MUSIC COMPOSERS for film and television: StuOz Favourites
I list about loud old school scores or theme tunes, mostly done for science fiction related material and disaster related movies.
Link to a video I made about Japanese Sci-Fi movies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bLZ4Oo8Nn4
Link to a video I made about 1966 Batman:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3knqB3rkGR4
Link to a video I made about Japanese Sci-Fi movies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bLZ4Oo8Nn4
Link to a video I made about 1966 Batman:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3knqB3rkGR4
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As one of the best known, awarded, and financially successful composers in US history, John Williams is as easy to recall as John Philip Sousa, Aaron Copland or Leonard Bernstein, illustrating why he is "America's composer" time and again. With a massive list of awards that includes over 52 Oscar nominations (five wins), twenty-odd Gold and Platinum Records, and a slew of Emmy (two wins), Golden Globe (three wins), Grammy (25 wins), National Board of Review (including a Career Achievement Award), Saturn (six wins), American Film Institute (including a Lifetime Achievement Award) and BAFTA (seven wins) citations, along with honorary doctorate degrees numbering in the teens, Williams is undoubtedly one of the most respected composers for Cinema. He's led countless national and international orchestras, most notably as the nineteenth conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra from 1980-1993, helming three Pops tours of the US and Japan during his tenure. He currently serves as the Pop's Conductor Laureate. Also to his credit is a parallel career as an author of serious, and some not-so-serious, concert works - performed by the likes of Mstislav Rostropovich, André Previn, Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Gil Shaham, Leonard Slatkin, James Ingram, Dale Clevenger, and Joshua Bell. Of particular interests are his Essay for Strings, a jazzy Prelude & Fugue, the multimedia presentation American Journey (aka The Unfinished Journey (1999)), a Sinfonietta for Winds, a song cycle featuring poems by Rita Dove, concerti for flute, violin, clarinet, trumpet, tuba, cello, bassoon and horn, fanfares for the 1984, 1988 and 1996 Summer Olympics, the 2002 Winter Olympics, and a song co-written with Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman for the Special Olympics! But such a list probably warrants a more detailed background...
Born in Flushing, New York on February 8, 1932, John Towner Williams discovered music almost immediately, due in no small measure to being the son of a percussionist for CBS Radio and the Raymond Scott Quintet. After moving to Los Angeles in 1948, the young pianist and leader of his own jazz band started experimenting with arranging tunes; at age 15, he determined he was going to become a concert pianist; at 19, he premiered his first original composition, a piano sonata.
He attended both UCLA and the Los Angeles City College, studying orchestration under MGM musical associate Robert Van Eps and being privately tutored by composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, until conducting for the first time during three years with the U.S. Air Force. His return to the states brought him to Julliard, where renowned piano pedagogue Madame Rosina Lhevinne helped Williams hone his performance skills. He played in jazz clubs to pay his way; still, she encouraged him to focus on composing. So it was back to L.A., with the future maestro ready to break into the Hollywood scene.
Williams found work with the Hollywood studios as a piano player, eventually accompanying such fare such as the TV series Peter Gunn (1958), South Pacific (1958), Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960), and To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), as well as forming a surprising friendship with Bernard Herrmann. At age 24, "Johnny Williams" became a staff arranger at Columbia and then at 20th Century-Fox, orchestrating for Alfred Newman and Lionel Newman, Dimitri Tiomkin, Franz Waxman, and other Golden Age notables. In the field of popular music, he performed and arranged for the likes of Vic Damone, Doris Day, and Mahalia Jackson... all while courting actress/singer Barbara Ruick, who became his wife until her death in 1974. John & Barbara had three children; their daughter is now a doctor, and their two sons, Joseph Williams and Mark Towner Williams, are rock musicians.
The orchestrating gigs led to serious composing jobs for television, notably Alcoa Premiere (1961), Checkmate (1960), Gilligan's Island (1964), Lost in Space (1965), Land of the Giants (1968), and his Emmy-winning scores for Heidi (1968) and Jane Eyre (1970). Daddy-O (1958) and Because They're Young (1960) brought his original music to the big theatres, but he was soon typecast doing comedies. His efforts in the genre helped guarantee his work on William Wyler's How to Steal a Million (1966), however, a major picture that immediately led to larger projects. Of course, his arrangements continued to garner attention, and he won his first Oscar for adapting Fiddler on the Roof (1971).
During the '70s, he was King of Disaster Scores with The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Earthquake (1974) and The Towering Inferno (1974). His psychological score for Images (1972) remains one of the most innovative works in soundtrack history. But his Americana - particularly The Reivers (1969) - is what caught the ear of director Steven Spielberg, then preparing for his first feature, The Sugarland Express (1974). When Spielberg reunited with Williams on Jaws (1975), they established themselves as a blockbuster team, the composer gained his first Academy Award for Original Score, and Spielberg promptly recommended Williams to a friend, George Lucas. In 1977, John Williams re-popularized the epic cinema sound of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Waxman and other composers from the Hollywood Golden Age: Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) became the best selling score-only soundtrack of all time, and spawned countless musical imitators. For the next five years, though the music in Hollywood changed, John Williams wrote big, brassy scores for big, brassy films - The Fury (1978), Superman (1978), 1941 (1979), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) ... An experiment during this period, Heartbeeps (1981), flopped. There was a long-term change of pace, nonetheless, as Williams fell in love with an interior designer and married once more.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) brought about his third Oscar, and The River (1984), Empire of the Sun (1987), The Accidental Tourist (1988) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989) added variety to the 1980s, as he returned to television with work on Amazing Stories (1985) and themes for NBC, including NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (1970). The '80s also brought the only exceptions to the composer's collaboration with Steven Spielberg - others scored both Spielberg's segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) and The Color Purple (1985).
Intending to retire, the composer's output became sporadic during the 1990s, particularly after the exciting Jurassic Park (1993) and the masterful, Oscar-winning Schindler's List (1993). This lighter workload, coupled with a number of hilarious references on The Simpsons (1989) actually seemed to renew interest in his music. Two Home Alone films (1990, 1992), JFK (1991), Nixon (1995), Sleepers (1996), Seven Years in Tibet (1997), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Angela's Ashes (1999), and a return to familiar territory with Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) recalled his creative diversity of the '70s.
In this millennium, the artist shows no interest in slowing down. His relationships with Spielberg and Lucas continue in A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), the remaining Star Wars prequels (2002, 2005), Minority Report (2002), Catch Me If You Can (2002), and a promised fourth Indiana Jones film. There is a more focused effort on concert works, as well, including a theme for the new Walt Disney Concert Hall and a rumored light opera. But one certain highlight is his musical magic for the world of Harry Potter (2001, 2002, 2004, etc.), which he also arranged into a concert suite geared toward teaching children about the symphony orchestra. His music remains on the whistling lips of people around the globe, in the concert halls, on the promenades, in album collections, sports arenas, and parades, and, this writer hopes, touching some place in ourselves. So keep those ears ready wherever you go, 'cause you will likely hear a bit of John Williams on your way.One of my three favourite film/TV composers of all time (the other two being Jerry Goldsmith and Bernard Herrmann). From 1965 (Lost In Space) to 2005 (War Of The Worlds), Williams did 40 years of simply wonderful music for Irwin Allen TV science fiction, a few 70s disaster movies, Superman, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, etc. He did not die or vanish in 2005 but simply stopped doing great scores in 2005.- Music Department
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Born on February 10, 1929, Jerry Goldsmith studied piano with Jakob Gimpel and composition, theory, and counterpoint with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. He also attended classes in film composition given by Miklós Rózsa at the Univeristy of Southern California. In 1950, he was employed as a clerk typist in the music department at CBS. There, he was given his first embryonic assignments as a composer for radio shows such as "Romance" and "CBS Radio Workshop". He wrote one score a week for these shows, which were performed live on transmission. He stayed with CBS until 1960, having already scored The Twilight Zone (1959). He was hired by Revue Studios to score their series Thriller (1960). It was here that he met the influential film composer Alfred Newman who hired Goldsmith to score the film Lonely Are the Brave (1962), his first major feature film score. An experimentalist, Goldsmith constantly pushed forward the bounds of film music: Planet of the Apes (1968) included horns blown without mouthpieces and a bass clarinetist fingering the notes but not blowing. He was unafraid to use the wide variety of electronic sounds and instruments which had become available, although he did not use them for their own sake.
He rose rapidly to the top of his profession in the early to mid-1960s, with scores such as Freud (1962), A Patch of Blue (1965) and The Sand Pebbles (1966). In fact, he received Oscar nominations for all three and another in the 1960s for Planet of the Apes (1968). From then onwards, his career and reputation was secure and he scored an astonishing variety of films during the next 30 years or so, from Patton (1970) to Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and from Chinatown (1974) to The Boys from Brazil (1978). He received 17 Oscar nominations but won only once, for The Omen (1976) in 1977 (Goldsmith himself dismissed the thought of even getting a nomination for work on a "horror show"). He enjoyed giving concerts of his music and performed all over the world, notably in London, where he built up a strong relationship with London Symphony Orchestra.
Jerry Goldsmith died at age 75 on July 21, 2004 after a long battle with cancer.One of my three favourite film/TV composers of all time. The Twilight Zone (Original Series), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (one TV episode), Our Man Flint, In Like Flint, Planet Of the Apes, Escape From The Planet Of The Apes, The Omen, Damien Omen 2, The Swarm, Capricorn One, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Twilight Zone: The Movie, Air Force One, etc.- Music Department
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The man behind the low woodwinds that open Citizen Kane (1941), the shrieking violins of Psycho (1960), and the plaintive saxophone of Taxi Driver (1976) was one of the most original and distinctive composers ever to work in film. He started early, winning a composition prize at the age of 13 and founding his own orchestra at the age of 20. After writing scores for Orson Welles's radio shows in the 1930s (including the notorious 1938 "The War of the Worlds" broadcast), he was the obvious choice to score Welles's film debut, Citizen Kane (1941), and, subsequently, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), although he removed his name from the latter after additional music was added without his (or Welles's) consent when the film was mutilated by a panic-stricken studio. Herrmann was a prolific film composer, producing some of his most memorable work for Alfred Hitchcock, for whom he wrote nine scores. A notorious perfectionist and demanding (he once said that most directors didn't have a clue about music, and he blithely ignored their instructions--like Hitchcock's suggestion that Psycho (1960) have a jazz score and no music in the shower scene). He ended his partnership with Hitchcock after the latter rejected his score for Torn Curtain (1966) on studio advice. He was also an early experimenter in the sounds used in film scores, most famously The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), scored for two theremins, pianos, and a horn section; and was a consultant on the electronic sounds created by Oskar Sala on the mixtrautonium for The Birds (1963). His last score was for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) and died just hours after recording it. He also wrote an opera, "Wuthering Heights", and a cantata, "Moby Dick".One of my three favourite composers of all time. Like most people, I know him for his work on the Hitchcock films. He scored many of them and when his was not used, such as in the case of the famed Rear Window, this became painfully obvious to me! I would even say it made movies like Rear Window less special to me. In the 50s Herrmann scored several 20th Century Fox movies and this brought life to such mundane material as Beneath The 12 Mile Reef and Garden Of Evil. Thankfully, in the 60s, the "Reef" and "Evil" scores were pinched by Fox's Irwin Allen and used in TV shows such as Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost In Space and The Time Tunnel. His The Day The Earth Stood Still score was also pinched by Irwin Allen. One of Herrmann's best and most under-rated scores ever was for Columbia's Mysterious Island (1961) - the wildly rich score brought life to a routine flick.- Music Department
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Alexander Courage was born on 10 December 1919 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was a composer and actor, known for Star Trek (1966), Jurassic Park (1993) and Star Trek: Generations (1994). He was married to Shirley Pumpelly. He died on 15 May 2008 in Pacific Palisades, California, USA.Star Trek Original Series,
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,
Doctor Doolittle,
Jurassic Park.
