George Groves The Movie Sound Pioneer

In 1957 George Groves found himself in charge of the sound department at Warner Bros. The incumbent head William A. Mueller had received instructions from Jack Warner to reduce the number of permanent staff in his department. Many were non-production staff, such as research engineers, who had worked at Warners for many years. Mueller did not obey the order immediately and so was relieved of his position, along with the engineers.

The word from Jack Warner to his studio manager was simply, "Let Groves do it", and so Mueller's job was given to George who held it for fifteen years. At first the position was known as Director of Sound but later became Head of Sound and George was very proud of his department: During that year same Warners made Sayonara, with Marlon Brando. It was a story of American servicemen stationed in Japan during the Korean War who fall in love and marry Japanese nationals. George had first encountered Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire some 6 years earlier and was unimpressed with his diction. He thought he was: "a perfect actor but very hard to understand...a mumbler." However unlike some other actors and directors, Brando was happy to "loop' lines" in Sayonara. Looping – a.k.a. ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement) – is the process of repeating lines in the studio when the quality of recorded dialogue isn't up to scratch. Sayonara received a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Sound. However, it was up against very strong competition in David Lean's World War II thriller Bridge On The River Kwai. At the Academy Awards ceremony held on March 26th 1958, the acclaimed war film won seven Oscars, including the coveted Best Picture award. So George was surprised but absolutely delighted when his sound department won the award for Best Sound. His Oscar was presented to him on the night by the beautiful American actress Dorothy Malone: The notable Warners’ films post-Sayonara included Nun's Story of 1959 starring Audrey Hepburn and the 1960 biographical profile of Franklin Roosevelt's battle with polio, Sunrise at Campobello.

In early 1960 George worked on Oceans 11 with Frank Sinatra. Shortly afterwards Sinatra moved his office onto the Warner lot, just across the street from the scoring stage. The building was redesigned to accommodate his company’s staff and for six years he ran Frank Sinatra Enterprises – including Reprise Records and his motion picture organisation – from there. George said: George found Frank to be very business-like while on the scoring stage. However music mixers were only given one opportunity to make a good recording. If Sinatra was satisfied with his own performance, he'd walk off the stage, put on his hat and say "fine that’s it, print it", with no concern for whether the mixer had made a good take. "Heaven help anybody who said 'Let's do another one' ", remarked George.

On one occasion George got a call to go down to a stage where Sinatra was filming. They sat down in his dressing room and Frank asked George why he had to go to a recording studio across town to make his records. "Why can’t I just walk across the street to a wonderful stage and do the recording there?" George explained that he'd asked Jack Warner to modernise the scoring facilities but no money had been forthcoming. He told him his ideas and showed him his plans and Sinatra said: "Get an estimate of what it takes and I'll have the money for you". George did just that but nothing came of it and Frank Sinatra Enterprises eventually moved off the Warner lot. The suggestion was that Sinatra and Jack Warner had fallen out. The studio modernisation programme would not materialise until two changes of ownership of Warner Brothers had taken place.

George said in his oral history that he liked Sinatra but found him a bit too serious: There were three Warners’ films of note released during 1962, Days of Wine and Roses, The Music Man and Gypsy. The title song for Days of Wine and Roses was written by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer and won an Oscar for best original song. This award pleased George as he'd lent his pre-war Schmidt French horn to the first horn player of the orchestra who'd used it to play the song's horn solo.

The musical Gypsy was based on the Broadway hit about the life and times of burlesque dancer Gypsy Rose Lee. George was surprised when director Mervyn LeRoy insisted that one song be "standard recorded". LeRoy said that the number was to be partly improvised and the performers couldn't be expected to follow a playback. At one time having an orchestra playing at the side of a set was the norm but by the 1960s it was unusual and playbacks ruled.

George Groves described The Music Man as a "fun job to work on" and it won an Oscar for best scoring for arranger Ray Heindorf. The film was also nominated for best sound. A considerable degree of "sweetening" was used on the song 76 Trombones to enhance the original orchestrations. The recordings of about twenty trombones were over-dubbed to create the feeling that it was a really huge trombone section.

The technology was continuing to improve and in 1962 George and his team of engineers in the sound department created a reversible dubbing system, which soon became standard in the Hollywood studios. This would prove useful when they worked on the next big picture at Warners, My Fair Lady, a film that was George's pride and joy.