[Nick Zwar]

Did Forbidden Planet have a theremin? I don’t think it did, and I don’t recall a theremin sound in the score. But in any case Miklós Rózsa’s score for Spellbound (1945) precedes Forbidden Planet by over a decade, so Spellbound may have been the first Hollywood score to use it. I was unaware Shostakovich used the instrument in a film score even earlier.