(Note: To me atleast, the guy is best known for his science fiction scores but, when interviewed, he made it very clear that he has no interest in science fiction??).- Music Department
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Leith Stevens was born on 13 September 1909 in Mount Moriah, Missouri, USA. He was a composer and actor, known for The War of the Worlds (1953), Destination Moon (1950) and Julie (1956). He was married to Mary McCoy and Elizabeth Stevens. He died on 23 July 1970 in Los Angeles, California, USA.Lost In Space (Blast Off Into Space),
The Time Tunnel (Reign Of Terror),
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,
Destination Moon,
War Of The Worlds (1953 version),
Twilight Zone Original Series.
(Note: He scored some of the great colour Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea episodes like Time Bomb, A Time To Die, No Way Back, Blow Up, etc).- Music Department
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John Barry was born in York, England in 1933, and was the youngest of three children. His father, Jack, owned several local cinemas and by the age of fourteen, Barry was capable of running the projection box on his own - in particular, The Rialto in York. As he was brought up in a cinematic environment, he soon began to assimilate the music which accompanied the films he saw nightly to a point when, even before he'd left St. Peters school, he had decided to become a film music composer. Helped by lessons provided locally on piano and trumpet, followed by the more exacting theory taught by tutors as diverse as Dr Francis Jackson of York Minster and William Russo, formerly arranger to Stan Kenton and His Orchestra, he soon became equipped to embark upon his chosen career, but had no knowledge of how one actually got a start in the business. A three year sojourn in the army as a bandsman combined with his evening stints with local jazz bands gave him the idea to ease this passage by forming a small band of his own. This was how The John Barry Seven came into existence, and Barry successfully launched them during 1957 via a succession of tours and TV appearances. A recording contract with EMI soon followed, and although initial releases made by them failed to chart, Barry's undoubted talent showed enough promise to influence the studio management at Abbey Road in allowing him to make his debut as an arranger and conductor for other artists on the EMI roster.
A chance meeting with a young singer named Adam Faith, whilst both were appearing on astage show version of the innovative BBC TV programme, Six-Five Special (1957), led Barry to recommend Faith for a later BBC TV series, Drumbeat (1959), which was broadcast in 1959. Faith had made two or three commercially unsuccessful records before singer/songwriter Johnny Worth, also appearing on Drumbeat, offered him a song he'd just finished entitled What Do You Want? With the assistance of the JB7 pianist, Les Reed, Barry contrived an arrangement considered suited to Faith's soft vocal delivery, and within weeks, the record was number one. Barry (and Faith) then went from strength to strength; Faith achieving a swift succession of chart hits, with Barry joining him soon afterwards when the Seven, riding high on the wave of the early sixties instrumental boom, scored with Hit & Miss, Walk Don't Run and Black Stockings.
Faith had long harboured ambitions to act even before his first hit record and was offered a part in the up and coming British movie, Wild for Kicks (1960), at that time. As Barry was by then arranging not only his recordings but also his live Drumbeat material, it came as no surprise when the film company asked him to write the score to accompany Faith's big screen debut. It should be emphasised that the film was hardly a cinematic masterpiece. However, it did give Faith a chance to demonstrate his acting potential, and Barry the chance to show just how quickly he'd mastered the technique of film music writing. Although the film and soundtrack album were both commercial successes, further film score offers failed to flood in. On those that did, such as Never Let Go (1960) and The Amorous Mr. Prawn (1962), Barry proved highly inventive, diverse and adaptable and, as a result, built up a reputation as an emerging talent. It was with this in mind that Noel Rogers, of United Artists Music, approached him in the summer of '62, with a view to involving him in the music for the forthcoming James Bond film, Dr. No (1962).
He was also assisted onto the cinematic ladder as a result of a burgeoning relationship with actor/writer turned director Bryan Forbes, who asked him to write a couple of jazz numbers for use in a club scene in Forbes' then latest film, The L-Shaped Room (1962). From this very modest beginning, the couple went on to collaborate on five subsequent films, including the highly acclaimed Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), King Rat (1965) and The Whisperers (1967). Other highlights from the sixties included five more Bond films, Zulu (1964), Born Free (1966) (a double Oscar), The Lion in Winter (1968) (another Oscar) and Midnight Cowboy (1969).
In the seventies he scored the cult film Walkabout (1971), The Last Valley (1971), Mary, Queen of Scots (1971) (Oscar nomination), wrote the theme for The Persuaders! (1971), a musical version of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland and the hit musical Billy. Then, in 1974, he made the decision to leave his Thameside penthouse apartment for the peace of a remote villa he was having built in Majorca. He had been living there for about a year, during which time he turned down all film scoring opportunities, until he received an invitation to write the score for the American TV movie, Eleanor and Franklin (1976). In order to accomplish the task, he booked into the Beverly Hills Hotel for six weeks in October 1975. However, during this period, he was also offered Robin and Marian (1976) and King Kong (1976), which caused his stay to be extended. He was eventually to live and work in the hotel for almost a year, as more assignments were offered and accepted. His stay on America's West Coast eventually lasted almost five years, during which time he met and married his wife, Laurie, who lived with him at his Beverly Hills residence. They moved to Oyster Bay, New York and have since split their time between there and a house in Cadogan Square, London.
After adopting a seemingly lower profile towards the end of the seventies, largely due to the relatively obscure nature of the commissions he accepted, the eighties saw John Barry re-emerge once more into the cinematic limelight. This was achieved, not only by continuing to experiment and diversify, but also by mixing larger budget commissions of the calibre of Body Heat (1981), Jagged Edge (1985), Out of Africa (1985) (another Oscar) and The Cotton Club (1984) with smaller ones such as the TV movies, Touched by Love (1980) and Svengali (1983). Other successes included: Somewhere in Time (1980), Frances (1982), three more Bond films, and Peggy Sue Got Married (1986).
After serious illness in the late eighties, Barry returned with yet another Oscar success with Dances with Wolves (1990) and was also nominated for Chaplin (1992). Since then he scored the controversial Indecent Proposal (1993), My Life (1993), Deception (1992), Cry, the Beloved Country (1995) and has made compilation albums for Sony (Moviola and Moviola II) and non-soundtrack albums for Decca ('The Beyondness Of Things' & 'Eternal Echoes').
In the late nineties he made a staggeringly successful return to the concert arena, playing to sell-out audiences at the Royal Albert Hall. Since then he has appeared as a guest conductor at a RAH concert celebrating the life and career of Elizabeth Taylor and made brief appearances at a couple of London concerts dedicated to his music. In 2004 he re-united with Don Black to write his fifth stage musical, Brighton Rock, which enjoyed a limited run at The Almeida Theatre in London.
He continued to appear at concerts of his own music, often making brief appearances at the podium. In November 2007, Christine Albanel, the French Minister for Culture, appointed him Commander in the National Order of Arts and Letters. The award was made at the eighth International Festival Music and Cinema, in Auxerre, France, when, in his honour, a concert of his music also took place.
In August 2008 he was working on a new album, provisionally entitled Seasons, which he has described as "a soundtrack of his life." A new biography, "John Barry: The Man with The Midas Touch", by Geoff Leonard, Pete Walker, and Gareth Bramley, was published in November 2008.
He died following a heart-attack on 30th January 2011, at his home in Oyster Bay, New York.The James Bond movies,
Raise The Titanic,
The Black Hole,
The Deep,
King Kong (1976 version).
(Note: John Barry was so much apart of James Bond much the same way that Bernard Herrmann was so much apart of Hitchcock. This probably explains why SOME of the non-Barry 007 films are missing some of the punch of the old ones).- Composer
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A composer, conductor, pianist and entertainer, Richard W. "Dick" LaSalle was educated at the University of Colorado. He wrote for radio in Denver, Colorado, and performed in area hotels as a pianist and orchestra leader between 1940 and 1955. He joined the American Society of Composers and Publishers (ASCAP) in 1958.Diary of a Madman,
Lost In Space (The Derelict),
Land Of The Giants (season two),
Wonder Woman (season three),
City Beneath The Sea,
Captain Nemo,
The Night The Bridge Fell Down, etc.
(Note: Diary of a Madman had some of the cues heard in LIS's The Derelict).- Music Department
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Distinguished multiple Grammy-winning trumpeter, arranger, conductor and songwriter whose instantly-recognizable style remains a longtime trademark. The son of a roofer and a youthful asthmatic, his physician advised therapy through playing the tuba. In his school band, he developed an appreciation of the other instruments and became a self-taught trumpeter and trombonist, and also an arranger. On the occasion when Charlie Barnet was to perform on a Pittsburgh radio station, May came to the studio to show Barnet some arrangements, which Barnet accepted but never paid for. Several months later, May approached Barnet for payment and Barnet offered May a position with his band. For Barnet, he provided the arrangement for his hits "Cherokee" and "Redskin Rhumba". Eventually Glenn Miller became aware of the Barnet band's sound and hired May away to play and arrange. For Miller, Billy May contributed the arrangements for "Serenade in Blue", "American Patrol" and "Take the 'A' Train". When the Miller band dissolved during World War II, May settled in Los Angeles to work with NBC and Capitol Records as a studio arranger, and with the bands of 'Les Brown', Woody Herman, Alvino Rey and Ozzie Nelson. But his longest association was with Frank Sinatra, with whom he worked on the noted albums "Come Fly With Me" (1957), " and "Come Dance With Me" (1958), "Come Swing With Me" (1961), and "Trilogy" (1979). In the early 1950s, Billy May had his own orchestra, for which the theme was "Lean Baby", featuring his trademark sax style. His last musical work was arranging a 90th Anniversary compendium of the music from Paramount Pictures in collaboration with noted composer-arranger Will Schaefer. But Billy May left the project due to his illness.The Green Hornet,
Batman (season three),
Mod Squad,
The Naked City (Series).
(Note: he did so much for 1966 Batman).- Music Department
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Versatile American arranger/conductor who started as a trombonist with several big bands, including Tommy Dorsey. In a long, distinguished career, he not only scored numerous films and television shows, but made many now-legendary recordings in collaboration with such people as Rosemary Clooney, Nat 'King' Cole, and, most notably, Frank Sinatra. With the latter, he recorded a series of albums now regarded as legendary ("Songs for Swingin' Lovers", "The Concert Sinatra", etc.). He recorded prolifically on his own, as well, scoring two top-ten hits with "Lisbon Antigua" (#1, 1956) and "Theme from 'Route 66'" (# 10, 1962). In his later years, he made a series of successful albums with pop diva Linda Ronstadt.Batman (season one & two),
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (one episode),
Lolita,
The Untouchables (TV theme),
Pal Joey.
