Who composed the score for Sunset Boulevard?

Franz Waxman composed the score for Sunset Boulevard. His music helped turn Billy Wilder’s dark Hollywood story into an atmospheric film noir, balancing glamour, decay, romance, and psychological unease.

Waxman’s score gives Norma Desmond a deliberately old-fashioned sound. Her theme draws on tango music, reflecting the former silent-film star’s imagined connection to Rudolph Valentino and the grand theatrical world she refuses to leave behind. By contrast, Joe Gillis is associated with a more modern bebop-inflected musical style.

Waxman also used distorted echoes of popular film music from the 1920s and 1930s. That approach mirrors Norma’s unstable state of mind and the film’s collision between silent-era celebrity culture and postwar Hollywood. The music was added late in production, making it the final major element completed for the film.

Waxman won the Academy Award for Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture for Sunset Boulevard. His work is sometimes confused with scores by Bernard Herrmann or Max Steiner, other major composers of classic Hollywood, but neither wrote this film’s music.