Ronald Stein(1930-1988)

At mid-century as a young hopeful film composer, he wrote to the music department heads at the film studios in search of advice or suggestions. He received only one reply, and that from Lionel Newman at 20th Century-Fox, who said simply: "Don't come.".

I treated every project that I've ever worked on--and some of them have been fairly miserable--with the greatest of respect. My question to myself, always, in any work I've done, was that my contribution had to be equal to or greater than anyone else's individual contribution. That's always been the way I've approached it. This is also the way I treated it, budget-wise: never wasting money, even if I wasn't paying for it. I treated it with a great deal of respect, first of all because the medium, to me, deserved it; and secondly, because the cooperation of all the people involved in order to get a film mounted is important.