(Note: despite just doing one episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, his music was heard a bit in the series as it was re-used as stock music).- Composer
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Stu Phillips was born on 9 September 1929 in the USA. He is a composer and actor, known for Knight Rider (1982), Argo (2012) and X-Men: Apocalypse (2016).Buck Rogers In The 25th Century,
Battlestar Galactica.
(Note: Too bad this composer was not around for every episode of Buck and BG).- Music Department
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A child prodigy, Miklos Rózsa learned to play the violin at the age of five and read music before he was able to read words. In 1926, he began studying at the Leipzig Conservatory where he was considered a brilliant student. He obtained his doctorate in music in 1930. Moving to Paris the following year, Rózsa had much of his own chamber music performed, as well as his 'Variations on a Hungarian Peasant Song' and his 'Symphony and Serenade for Small Orchestra'. However, he soon became disenchanted with meagre wages for playing classical music in concert. Attempting to change his financial situation, Rózsa managed to secure a contract with Pathe records to compose music for use in intermissions between movies. This was to be his first step in entering the more lucrative field of film composition. In 1935, Rózsa went to London after being invited by the Hungarian Legation to write the music for a ballet. The resulting work, 'Hungaria', so impressed the director Jacques Feyder that he set up a meeting with fellow Hungarian Alexander Korda, who then commissioned him to write an opulent score for the romantic drama Knight Without Armor (1937). Rózsa later recalled having to learn to write music for films 'the hard way': "I bought one German and one Russian book on the technique of film music and everything I learned from these books was absolutely wrong! But then I had long conferences with Muir Mathieson, who was the music director and conductor for Korda, and somehow I learned."
While writing the score for The Thief of Bagdad (1940), Rózsa relocated to Hollywood where he remained gainfully employed over the next four decades. An expert at orchestration and counterpoint with a great flair for the dramatic, he often concentrated on the psychological aspects of a film. One of his innovations was the use of a theremin for the famous dream sequence in Spellbound (1945) which accompanies Salvador Dalí's transcendental nightmare images. Few composers have managed to convey suspense and tension as powerfully as Rózsa with his eerily haunting scores for some of the Golden Era's best films noir (Double Indemnity (1944), The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), The Killers (1946), The Naked City (1948)) or his lush, stirring music for spectacular epics (Quo Vadis (1951), Ivanhoe (1952), El Cid (1961)). In addition to winning three Oscars for his film work, Rózsa also continued as a prolific composer of classical music, including Violin and Piano Concertos, a Concerto for String Orchestra, a Sinfonia Concertante and Notturno Ungherese (influenced, respectively, by Stravinsky and Bartók). In 1945, he was appointed Professor of Composition at the University of Southern California where also lectured on the subject for many years.Ben-Hur (1959 version),
The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad (1973),
Captain Video (1951 movie serial).
(Note: I found Ben-Hur late, in 1998, but I found it in a good way - re-released with a fine print on a cinema screen. This 1998 viewing, with the music playing in HD, was probably the highlight of 1998).- Music Department
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Ron Grainer was one of the outstanding composers of music for British television. He was born in a small mining town called Atherton, Queensland, Australia on 11th August 1922, where his father owned the local milk bar. His mother played piano and Ron was on the keyboard from the age of two and considered a child genius, playing concerts for the local community by the age of six. He also showed the first sign of his versatility at the tender age of four when he began to learn the violin, practicing for two hours before and after school. In order to develop this talent further, he also studied the piano to such a level that, by his early teens he was a proficient performer on both instruments. He was never allowed to play any games which might injure his fingers so led a pretty lonely life. During these years he was an excellent scholar who also had to complete homework assignments. Maths was his special subject, which helped enormously in his orchestrations later on.
Before the second world-war, he studied music under Sir Eugene Goosens at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, but this was interrupted by World War II. He was called up to serve in the army on the islands after Japan invaded and Australia sent forces to monitor planes flying over. It was there that a barrel crashed against his leg when he was travelling in a truck and they had to drive over open ground very fast. He managed to get one leg over the tailgate but the other leg was crushed. There were no doctors at the base and he was in terrible pain and unconscious for several days before he was given medical treatment, by then osteomyelitis had entered the bone marrow. They wanted to amputate but he couldn't have survived the anaesthetic, so he did not lose his leg but was in and out of hospital for years and received an army disability pension.
He returned to Sydney Conservatorium when the war ended but he gave up the violin to concentrate on composition. During this time he rented a room from Margot who became his wife. She had her daughter living with her who had an aversion to meat and so she and Ron bonded as Ron had become total vegetarian during his treatment.
The couple decided to move to England, as a means of raising his international profile. However, on arriving in 1952, with Margot, he initially found regular work as a pianist in light entertainment, touring as part of a musical act - 'The Alien Brothers & June' - with other acts such as Billy Daniels, Guy Mitchell, Frankie Laine, Al Martino and Billy Eckstine. Playing in such exalted company, he was rewarded with no less than three appearances at the London Palladium and also gained something of a reputation as a piano accompanist, often helping out at charity shows organised by Record & Show Mirror proprietor, Isodore Green, the brother of the well-known jazz critic, Benny Green.
During this period, Grainer made his first recordings, albeit as an accompanist, backing Irish folk-singers Charlie McGhee and Patrick O'Hagan, and was also heard on a Christmas record by Shari. He became fascinated with the sound produced by the antique instruments he had started to collect, and soon developed this interest by writing works for some of them. The virginal, the heckle-phones, the shaums, the tenor comporium, as well as the more modern ondes martinet were amongst those he successfully tackled, and one of these early works was an ambitious jazz-ballet score.
After Grainer had divorced Margot, and married his second wife, Jennifer, he settled in Roehampton. He began to act regularly as musical adviser to many gala programmes produced by Associated Rediffusion TV, including those featuring Tito Gobbi and Maria Callas. His 'bread-and-butter' work, however, still lay as a pianist and he was much in demand at the BBC TV rehearsal rooms, which eventually opened a number of important musical doors for him. From this vantage point he was asked to write music for a number of television plays, including The Birthday Party (1960), and also accepted the job as musical adviser to a [link=nm0000267 series. He made such a strong impression on executive producer Andrew Osborn, that he was commissioned to write both the theme and incidental music for a new detective series - Maigret (1959) - based on the books written by Georges Simenon. In using harpsichord, banjo and clavichord, Grainer perfectly captured the Gallic atmosphere and, in doing so, contributed enormously to the ultimate success of the series. This proved to be a major landmark in Grainer's own career. His work on Maigret, which began in 1960 with Rupert Davies in the title role, was directly responsible for him securing his first recording deal with Warner Bros., who issued both a single and an EP featuring musical extracts from the BBC series. Bandleader Joe Loss also recorded the theme and perhaps surprisingly it was his single which reached number 20 in the charts.
Over the next few years, a succession of TV themes and scores followed, many for the BBC. The first of these was 'Happy Joe' in 1962, the theme to Comedy Playhouse (1961) - a series designed to give 'try-outs' to pilots for potential new comedy series. This cheerful sounding melody became extremely familiar with its catchy whistling, encouraging 'Pye', Grainer's new record company to issue it on a single. One of the first Comedy Playhouse (1961) pilots to get its own series was Steptoe and Son (1962), which starred Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H. Corbett as the feuding father and son rag and bone men. Grainer was invited to compose the theme, which he named 'Old Ned' - a reference to the horse which in the opening sequence was shown pulling the cart along. Helped by the enormous success of the series, the theme to Steptoe and Son was recorded by many artists although this saturation coverage spoilt the chances of any one version charting. 'Old Ned' won for Grainer his second successive Ivor Novello Award, following success with Maigret the previous year.
One of BBC's very first cooking programmes, 'Fanny Craddock', transmitted in 1963, also benefited from a Grainer theme, as did 'Giants Of Steam', The Flying Swan (1965) and The Old Curiosity Shop (1962) in the same year. While Grainer worked on the score for the feature film, Some People (1962), he encountered the Eagles, an instrumental group which hailed from Bristol, where the film was being shot. If not actually Grainer discoveries, they were certainly his protégées; they eventually re-recorded a plethora of Grainer originals, and at one time even shared his new home. Their recording of Oliver Twist (1962), for example, written by Grainer for the BBC's adaptation for children's television in 1962, is to this day the only recorded version.
In the same year further film work ensued in the form of Trial and Error (1962), A Kind of Loving (1962) and Live Now - Pay Later (1962), while the following year he was assigned to write the music for The Mouse on the Moon (1963), a comedy written by Michael Pertwee and directed by Richard Lester. Despite these credential and an excellent cast which included Margaret Rutherford, Ron Moody, Bernard Cribbins and Terry-Thomas, the film failed to live up to expectations. Grainer's theme was covered by 'The Countdowns', who are actually an orchestra under the direction of John Barry. Also in 1963, Grainer was asked to provide a theme for a new children's BBC's science fiction series entitled Doctor Who (1963). Despite some changes to the arrangement, this theme is still being used over 40 years later, as the series enjoys renewed success. The very first episode of Doctor Who was broadcast in November, on a day when television was dominated by the news of the shooting of President John F. Kennedy, so tended to pass almost unnoticed, but soon became one of the most popular children's programmes of all time.
Producer Ned Sherrin was impressed with Grainer's ability to create themes for such a wide variety of programmes and in the same year commissioned him to compose the theme for the ground-breaking satirical BBC TV show, That Was the Week That Was (1962) and its successor, Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life (1964). Lyricist Caryl Brahms provided the words sung by Millicent Martin. Around this time, Grainer started experiencing eye problems. Fortunately, prompt treatment helped alleviate blindness with doctors attributing the condition to excessive working under artificial lighting. Despite this obvious handicap, Grainer's output continued apparently unabated. In 1964 he wrote the film-score for Nothing But the Best (1964) - a comedy drama written by Frederic Raphael which starred Alan Bates, Denholm Elliott, Harry Andrews and Millicent Martin. Director Clive Donner had previously worked with Grainer on 'Some People'.
Grainer's first excursion on to the London stage came with 'Robert and Elizabeth' which he wrote with lyricist Ronald Millar. This was a musical about the lives of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, based on 'The Barretts of Wimpole Street', with an original cast including June Bronhill, Keith Michell and John Clement, who also featured on the original cast album. Work on this musical won for Grainer a third Ivor Novello Award. In 1966, a second musical, 'On the Level', also written with lyricist Ronald Millar wasn't quite so successful, though an original cast album did materialise featuring Sheila White and Rod McLennan. However, in 1970, he returned to the world of stage musicals with 'Sing a Rude Song', which benefited from lyrics written by Caryl Brahms and Ned Sherrin. It opened at the Greenwich Theatre prior to a London West End run at the Garrick Theatre.
