Background
Skinner was born in Meredosia, Illinois.
Skinner was born in Meredosia, Illinois.
They were billed as the Skinner Brothers dance band. From there they began playing on the steamboats that went up and down the Illinois river. lieutenant was during this time that he began writing and arranging music for dance bands.
This work brought him to New York, where from 1925 to 1935 he arranged about 2000 popular songs for Robbins Publishing.
By the time he left Manhattan for Hollywood, he had written two books on arranging for dance bands. After a short period at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, working on musical settings for The Great Ziegfeld (1936), Skinner was hired by Universal Studios.
Over the course of his 30 years there, he composed music for more than 200 films. He died in Beverly Hills, California.
His distinctive approach to scoring horror films, such as and The Wolf Manitoba (1941), has been characterized as a ‘passion for chromatic lines … mirrored contours … restrained, yet ominously mythical orchestrations’ (Marcello).
He gained new recognition in the 1950s for his lush romantic scores, including those for such Douglas Sirk films as and Despite many changes in the film industry, his book Underscore (1950) has survived as an excellent introduction to film music composition. In 2014, Dallas pre-swing orchestra The Singapore Slingers released a fifteen-track Civil Defense homage to Skinner"s arrangements.