Acclaimed by many film historians as a triumph in the art of motion-picture music, Alfred Newman's reverent, intense, prodigious background music failed to garner an Academy Award nomination for Dramatic Score. Nonetheless, Newman did take home an Oscar that night - for his role as musical director of the Irving Berlin-Ethel Merman frolic, Call Me Madam (1953). To register his unhappiness with the snub, distinguished film composer Franz Waxman, an Oscar winner for Sunset Blvd. (1950) and A Place in the Sun (1951), resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Compounding his appreciation for the Newman opus, Waxman required that his screen credit for this film's sequel, Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954), note that the Waxman score was based on the Newman score. Ironically, that year's winning Dramatic Score perhaps had been placed in the wrong category. Bronislau Kaper's charming score for Lili (1953), really a semi-musical starring Leslie Caron and Mel Ferrer, spotlighted Kaper's melodies for two dream-dance sequences (choreographed by Charles Walters), and the wistful hit waltz, "Li-Lili, Hi-Lo" (lyrics by Helen Deutsch). It was not nominated.