After concentrating for a few years on films and theatre work, 1967 saw him back on the small screen. Man in a Suitcase (1967), an ITC series starring Richard Bradford as McGill - a one man investigator, featured another exciting Grainer theme. Next up, he produced an unforgettable theme for The Prisoner (1967). What's often not related is the fact that Grainer was originally ITC's third choice as composer for the cult series, after they rejected earlier efforts from Robert Farnon and Wilfred Josephs. Moreover, Grainer's own original attempt, 'Age of Elegance', was deemed inappropriate by producer and star, Patrick McGoohan, who initially disliked the tempo, deeming it far too languorous. Grainer's swift response was to speed it up. What transpired was precisely the type of theme McGoohan envisaged and is the one which eventually graced each episode.
Although Grainer did not write the popular title song, To Sir, with Love (1967), his association with the success of the film led to further offers and in 1968 he scored three more. The Assassination Bureau (1969), was a frantic black comedy starring Oliver Reed and Diana Rigg, Only When I Larf (1968), which boasted a screenplay based on the Len Deighton book, and a cast which included Richard Attenborough, David Hemmings and Alexandra Stewart as a trio of confidence tricksters, and Lock Up Your Daughters! (1969) - the bawdy comedy based on the very successful stage musical of the same name. The stage version had featured music and lyrics by Laurie Johnson and Lionel Bart, but Grainer was in sole charge of the film score.
Grainer's impressive portfolio of music involving detectives or special agents was further enhanced in 1969 with Paul Temple (1969), created by thriller-writer Francis Durbridge for a series of novels in the 1930s. However, the BBC's adaptation, one of their first major colour productions, placed him in a contemporary setting where he, as a writer turned amateur sleuth, was portrayed by Francis Matthews. The series proved an enduring success, extending to 52 episodes over four seasons, ending in September 1971. However, his talents were not solely confined to this genre as two contemporaneous BBC commissions - Boy Meets Girl and The Jazz Age - bear witness to. Boy Meets Girl (1967), which began in 1967, was a series of plays adapted from modern fiction, of which "The Raging Moon" - later a highly acclaimed film - was one such example, while The Jazz Age (1968) which began a year later, collected the works of such notable authors as Noël Coward and John Galsworthy, as a means of producing a series of plays set entirely in the twenties. His theme for this was a deliberate throw-back to the music of that period.
In the early seventies, Grainer achieved further success as a writer of television themes with three commissions for London Weekend Television: Man in the News (1970), The Trouble with You, Lilian (1971) and The Train Now Standing (1972), as well as one for Thames - For the Love of Ada (1970). The Train Now Standing was a gentle comedy drama set at Burberry Halt - one of the few rural railway stations to escape the Beeching axe. Bill Fraser starred as stationmaster Hedley Green who still worked by the GWR 1933 rule book, and other regulars included Denis Lill and Pamela Cundell. Grainer's theme instantly conjures up images of an era of old-fashioned steam trains, a subject on which he had previously worked for the BBC in the early sixties.
He didn't neglect his film duties either during this period, scoring Hoffman (1970), a curious vehicle for Peter Sellers, and Charlton Heston's The Omega Man (1971) - nowadays regarded as a 'cult' movie. However, his eyes continued to prove troublesome, and in a final attempt to combat this. He decided to move to the Algarve in Portugal, actually a farmhouse in Albufeira, where the natural light was appreciably better. According to a report in the Sun newspaper in 1973, Grainer was enjoying life in Portugal and had no intention of returning to England to pick up his abandoned career. But, in 1976, he divorced Jennifer and two years later moved back to England with his son, Damon, to live near Brighton, at which point he was commissioned by Anglia Television to write the theme for a new mystery series entitled Tales of the Unexpected (1979). Author Roald Dahl, perhaps best known for his children's stories, proved equally as adept at devising and writing many macabre plots for this networked series. Featuring a different cast every week, each self-contained half-hour episode usually ended with a teasing denouement, which, in effect explained its title.
Thames Television provided Grainer with two further commissions in that same year. Born and Bred (1978) and Edward & Mrs. Simpson (1978), two very contrasting programmes. Born And Bred was a comedy series set in Battersea, London, which focused upon the stifled and unrealised aspirations of a group of middle-aged residents, whereas 'Edward & Mrs Simpson' based itself on the uncrowned Duke of Windsor's constitutionally controversial relationship with divorcee and subsequent wife, Duchess of Windsor.
Grainer enjoyed a fruitful relationship, artistically and commercially with the BBC and in 1979 he obtained a further two commissions from them. Mystery!: Malice Aforethought (1979), written by Philip Mackie from the original novel by Anthony Berkeley, told the story of a country doctor (Hywel Bennett) who plots to murder his wife (Judy Parfitt) to enable him to continue with a passionate affair. Managing to retain the suspense of the original novel, this was a delightfully observed representation of life in the English countryside during the thirties. This four-part series was broadcast in the same year (1979) as Rebecca (1979) - a strict adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier's novel, which once again teamed Grainer with producer Richard Beynon, after their success with 'Malice'. Directed by Simon Langton, Rebecca starred Jeremy Brett, Joanna David and Anna Massey.
Ron Grainer continued writing music for television and films right up to his death in 1981. Two comedies for Independent Television: Shelley (1979) and It Takes a Worried Man (1981) benefited from his themes, while his score for 'The Business of Murder', a two-part episode of LWT's Sunday Night Thriller (1981) series, was his very last and was transmitted posthumously. On 21st February, 1981, only ten days after being admitted to Cuckfield Hospital in Sussex, suffering from cancer of the spine, he died at the early age of 58. His former wife, Jennifer, flew from Portugal to be at his side.
Very much the 'unsung hero' amongst film and TV composers, Grainer is still being 'discovered'. In the late nineties, for example, Chris Evans chose his 'Man in a Suitcase' theme to introduce the very popular TFI Friday (1996). Evans also made a feature out of the opening titles of Tales of the Unexpected (1979) (featuring Grainer's music) by inviting the original dancer onto the show. In 2007, news came that an album of his music from this series was being compiled for future release on CD.The Prisoner (theme),
The Omega Man,
Doctor Who (theme).
(Note: The Prisoner is a UK drama series of the 60s and is not to be confused with an 80s Australian series about a women's prison).- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Michael Vickers was born on 18 April 1940 in Staines-upon-Thames, Surrey, England, UK. He is a composer, known for My Lover, My Son (1970), At the Earth's Core (1976) and Lovebox (1972).Warlords Of Atlantis.
(Note: Michael only just manged to sneak in this list as his Warlords score is just so memorable).- Composer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Leonard Rosenman was born on 7 September 1924 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He was a composer, known for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), Barry Lyndon (1975) and La La Land (2016). He was married to Judie Gregg, Lyn Furr, Kay Scott and Adele Bracker. He died on 4 March 2008 in Woodland Hills, California, USA.Fantastic Voyage,
Beneath The Planet Of The Apes,
Rebel Without A Cause,
Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home.
The Car.
(Note: his style of music stands out a mile away).- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Prolific screen composer, arranger, and conductor, educated at Juillard and the Academie fur Musik in Vienna. He played in night clubs in Vienna and Munich from 1923 to 1926, then was an opera coach in Munich, 1926-1927. In 1927 he conducted for NBC, and then became music director for WGY in Schenectady, New York. In 1933, he departed for Hollywood and joined ASCAP in 1944.House Of Wax (original).
(Note: mighty sounding music when the wax figures burn).- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Bruce Broughton composes in almost every medium, from theatrical motion pictures and television to computer games, in styles ranging from large symphonic settings ("Silverado") to contemporary electronic scores (the recently Emmy-nominated "The Dive from Clausen's Pier"). Broughton has written the scores for such major motion pictures as "Tombstone," "Lost In Space," "Young Sherlock Holmes" and "Bambi II." With 23 nominations, he has received the Emmy award a record ten times, most recently for his score to the HBO movie, "Warm Springs." His television credits include the main title themes for "Jag" and Steven Spielberg's "Tiny Toon Adventures," as well as the scores for countless television series ("Dallas," "Quincy," "Hawaii Five-O") and movies and mini-series ("The Blue and the Gray," True Women"). His score for "Heart of Darkness" was the first orchestral score composed for a CD-ROM game. Broughton's concert music includes numerous works for orchestra and chamber groups, which have been performed by ensembles such as the Cleveland Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. He is a governor of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a board member of ASCAP and a past president of The Society of Composers and Lyricists. He has lectured in music composition at UCLA and has taught film composition in the Advanced Film Music Studies program at USC.Hawaii Five O Original Series,
Lost In Space The Movie.
(Note: Originally, Lost In Space wanted to get John Williams but he was unavailable).- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
As Danny Elfman was growing up in the Los Angeles area, he was largely unaware of his talent for composing. It wasn't until the early 1970s that Danny and his older brother Richard Elfman started a musical troupe while in Paris; the group "Mystic Knights of Oingo-Boingo" was created for Richard's directorial debut, Forbidden Zone (1980) (now considered a cult classic by Elfman fans). The group's name went through many incarnations over the years, beginning with "The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo" and eventually just Oingo Boingo. While continuing to compose eclectic, intelligent rock music for his L.A.-based band (some of which had been used in various film soundtracks, e.g. Weird Science (1985)), Danny formed a friendship with young director Tim Burton, who was then a fan of Oingo Boingo. Danny went on to score the soundtrack of Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985), Danny's first orchestral film score. The Elfman-Burton partnership continued (most notably through the hugely-successful "Batman" flicks) and opened doors of opportunity for Danny, who has been referred to as "Hollywood's hottest film composer".Batman The 1989 Movie,
Desperate Housewives (theme).
(Note: that 1989 Batman score was so much apart of that year - must have listened to that score 200 times in 12 months).- Composer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
A three-time Oscar nominee, Jerry Fielding was among the boldest and most experimental of all Hollywood film composers. His music typically utilized advanced compositional procedures, producing dense, often richly dissonant orchestral textures, sometimes flavored with jazz. Fielding's film music career was marked by enduring and rewarding collaborations with Sam Peckinpah, Michael Winner and Clint Eastwood.
Born Joshua Feldman in Pittsburgh in 1922 to immigrant Russian parents, Jerry Fielding was brought up in a music-loving but non-musical household. As a home-bound, somewhat sickly teenager, Fielding derived early inspiration from the radio productions of Orson Welles, with their groundbreaking Bernard Herrmann scores. He was also fascinated by the increasingly advanced orchestrations being done for the swing bands of the time, with their heavy reliance on aspects of classical music. The young Fielding joined the studio of Max Adkins, the noted director of theatrical music who also included Henry Mancini and Murray Gerson among his students. After picking up vital arranging skills, Fielding toured with some of the leading dance bands of the 1940s. This led to Hollywood, where his radio and television assignments included conducting and arranging for many of the most popular variety shows of the time, including those of Groucho Marx.
