Two books about musicians who have been at the center of the classical-music debates of the last 75 years have just arrived. One is a short tell-all-about-me memoir centered around the mesmeric media-star conductor Leopold Stokowski by his former musical assistant (I Knew a Man Who Knew Brahms, by Nancy Shear), and the other is a monumental biography of John Williams (John Williams—A Composer’s Life, by Tim Greiving). Both men were (and still are) household names, and both managed to keep their inner selves complete mysteries while appearing in the company of movie stars, presidents, and foreign dignitaries.
Stokowski’s three marriages (including one to the 21-year-old Gloria Vanderbilt when he was 58) and his affair with Greta Garbo (“Just Friends” was one of the tabloid headlines) may be ancient history, but swap the names with “Gustavo Dudamel Seen in Positano with Beyoncé” or “Yannick Nézet-Séguin Marries Peter Thiel in Venice” and you get the idea. Throughout his career, Stokowski collaborated with big names like Sergei Rachmaninoff as well as Harpo Marx, but it was his handshake with Mickey Mouse in Disney’s Fantasia that sealed the orchestra conductor’s unlikely eternal fame. Stokowski was a movie star.
