Hobson's Choice was one of three collaborations between Arnold and director David Lean (the others being The Sound Barrier and The Bridge on the River Kwai). Set in the 1890s, Hobson's Choice stars Charles Laughton as Henry Hobson, a rather unpleasant, overbearing boot-and-shoe salesman (coincidentally, Arnold's own father manufactured shoes), who is watched over by his three daughters. Eventually his eldest daughter Maggie (Brenda de Banzie) begins to assert herself, marrying Willie Mossop (John Mills) and setting him up in a rival boot store. At the end of the film the characters are reconciled as the two boot stores merge, Mossop is given more control over them, and Hobson relinquishes some of his dominance over everyone involved.

Arnold introduces Hobson with a jaunty, humorous theme featuring trombone glissandos representing Hobson's drinking. Later, the music depicts the growing relationship between Willie and Maggie with a love theme, stated quietly at first by the oboe over gentle string chords and then taken by other woodwinds. Here and elsewhere in the film, Arnold's music moves effortlessly between playful, humorous (yet bittersweet) moods and a somewhat darker undercurrent. Hobson's music continues to break through as the love theme is reintroduced, in a more stately, self-consciously classical form, at Willie and Maggie's wedding and is employed one last time, triumphantly, at the film's conclusion.

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