At this time the shadow of McCarthyism was looming over America and Fielding, a self-confessed "loud-mouthed crusader", found himself among its many victims. His hiring of black musicians for his television orchestra (unheard of in those days) brought criticism and threats. His progressive affiliations brought him to the attention of the FBI and HUAC. Despite his strong liberal beliefs, Fielding said that McCarthy's men were probably more interested in getting him to name Groucho Marx as a "fellow traveler". He took the Fifth Amendment and promptly found his Hollywood career in ruins. He eventually found employment in the safe haven of Las Vegas, where he became musical director for the stage shows of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, Debbie Reynolds, Eddie Fisher and others. He also began recording the first of many pop and swing LPs, such as "Fielding's Formula", "Sweet With A Beat" and "Hollywood Brass".
The approach of the 1960s saw the end of McCarthyism and Fielding's return to Hollywood. In 1962, at the suggestion of his writer friend Dalton Trumbo, Fielding was hired by Otto Preminger for the film Advise & Consent (1962), a tale of political intrigue amid the halls of Washington, DC. It was a remarkable debut score that combined light orchestral lyricism with hints of the richer, almost ethereal textures of his later work. It was also drenched in Fielding's own brand of dark irony--a trademark of the composer.
Around this time Fielding, hungry to expand his compositional technique, enrolled as a student of the venerated composer and teacher Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, who, incidentally, had given similar instruction to Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams. More television work followed, including scores to Mission: Impossible (1966) and Star Trek (1966). In 1967 Fielding scored Noon Wine (1966), a contemporary western for television directed by Sam Peckinpah. It was the first in a legendary though sometimes tumultuous partnership. In 1969 came The Wild Bunch (1969). This landmark western was Peckinpah's and Fielding's breakthrough movie. The composer caught the weariness, dust, dirt and blood of a vanishing West in a rich underscore that interspersed sprightly action cues with wistful Mexican folk melodies and nostalgic, bittersweet dirges. However, as always, the nostalgia was tempered with Fielding's characteristically steely irony. It earned him his first Oscar nomination. A second came with Peckinpah's Straw Dogs (1971) in 1971. This controversial though somewhat garbled tale of the violence lurking within a meek man saw Fielding's music take a new direction. Inspired by Igor Stravinsky's "Histoire Du Soldat", and with a large orchestra supplying dense, yearning sound clusters, this remarkable work gives voice to both the characters' inner turmoil and the desolate Cornish landscapes of the film's setting.
Fielding provided another sensitive, beautifully forlorn score for Peckinpah's proxy self-portrait, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974). However, some Peckinpah collaborations were not so happy. Fielding's music for The Getaway (1972) was rejected in favor of a score by Quincy Jones. Then in 1973 Fielding backed out of working with Bob Dylan on the score for Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973).
Fielding's association with Michael Winner began in 1970 with Lawman (1971), for which the composer supplied an epic score tinged with jazz--something of a first for a western! Then followed the searing, impressionistic music for Chato's Land (1972), The Mechanic (1972) and Scorpio (1973). A standout score was for Winner's gothic melodrama, The Nightcomers (1971). This gave Fielding a chance to indulge his love of 19th-century baroque music. The composer considered it among his finest works. His final score for Winner was for The Big Sleep (1978). It was an admirable consummation of the composer's various techniques.
Clint Eastwood was well served by Fielding's scores to The Enforcer (1976) and The Gauntlet (1977). The composer responded to their hard-edged urban milieu with full-on jazz compositions that featured some of the best jazz players in the business. In 1976 Fielding received his third and final Oscar nomination for Eastwood's The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976).
Jerry Fielding was a man who fought hard to get his brand of music into films. He was not a glad-hander. He was an uncompromising artist who perhaps sacrificed many choice assignments by spurning easy, producer-friendly routes. These stances may have taken their toll on him. From the mid-'70s onwards, the composer endured a series of heart attacks. In 1980 he suffered a fatal heart seizure while in Canada scoring Funeral Home. He was 57 years old. Jerry Fielding had an innately humane approach to film scoring. He eschewed traditional "mickey-mousing" techniques (i.e., slavishly following every on-screen action). Rather, his music sought to mirror and illuminate the motivations and deepest inner lives of the characters. This it did with great compassion, beauty and sensitivity. Producer Gordon T. Dawson touchingly described Fielding's music as being " . . . like a man in a green suit walking in a forest."
And so it is.Beyond The Poseidon Adventure,
The Enforcer,
Kolchak The Night Stalker.
(Note: he scored two episodes of Star Trek Original Series but his scores were terrible!).- Music Department
- Composer
- Writer
Although many reference sources inexplicably give Barry Gray's year of birth as 1925, he was in fact born John Livesey Eccles in Blackburn on 18 July 1908. His father John Haworth Eccles was a stationery traveller by profession, but both parents were said to be musically talented, and John Junior went to study at the Royal Manchester College of Music and at Blackburn Cathedral, learning composition from Matyas Seiber. His professional music career began with London publishers B. Feldman & Co. where he arranged scores for variety theatres, and he also worked for Radio Normandy. After war service with the R.A.F. he became a freelance composer and lyricist for radio, records and film music libraries. He joined the Performing Right Society in 1947 under his real name, but later changed it by deed poll to John Livesey Barry Gray. After several years as musical assistant to Eartha Kitt, Hoagy Carmichael and Vera Lynn, in 1956 he began a long and successful association with producers Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, scoring popular marionation series such as Twizzle, Supercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray and Thunderbirds. He continued to compose independently, sometimes using the pseudonyms John Livesey, Gene Durant or Martin Jerbourg (a character in Bergerac). Barry Gray himself moved to the Channel Islands in 1970, settling in St Peter-in-the-Wood in Guernsey and with a music studio in St Peter Port, and occasionally guesting as pianist at island venues. He died of heart disease at Guernsey's Princess Elizabeth Hospital on 26 April 1984, age 75. His music continues to find favour with film makers, particularly the ever-popular Thunderbirds March which enjoyed a notable revival in the expensive Thunderbirds remake of 2004.Stingray,
Thunderbirds,
U.F.O,
Space 1999 (season one).
(Note: Gray was so much apart of these Gerry Anderson shows).- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Immensely talented, Argentinian born pianist, conductor and composer who has written over 100 scores for both television & the cinema including the memorable themes to Mission: Impossible (1966), Mannix (1967), Starsky and Hutch (1975), Cool Hand Luke (1967), and Bullitt (1968). Schifrin has regularly worked alongside Clint Eastwood (another jazz music aficionado) on numerous contributions including the themes to all the Dirty Harry films, plus Joe Kidd (1972) and Coogan's Bluff (1968). During his illustrious career, Schifrin has received four Grammy Awards, and has received six Oscar nominations.
Schifrin received his classical music training in both Argentina & France, and is a highly respected jazz pianist. On moving back to Buenos Aires in the mid 1950s, Schifrin formed his own big band, and was noticed by jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie, who asked him to become his pianist and arranger. Schifrin moved to the United States in 1958 and his career really began to take off. In addition to his jazz and cinema compositions, he has conducted the London Philarmonic Orchestra, the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angelas Philarmonic, the Los Angelas Chamber Orchestra and many others.
Schifrin is one of the talented and significant contributors to film music over the past 40 years, and he continues to remain active with recent compositions for the Jackie Chan films Rush Hour (1998) and Rush Hour 2 (2001).When Time Ran Out,
Murderers' Row,
The Concorde...Airport 79,
Dirty Harry,
Magnum Force,
Sudden Impact,
Mission Impossible (theme),
Mannix (theme),
Starsky and Hutch (theme),
Planet of the Apes TV series (theme).
(Note: King of 70s TV themes?).- Music Department
- Composer
- Director
Elliot Goldenthal is an Academy Award-winning composer best known for his original music scores for such films as Frida (2002) and Across the Universe (2007), among his other works.
He was born on May 2, 1954, in Brooklyn, New York. His father was a house-painter, and his mother was a seamstress. Young Goldenthal was fond of music and theatre, he played with his school rock band during the 1960s. In 1968, he staged his first ballet at John Dewey High School in Brooklyn, from which he graduated in 1971. He attended the Manhattan School of Music, studied under Aaron Copland and John Corigliano, and earned his MA in composition.
Among Goldenthal's most notable works are his original music scores for numerous films, such as Julie Taymor's Frida (2002), Clark Johnson's S.W.A.T. (2003), Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever (1995) and Batman & Robin (1997). Goldenthal also has been collaborating with director Neil Jordan on five films, among those are Michael Collins (1996), and Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994), for which he earned two Oscar nominations.
Since the early 1980s, Elliot Goldenthal has been working together with Julie Taymor. Their partnership in film and in life has been one of the most rewarding in film business; the couple made such acclaimed films as Titus (1999), Frida (2002) and Across the Universe (2007), among their other works, earning numerous awards and nominations for their highly innovative creativity.Batman Forever,
Batman and Robin (1997 version).
(Note: one of the better 90s composers).- Music Department
- Composer
- Sound Department
Of Hungarian ancestry, the son of film composer George Steiner followed in his father's footsteps. A child prodigy, he played the piano by the age of six and cello at thirteen. Growing up in Manhattan, Fred immersed himself in his father's vast collection of records, which included a great deal of orchestral and chamber music. Highly motivated to study composition and playing two instruments, he soon earned himself a scholarship. By the age of twenty, he graduated with a degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio, and, in later years, added a PhD from USC to his resume for writing a dissertation on the legendary film composer Alfred Newman. Straight out of college, Fred began writing and arranging scores for several New York-based radio broadcasts, including "Suspense" and "CBS Radio Workshop". He also scored wartime propaganda shorts, selling war bonds. Another popular show, for which he composed and conducted, was "This Is Your FBI", a semi-documentary production based on actual case files and often narrated by movie personalities, like Richard Widmark, Jack Lemmon and Jeff Chandler.
From 1947, Steiner (who was not related to the legendary Max) spent time in Hollywood, working as arranger, conductor and (often uncredited) composer. His first solo motion picture effort and personal favourite among his scores, Run for the Sun (1956), came about via a recommendation from his good friend Bernard Herrmann. Though he later shared an Academy Award nomination for adaptation/orchestration of The Color Purple (1985), Fred reserved his best work for the small screen. One of the most prolific of television composers, he contributed to numerous episodes of popular series, ranging across diverse genres, from Gunsmoke (1955) to Hogan's Heroes (1965); from The Twilight Zone (1959) to Hawaii Five-O (1968). He was singularly adept at suiting his music to a particular dramatic situation or conveying specific emotions to a certain scene, as, for example, in his use of violins and harp in the Rachmaninoff-inspired score for the "Twilight Zone" episode "The Passersby".
One of Steiner's most fondly remembered compositions is the jazzy "Park Avenue Beat", which served as the theme for the long-running courtroom drama series Perry Mason (1957), conceived to represent a combination of 'sophistication and toughness'. In stark contrast, he provided a more light-hearted musical approach to his score of the animated cult favorite The Bullwinkle Show (1959). His affinity for animation can be traced back to his father, who wrote music for many of the early classic cartoons, such as the "Betty Boop" series and Terrytoons productions, almost always working from home.
