Program Notes

Following The Philadelphia Story, (MGM, 1939) staring James Stewart Franz Waxman’s next assignment at the studio was another Steward film, Reinhold Schunzel’s Ice Follies of of 1939 which also featured Joan Crawford, Lew Ayers, Lewis Stone and The International Ice Skating Troupe. The music in the suite is mostly drawn from the Ice Skating Ballet, which concludes the picture about a struggling Ice Skating Company.
It was a challenging assignment for Waxman, As the piano soloist he hired a friend, Lella Simone, who had recently arrived from Berlin. Lella was a student of Arthur Schnabel and Roger Edens was so impressed that she was able to master the difficult passages that he hired her on the spot. Lella would work at MGM for the next 25 years and become the assistant to the legendary producer Arthur Freed. Upon her retirement from the studio she married my father.

– John Waxman