place.

During her long career, Warren never dwelled on the fact that she was a woman working in a male-dominated field. As she explained, "I always try to write music as I feel it. I don't think compositions, whether they're large or small, have a gender, as far as the music goes, and I think it makes no difference to state `this is a woman composer,' `this is a man composer,'" Warren commented in a 1987 interview. "I've had many people say to me `You play like a man,' or `Your music sounds as if it were written by a man.' I think they associate any kind of music that is rather strong or powerful with manliness." When the interviewer observed, "Because the work is so big and we just don't expect that of a woman," Warren shot back, "I don't know why. Women have thoughts too!"

Elinor Remick Warren died in April 1991.

Today, the Z. Wayne Griffin Director’s Stakes, staged in late November at the Los Alamitos (Calif.) Race Track, is one of America’s premiere racing events for quarter horses.

Resources (compiled by Pamela Blevins for MUSICWEB)

Discography:

1. Legend of King Arthur (Cambria CD-1043) 1991...Thomas Hampson, baritone; Lawrence Vincent, tenor; Polish Radio and Television Orchestra and Chorus of Cracow; Szymon Kawalla, conductor.

2. Good Morning, America! (Cambria CD-1042) 1989... Suite for Orchestra; The Crystal Lake; Symphony in One Movement; Along the Western Shore; Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., narrator; Polish Radio and Television Orchestra and Chorus of Cracow; Szymon Kawalla, conductor.

3. Art Songs by Elinor Remick Warren (Cambria CD-1028)...Marie Gibson, soprano; Catherine Smith, flute; Elinor Remick Warren, piano.

4. Requiem (Cambria CD-1061) forthcoming...Marina Sandel, mezzo-soprano; Ryszard Ciešla, baritone; Polish Radio and Television Orchestra and Chorus of Cracow; Szymon Kawalla, conductor.

5. Singing Earth (Cambria CD-1095)...Singing Earth, The Harp Weaver, The Sleeping Beauty, Abram in Egypt; Thomas Hampson, baritone; Polish Radio and Television Orchestra and Chorus of Cracow; Bruce Ferden, conductor.

6. Anne Perillo Sings Songs by Elinor Remick Warren and other American Composers (Plymouth 91881) 1988...Florence Baldacci, piano.

Books:

Virginia Bortin, Elinor Remick Warren, Her Life and Her Music, (Metuchen, NJ & London: The Scarecrow Press, 1987)...Contact Pamela Blevins at pblevins@erols.com for information on ordering.

Virginia Bortin, Elinor Remick Warren, A Bio-Bibliography, (Westport, CT & London: Greenwood Press, 1993).

Compositions in print:

More than 200 of Warren's compositions have been published. Her primary publishers are Carl Fischer, New York and G. Schirmer, New York.

George Edmonston Jr. is editor of the Oregon Stater and Eclips.