Fred Steiner also made a lasting impact on fans of Star Trek (1966), composing music for several episodes, of which "The Corbomite Maneuver" and "Balance of Terror" are often considered among the best of the original series. In an interview (recorded in Santa Fe on June 25, 2003), he recalled that Gene Roddenberry had made it clear to him from the beginning, that he didn't want "poops and peeps music", but "Captain Blood in space"!
Between 1958 and 1960, Steiner worked in Mexico, compiling and archiving Latin American music for government-sponsored television documentaries. He grew to admire the local traditional culture and was in later years drawn back to spend his twilight years there. He also continued his life-long interest in musicology, co-founding the Film Music Society, lecturing in composition at USC and regularly contributing to a number of musical publications (authoring analyses of classic film scores, such as King Kong (1933) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)).Lost In Space Original Series,
Star Trek Original Series.
(Note: one of the less talked about LIS/Trek link ups).- Music Department
- Composer
- Additional Crew
Dominic Carmen Frontiere, 86, Emmy and Golden Globe winning film and television composer, former head of music at Paramount Pictures, passed away in Tesuque, New Mexico on 21 December 2017. He is survived by his wife Robin and their children Emily, Joseph, Nicholas and Sofia, as well as daughter Victoria from a previous marriage.The Outer Limits Original Series,
The Invaders,
Vegas (theme),
Probe (theme).
(Note: He dropped out of both Limits and Invaders after one season).- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
David Arnold was born on 23 January 1962 in Luton, England, UK. He is a composer and actor, known for Casino Royale (2006), Independence Day (1996) and Godzilla (1998). He has been married to Ellie Pole since 8 June 1996. They have three children.Independence Day.
(Note: one of the better 90s composers).- Composer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
In his ongoing, decades-long career as a composer, Alan Silvestri has blazed an innovative trail with his exciting and melodic scores, winning the applause of Hollywood and movie audiences the world over. With a credit list of over 100 films Silvestri has composed some of the most recognizable and beloved themes in movie history. His efforts have been recognized with two Oscar nominations, two Golden Globe nominations, three Grammy awards, two Emmy awards, and numerous International Film Music Critics Awards, Saturn Awards, and Hollywood Music In Media Awards.
Born in New York City and raised in Teaneck, New Jersey, Silvestri first dreamed of becoming a jazz guitar player. After spending two years at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, he hit the road as a performer and arranger. Landing in Hollywood at the age of 22, he found himself successfully composing the music for 1972's "The Doberman Gang" which established his place in the world of film composing.
The 1970s witnessed the rise of energetic synth-pop scores, establishing Silvestri as the action rhythmatist for TV's highway patrol hit "CHiPs." This action driven score caught the ear of a young filmmaker named Robert Zemeckis, whose hit film, 1984's "Romancing the Stone," was the perfect first date for the composer and director. It's success became the basis of a decades long collaboration that continues to this day. Their numerous collaborations have taken them through fascinating landscapes and stylistic variations, from the "Back to the Future" trilogy to the jazzy world of Toontown in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" the tension filled rooms of "What Lies Beneath" and "Death Becomes Her", to the cosmic wonder of "Contact;" the emotional isolation of "Castaway", to the magic of the "Polar Express". But perhaps no film collaboration defines their creative relationship better than Zemeckis' 1994 Best Picture winner, "Forrest Gump", for which Silvestri's gift for melodically beautiful themes earned him an Oscar and Golden Globe nomination and the affection of film music lovers everywhere. This 35 year, 21 film collaboration includes such recent films as "Flight", "Allied" and most recently "Welcome To Marwen". Zemeckis and Silvestri are currently working on "The Witches" based on Roald Dahl's 1973 classic book scheduled for release in October of 2020.
Though the Zemeckis/Silvestri collaboration is legendary, Silvestri has scored films of every imaginable style and genre. His energy has brought excitement and emotion to the hard-hitting orchestral scores for Steven Spielberg's "Ready Player One", James Cameron's "The Abyss" as well as "Predator" and "The Mummy Returns." Alan's diversity is on full display in family entertainment films such as "The Father of the Bride 1 and 2", "Parent Trap", "Stuart Little 1 and 2", Disney's "Lilo and Stitch", "The Croods" as well as "Night at the Museum 1, 2 and 3" while his passion for melody fuels the romantic emotion of films like "The Bodyguard" and "What Women Want".
Most recently, Alan has composed the music for Marvel's "Avengers: Endgame." The film is the culmination of a partnership with Marvel that began in 2011 with Alan's dynamically heroic score for "Captain America: The First Avenger" followed by "Avengers". Since 2011 Alan's collaboration with Marvel helped propel "The Avengers" and "Avengers: Infinity War" to spectacular world-wide success.
Silvestri's success has also crossed into the world of songwriting. His partnership with Six-Time Grammy Award winner Glen Ballard has produced hits such as the Grammy-winning and Oscar-nominated song "Believe" (Josh Groban) for "The Polar Express", "Butterfly Fly Away" (Miley Cyrus) for "Hannah Montana The Movie", "God Bless Us Everyone" (Andrea Bocelli) for "A Christmas Carol" and "A Hero Comes Home" (Idina Menzel) for "Beowulf".
Alan and his wife Sandra are long time residents of California's central coast. In 1998 the Silvestri family embarked on a new venture as the founders of Silvestri Vineyards. Their wines show that lovingly cultivated fruit has a music all its own. "There's something about the elemental side of winemaking that appeals to me," he says. "Both music making and wine making involve a magical blending of art and science. Just as each note brings it own voice to the melody, each vine brings it's own unique personality to the wine."
Their other great passion is the ongoing search for the cure to Type 1 Juvenile Diabetes. With the diagnosis of their son at two years of age (now 29) they continue to work the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and dream of the day this disease (and all of the suffering it brings to so many) will finally become a thing of the past.Back to the Future,
Volcano.
(Note: one of the better 80s/90s composers).- Composer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Conductor, composer, arranger, saxophonist, clarinetist and record producer Ray Ellis has arranged for a dozen million-selling records. A student of the saxophone from age twelve, he learned all the reed instruments by age fifteen. By sixteen he began working with name bands, and joined the US Army during World War II during which he arranged for the Army Band at Fort Knox. Following his discharge he joined the staff of a Philadelphia radio station, and by the 1950s he was in New York arranging for the The Four Lads first recording sessions. By 1961 he signed an exclusive recording contract with RCA Victor.Spiderman (1967 cartoon),
Fantastic Voyage (1968, cartoon),
Star Trek (1973 cartoon),
Shazam! (1974 live action series),
Ark 11 (live action series),
The Secrets Of Isis (live action series).
(Note: This is a seriously under-rated composer. Some of you might not know his music, some of you might not even know half the shows listed above, but I am telling you - this guy really rocked!).- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Alex North studied music at the Curtis Institute of Philadelphia, then won a scholarship to Juilliard in New York (1929) and the Moscow Conservatoire (1933), making him the first-ever American to become a member of the Union of Soviet Composers. In Europe, he worked as music director for the Latvian State Theatre, before returning to the U.S. in 1935 to perfect his craft under the auspices of Aaron Copland. At the same time, he produced his first compositions, including two symphonies, chamber music and dance scores for Martha Graham and Agnes de Mille. After a spell in Mexico as conductor/composer, he served as a captain with the U.S. Army, in charge of 'self-entertainment programs' for hospitalised psychiatric patients. He also did his first film work, scoring documentaries for the Office of War Information.
Profoundly influenced by, above all, Duke Ellington, North began to write several innovative compositions in jazz. His 'Revue for Clarinet and Orchestra' was originally commissioned by Benny Goodman and first performed in 1946 under the direction of Goodman and Leonard Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Joining ASCAP in 1947, North went on to compose theatrical scores, including 'Death of a Salesman' for Elia Kazan and this opened the door to Hollywood. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) was the first all-jazz score ever written for a motion picture. His next assignment was the film version of Death of a Salesman (1951), followed by Viva Zapata! (1952), for which he used traditional instruments, including marimbas and timbales.
Much of his subsequent work was characterised by sparse instrumentation (as, for example, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and the Oscar-nominated Under the Volcano (1984)). He used jazz again, evocatively, to score The Long, Hot Summer (1958) and The Sound and the Fury (1959), but was rather less successful on more conventional themes, such as The Misfits (1961). One of his most beautiful and lyrical works was the love theme from Spartacus (1960). For the small screen, he composed the music for the two instalments of the popular miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man (1976). Alex North was Oscar-nominated fifteen times but only received the coveted statuette as a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1986.Spartacus.
(Note: a very long movie with lots of music!).- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
David Rose was born on 15 June 1910 in London, England, UK. He was a composer and actor, known for Falling Down (1993), Bonanza (1959) and Lionheart (1990). He was married to Betty Bartholomew, Judy Garland and Martha Raye. He died on 23 August 1990 in Burbank, California, USA.Bracken's World (theme),
The Devil And Miss Sarah.
(Note: most would be shaking their heads wondering what the hell these two shows are - The Devil And Miss Sarah is the most under-rated western ever made!).- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Austrian composer Max Steiner achieved legendary status as the creator of hundreds of classic American film scores. He was born Maximilian Raoul Walter Steiner in Vienna, Austria, the son of Marie Mizzi (Hasiba) and Gabor Steiner, an impresario, and the grandson of actor and theater director and manager Maximilian Steiner. His family was Jewish. As a child, he was astonishingly musically gifted, composing complex works as a teenager and completing the course of study at Vienna's Hochschule fuer Musik und Darstellende Kunst in only one year, at the age of sixteen. He studied under Gustav Mahler and, before the age of twenty, made his living as a conductor and as composer of works for the theater, the concert hall, and vaudeville. After a brief sojourn in Britian, Steiner moved to the USA in the same wave as fellow film composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold and quickly became a sought-after orchestrator and conductor on Broadway, bringing the Western classical tradition in which he had been raised to mainstream audiences.
He was soon snatched up by the film studios with the advent of sound and helped the fledgling talkies become musically sophisticated within a brief few years. He was one of the first to fully integrate the musical score with the images on-screen and to score individual scenes for their content and create leitmotifs for individual characters, as opposed to simply providing vaguely appropriate mood music, as evidenced in King Kong (1933), which set the standard for American film music for years to come.
From the 1930s to the 1960s, he was one of the most respected, innovative, and brilliant composers of American film music, creating a truly staggering number of exceptional scores for films of all types. He was nominated for Academy Awards for his scores eighteen times and won three times. Years after his death in 1971, he remains one of the giants of motion picture history, and his music still thrives.Gone With The Wind,
Casablanca,
Mildred Pierce.
(Note: these 30s/40s scores are going to the very roots of Hollywood music).- Composer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Derek Wadsworth was born on 5 February 1939 in Cleckheaton, Yorkshire, England, UK. He was a composer, known for Space: 1999 (1975), Britannia Hospital (1982) and Spring and Port Wine (1970). He died on 3 December 2008 in Oxfordshire, England, UK.Space 1999 (season two).
(Note: the theme music/intro to Space 1999 season two would have to be one of the most listened to things in my life. The music was all about energy and change. Whenever I have an energetic change in life - I listen to that music).- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Composer, arranger and pianist, he was a child prodigy who was already a keyboard artist at three and a concert performer at six. A self-taught orchestrator, he learned musical theory in the local public library, and soon was arranging music for popular bandleaders including Count Basie and Fred Waring. Coming to Hollywood in 1948, he studied composition theory with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and by 1951 he was on the staff of the Universal-International music department, where he remained until the end of that decade, composing themes and scores for U-I's steady output of youth-oriented monster and horror films, a genre he often effaced. Later, at the beginning of the 1960s, he concentrated on television music, until retiring in the mid-1960s.Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,
Lost In Space Original Series,
The Time Tunnel,
The Incredible Shrinking Man,
This Island Earth.
(Note: 50s science fiction and Irwin Allen as well - not bad!)- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Composer, author and oboist, educated at Juilliard (BS). He was first oboist for the Dallas Symphony and the New York Little Orchestra between 1948 and 1956. Then he joined Revue Studios in California, lasting until 1960, thereafter working freelance. Joining ASCAP in 1956, his chief musical collaborators included Johnny Mercer and Jack Brooks.Star Trek Original Series,
Lost In Space Original Series.
(Note: a less talked about Trek/LIS link up).- Composer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Joseph Mullendore was born on 21 October 1914 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was a composer, known for Star Trek (1966), The Dick Powell Theatre (1961) and Burke's Law (1963). He was married to Virginia Ganahl Mullendore. He died on 19 June 1990 in Pasadena, California, USA.Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,
Lost In Space Original Series,
The Time Tunnel.
(Note: For some reason when he worked for Irwin Allen he sparkles, but when he worked for other 60s TV shows he was less pleasing?).- Composer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Harry is survived by his three children, Stephen, Joanne Jr., and Paul, and has multiple grandchildren. Stephen became a writer and professor, while Joanne Jr. worked in production for many television shows including The Larry Sanders show. Harry was ultimately married to his wife of many years, Joanne Burgan, and they parented Joanne Jr. and Paul.Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,
Land Of The Giants,
Hawaii Five O Original Series.
(Note: Nice to see an Irwin Allen composer on Hawaii Five O).- Composer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Composer, MGM music director (1940-1953), conductor, arranger and pianist in the jazz groups of 'Frankie Trumbauer', Bix Beiderbecke, Red Nichols, Joe Venuti and others. He was also with the Paul Whiteman orchestra. He also was music director for Lena Horne, his wife. Joining ASCAP in 1953, his popular-instrumental compositions included "Flying Fingers", "Mood Hollywood" and "Midnight Mood".Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.
(Note: he scored The Monster From Outer Space, And Five Of Us Are Left and The Phantom Strikes - which makes him a very talented man).- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Van Cleave was born on 8 May 1910 in Bayfield, Wisconsin, USA. Van Cleave was a composer, known for White Christmas (1954), Funny Face (1957) and Easter Parade (1948). Van Cleave was married to Doris. Van Cleave died on 2 July 1970 in Los Angeles, California, USA.Twilight Zone Original Series,
Robinson Crusoe On Mars.
(Note: He scored TZ's Elegy, a great score which was re-used in other TZ episodes).- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Alfred Newman is an American composer, arranger, and conductor of film music.
From his start as a music prodigy, he came to be regarded as a respected figure in the history of film music. He won nine Academy Awards and was nominated 45 times, contributing to the Newmans being the most nominated Academy Award extended family, with a collective 92 nominations in various music categories.
In a career spanning more than four decades, Newman composed the scores for over 200 motion pictures. Some of his most famous scores include All About Eve (1950), Anastasia (1956), Wuthering Heights (1939), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), The Mark of Zorro (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Song of Bernadette (1943), Captain from Castile (1947), Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), How the West Was Won (1962), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), and his final score, Airport (1970), all of which were nominated for or won Academy Awards. He is perhaps best known for composing the fanfare which accompanies the studio logo at the beginning of 20th Century Fox's productions.
Newman was highly regarded as a conductor, and arranged and conducted many scores by other composers, including George Gershwin, Charles Chaplin, and Irving Berlin. He also conducted the music for many film adaptations of Broadway musicals (having worked on Broadway for ten years before coming to Hollywood), as well as many original Hollywood musicals.
He was among the first musicians to compose and conduct original music during Hollywood's Golden Age of movies, later becoming a respected and powerful music director in the history of Hollywood.Airport,
The Robe.
(Note: The opening title music of Airport would have to be one of the most listened to things in my lifetime! The tune is so grand, bold and mighty - it just gives me a lift whenever I hear it).- Music Department
- Composer
- Producer
Dimitri Tiomkin was a Russian Jewish composer who emigrated to America and became one of the most distinguished and best-loved music writers of Hollywood. He won a hallowed place in the pantheon of the most successful and productive composers in American film history, earning himself four Oscars and sixteen Academy Awards nominations. He was born Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin on May 10, 1894, in Kremenchug, Russia. His mother, Marie (nee Tartakovsky), was a Russian pianist and teacher. His father, Zinovi Tiomkin, was a renowned medical doctor. His uncle, rabbi Vladimir Tiomkin, was the first President of the World Zionist Union. Young Dimitri began his music studies under the tutelage of his mother. Then, at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, he studied piano under Felix Blumenfeld and Isabelle Vengerova. He also studied composition under the conservatory's director, Aleksandr Glazunov, who appreciated Tiomkin's talent and hired him as a piano tutor for his niece. Soon Dimitri appeared on Russian stages as a child pianist prodigy and continued to develop into a virtuoso pianist. Like other intellectuals in St. Petersburg, Tiomkin frequented the club near the Opera, called Stray Dog Café, where Russian celebrities, including directors Vsevolod Meyerhold and Nicolas Evreinoff, writers Boris Pasternak, Aleksei Tolstoy, Sergei Esenin, Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Gumilev and Vladimir Mayakovsky, had their bohemian hangout. There Tiomlkin could be seen with his two friends, composer Sergei Prokofiev and choreographer Mikhail Fokin. At that time he also gained exposure and a keen interest in American music, including the works of Irving Berlin, ragtime, blues, and early jazz. Tiomkin started his music career as a piano accompanist for Russian and French silent films in movie houses of St. Petersburg. When the famous comedian Max Linder toured in Russia, he hired Tiomkin to play piano improvisations for the Max Linder Show, and their collaboration was successful. He also provided classical piano accompaniment for the famous ballerina Tamara Karsavina. However, the 1917 Communist Revolution in Russia caused dramatic political and economic changes. From 1917 to 1921 Tiomkin was a Red Army staff composer, writing scores for revolutionary mass spectacles at the Palace Square involving 500 musicians and 8000 extras, such as "The Storming of the Winter Palace" staged by Vsevolod Meyerhold and Nikolai Yevreinov for the third anniversary of the Communist Revolution. In 1921 Tiomkin emigrated from Russia and moved to Berlin to join his father, who was working with the famous German biochemist Paul Ehrlich. In Berlin Tiomkin had several study sessions with Ferruccio Busoni and his circle. By 1922 Dimitri was well known for his concert appearances in Germany, often with the Berlin Philharmonic. Among his repertoire were pieces written for him by other composers. He also concertized in France. There, in Paris, Feodor Chaliapin Sr. convinced Tiomkin to emigrate to the United States. In 1925 Tiomkin got his first gig in New York: he became the main pianist for a Broadway dance studio. There he met and soon married the principal dancer/choreographer, Albertina Rasch. He also met composers George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers and Jerome Kern. In 1928 Tiomkin made a concert tour of Europe, introducing the works of Gershwin to audiences there. He gave the French premiere of Gershwin's "Piano Concerto in F" at the famed "L'Opera de Paris." His Hollywood debut came in 1929, when MGM offered him a contract to score music for five films. His wife got a position as an assistant choreographer for some musical films. He also scored a Universal Pictures film, performed concerts in New York City and continued composing ballet music for his wife's dance work. He also continued writing American popular music and songs. He received further Broadway exposure with the Shuberts and Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.. He produced his own play "Keeping Expenses Down," but it was a flop amidst the gloom of the Big Depression, and he once again returned to Hollywood in 1933. When he came back he was on his own. By that time Tiomkin was disillusioned with the intrigue and politics inside the Hollywood studio system. He already knew the true value of his musical talent, and chose to freelance with the studios rather than accepting a multi-picture contract. He became something of a crusader, pushing for better pay and residuals. His independent personality was reflected in his music and business life: he was never under a long-term studio contract. Though MGM was the first to be acquainted with his services, Tiomkin next turned to Paramount for Alice in Wonderland (1933), another fine example of making music that he liked. Hollywood's most prominent independent composer, Tiomkin, thanks to his free-agent status, negotiated contractual terms to his benefit, which in turn benefited other musicians. He aggressively sought music publishing rights and formed his own ASCAP music publishing company, Volta Music Corporation, while remaining faithful to France-based performing rights organization SACEM. In Tiomkin's own words: "My fight is for dignity. Not only for composer, but for all artists responsible for picture." He also fought for employing qualified musicians regardless of their race. As a composer classically trained at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Tiomkin was highly skilled in orchestral arrangements with complex brass and strings, but he was also thoroughly versed in the musical subtleties of America and integrated it into traditional European forms. His interest in the musical form resulted in his next score, for the operetta Naughty Marietta (1935), a popular musical that teamed Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. He also did his fair share of stock music arranging. Among his most successful partnerships was that with director Frank Capra, starting with Lost Horizon (1937), where Tiomkin used many innovative ideas, and received his first Academy Award nomination. The association with Capra lasted through four more famous films, culminating with It's a Wonderful Life (1946). In 1937 Tiomkin became a naturalized American citizen. The next year he made his public conducting debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. During the WWII years he wrote music for 12 military documentaries, earning himself a special decoration from the US Department of Defense. After the war he ventured into all styles of music for movies, ranging from mystery and horror to adventure and drama, such as his enchanting score, intricately worked around Claude Debussy's "Girl with the Flaxen Hair," for the haunting Portrait of Jennie (1948) and the energetic martial themes for Cyrano de Bergerac (1950). He scored three films for Alfred Hitchcock, perhaps the most inventive being for the tension-building Strangers on a Train (1951) with its out-of-control carousel finale. He also worked with top directors in that exclusively American genre: the western. His loudest success was the original music for Duel in the Sun (1946) by King Vidor. For that film, Tiomkin wrote a lush orchestral score, trying to fulfill writer/producer David O. Selznick's request to "Make a theme for orgasm!" Tiomkin worked for several weeks, and composed a powerful theme culminating with 40 drummers. Selsnick was impressed, but commented: "This is not orgasm!" Tiomkin worked for one more month and delivered an even more powerful theme culminating with 100 voices. Selznick was impressed again, but commented: "This is not orgasm! This is not the way I f..k!" Tiomkin replied brilliantly, "Mister Selznick, you may f..k the way you want, but this is the way I f..k!" Selznick was convinced, and after that Tiomkin's music was fully accepted. In 1948 he wrote the score for one of the westerns with John Wayne, Red River (1948) by Howard Hawks. Wayne had Tiomkin's touch on five more movies into the 1960s. Tiomkin was adding a song to all of his scores, starting with the obscure Trail to Mexico (1946). The result was successful, and the western score with songs became Tiomkin's signature. Horns and lush string orchestral sound are most associated with Tiomkin's style, which culminated in The Unforgiven (1960) by John Huston, although he used the same approach in High Noon (1952) with the famous song "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin'" and Howard Hawks' The Big Sky (1952). Most of his big-screen songs were written for westerns and totaled some 25 themes. The most songs he composed for one movie was six for Friendly Persuasion (1956). Tiomkin achieved dramatic effects by using his signature orchestral arrangements in such famous films as Giant (1956), The Old Man and the Sea (1958) and The Guns of Navarone (1961). He also wrote music and theme songs for several TV series, most notably for Clint Eastwood's Rawhide (1959). In 1967 his beloved wife, Albertina Rasch, passed away, and Tiomkin was emotionally devastated. Going back from his wife's funeral to his Hancock Park home in Los Angeles, he was attacked and beaten by a street gang. The crime caused him more pain, so upon recommendation of his doctor, Tiomkin moved to Europe for the rest of his life. In the 1960s Tiomkin produced Mackenna's Gold (1969) starring Gregory Peck and Omar Sharif. He also executive-produced and orchestrated the US/Russian co-production Tchaikovsky (1970), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for best music, and the movie was also nominated in the foreign language film category. Filming on locations in Russia allowed him to return to his homeland for the first time since 1921, which also was the last visit to his mother country. In 1972 Tiomkin married Olivia Cynthia Patch, a British aristocrat, and the couple settled in London. They also maintained a second home in Paris. For the rest of his life Tiomkin indulged himself in playing piano, a joy also shared by his wife. He died on November 11, 1979, in London, England, and was laid to rest in Forest Lawn Memorial Cemetery in Glendale, California. In 1999 Dimitri Tiomkin was pictured on one of six 33¢ USA commemorative postage stamps in the Legends of American Music series, honoring Hollywood Composers. His music remains popular, and is continuously used in many new films, such as Inglourious Basterds (2009) by director Quentin Tarantino.Strangers On A Train,
The Thing From Another World (main title),
Giant,
High Noon.
(Note: Strangers On A Train is Hitchcock without the usual Bernard Herrmann).- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
James Horner began studying piano at the age of five, and trained at the Royal College of Music in London, England, before moving to California in the 1970s. After receiving a bachelor's degree in music at USC, he would go on to earn his master's degree at UCLA and teach music theory there. He later completed his Ph.D. in Music Composition and Theory at UCLA. Horner began scoring student films for the American Film Institute in the late 1970s, which paved the way for scoring assignments on a number of small-scale films. His first large, high-profile project was composing music for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), which would lead to numerous other film offers and opportunities to work with world-class performers such as the London Symphony Orchestra. With over 75 projects to his name, and work with people such as George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Oliver Stone, and Ron Howard, Horner firmly established himself as a strong voice in the world of film scoring. In addition, Horner composed a classical concert piece in the 1980s, called "Spectral Shimmers", which was world premiered by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Horner passed away in a plane crash on June 22, 2015, two months short of his 62nd birthday.Star Trek 2: The Wrath Of Khan,
Titanic,
Troy.
(Note: one of the better 80s/90s composers).- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
One of the great arrangers of the Big Band era, Sicilian-born Peter Rugolo was five years old when his family moved to Santa Rosa, California. He attended San Francisco College and in the 1930's studied composition under the classical composer Darius Milhaud. After military service in World War II, he joined Stan Kenton and His Orchestra, where he contributed numerous distinctive arrangements and compositions. He had a critical influence on the progressive image of the band, which sounded unlike any other in the business. Rugolo and Kenton formed a very close personal friendship, akin to that of Duke Ellington and his arranger Billy Strayhorn.
In 1949, Pete became musical director at Capitol records , where he produced recording sessions with big name jazz stars, including Miles Davis (he came up with the title of Davis's ground-breaking album "The Birth of the Cool"), Charlie Parker, Nat 'King' Cole and Peggy Lee. He continued a part-time collaboration with Kenton and also arranged for Kenton's former star vocalist June Christy (her "Something Cool" album).
The 1950's were a busy decade for Rugolo. He briefly fronted his own band in 1954, featuring Patti Page as his vocalist. He also had contractual affiliations first with Columbia Records and then with Mercury Records, writing, among others, for Sarah Vaughan. By that time, he had branched out into musical genres other than jazz. At MGM, he was employed as a staff composer/arranger on a number of musicals, including Kiss Me Kate (1953) and Easy to Love (1953). From there he went on to prolific television work, writing the jazzy theme scores for popular crime shows like The Fugitive (1963) and The Outsider (1968), as well as westerns (Alias Smith and Jones (1971)) and numerous TV movies. He was nominated for six Emmy Awards, of which he won three. Retiring in 1985, Rugolo was honoured in 1993 by receiving the Golden Score Award from the American Society of Music Arrangers and Composers.The Fugitive (series),
Lost In Space Original Series (one episode).
(Note: Imagine The Fugitive TV series without that music - it would not have been the same at all).- Composer
- Music Department
- Additional Crew
Dennis McCarthy was born in 1945. He is a composer, known for Star Trek: Generations (1994), Star Trek: Enterprise (2001) and Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987). He has been married to Patty since 1965. They have three children.Star Trek: Generations.
(Note: the opening and closing tune is so good it almost puts a tear in my eye).- Composer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Frédéric Talgorn was born on 3 July 1961 in Toulouse, France. He is a composer, known for Fortress (1992), Asterix at the Olympic Games (2008) and Robot Jox (1989).Edge Of Sanity.
(Note: this only just managed to sneak in the list as by 1989 we were getting so little quality music - it saved us!).- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
German-born composer Hans Zimmer is recognized as one of Hollywood's most innovative musical talents. He featured in the music video for The Buggles' single "Video Killed the Radio Star", which became a worldwide hit and helped usher in a new era of global entertainment as the first music video to be aired on MTV (August 1, 1981).
Hans Florian Zimmer was born in Frankfurt am Main, then in West Germany, the son of Brigitte (Weil) and Hans Joachim Zimmer. He entered the world of film music in London during a long collaboration with famed composer and mentor Stanley Myers, which included the film My Beautiful Laundrette (1985). He soon began work on several successful solo projects, including the critically acclaimed A World Apart, and during these years Zimmer pioneered the use of combining old and new musical technologies. Today, this work has earned him the reputation of being the father of integrating the electronic musical world with traditional orchestral arrangements.
A turning point in Zimmer's career came in 1988 when he was asked to score Rain Man for director Barry Levinson. The film went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture of the Year and earned Zimmer his first Academy Award Nomination for Best Original Score. The next year, Zimmer composed the score for another Best Picture Oscar recipient, Driving Miss Daisy (1989), starring Jessica Tandy, and Morgan Freeman.
Having already scored two Best Picture winners, in the early 1990s, Zimmer cemented his position as a preeminent talent with the award-winning score for The Lion King (1994). The soundtrack has sold over 15 million copies to date and earned him an Academy Award for Best Original Score, a Golden Globe, an American Music Award, a Tony, and two Grammy Awards. In total, Zimmer's work has been nominated for 7 Golden Globes, 7 Grammys and seven Oscars for Rain Man (1988), Gladiator (2000), The Lion King (1994), As Good as It Gets (1997), The The Preacher's Wife (1996), The Thin Red Line (1998), The Prince of Egypt (1998), and The Last Samurai (2003).
With his career in full swing, Zimmer was anxious to replicate the mentoring experience he had benefited from under Stanley Myers' guidance. With state-of-the-art technology and a supportive creative environment, Zimmer was able to offer film-scoring opportunities to young composers at his Santa Monica-based musical "think tank." This approach helped launch the careers of such notable composers as Mark Mancina, John Powell, Harry Gregson-Williams, Nick Glennie-Smith, and Klaus Badelt.
In 2000, Zimmer scored the music for Gladiator (2000), for which he received an Oscar nomination, in addition to Golden Globe and Broadcast Film Critics Awards for his epic score. It sold more than three million copies worldwide and spawned a second album Gladiator: More Music From The Motion Picture, released on the Universal Classics/Decca label. Zimmer's other scores that year included Mission: Impossible II (2000), The Road to El Dorado (2000), and An Everlasting Piece (2000), directed by Barry Levinson.
Some of his other impressive scores include Pearl Harbor (2001), The Ring (2002), four films directed by Ridley Scott; Matchstick Men (2003), Hannibal (2001), Black Hawk Down (2001), and Thelma & Louise (1991), Penny Marshall's Riding in Cars with Boys (2001), and A League of Their Own (1992), Tony Scott's True Romance (1993), Tears of the Sun (2003), Ron Howard's Backdraft (1991), Days of Thunder (1990), Smilla's Sense of Snow (1997), and the animated Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) for which he also co-wrote four of the songs with Bryan Adams, including the Golden Globe nominated Here I Am.
At the 27th annual Flanders International Film Festival, Zimmer performed live for the first time in concert with a 100-piece orchestra and a 100-voice choir. Choosing selections from his impressive body of work, Zimmer performed newly orchestrated concert versions of Gladiator, Mission: Impossible II (2000), Rain Man (1988), The Lion King (1994), and The Thin Red Line (1998). The concert was recorded by Decca and released as a concert album entitled "The Wings Of A Film: The Music Of Hans Zimmer."
In 2003, Zimmer completed his 100th film score for the film The Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise, for which he received both a Golden Globe and a Broadcast Film Critics nomination. Zimmer then scored Nancy Meyers' comedy Something's Gotta Give (2003), the animated Dreamworks film, Shark Tale (2004) (featuring voices of Will Smith, Renée Zellweger, Robert De Niro, Jack Black, and Martin Scorsese), and Jim Brooks' Spanglish (2004) starring Adam Sandler and Téa Leoni (for which he also received a Golden Globe nomination). His 2005 projects include Paramount's The Weather Man (2005) starring Nicolas Cage, Dreamworks' Madagascar (2005), and the Warner Bros. summer release, Batman Begins (2005).
Zimmer's additional honors and awards include the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award in Film Composition from the National Board of Review, and the Frederick Loewe Award in 2003 at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. He has also received ASCAP's Henry Mancini Award for Lifetime Achievement. Hans and his wife live in Los Angeles and he is the father of four children.Batman Begins,
The Dark Knight,
The Dark Knight Rises.
(Note: Good Lord! 21st Century music in this list!).- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Known best as the record producer for The Beatles, George Martin had a long and varied musical career, and continues to enjoy a rare reputation as one of popular music's true "nice guys."
Martin was born into a working-class family in Drayton Park, England, on 3 January 1926. His classical music training didn't actually begin until his 20s; the only formal musical education Martin had as a child was eight piano lessons from an aunt. He kept up with the piano on his own, though, and by his teens led a small combo called The Four Tune-Tellers, along with his being able to play several classical pieces by ear. He'd also begun composing his own songs, with an eye toward someday writing film scores.
By this time World War II was underway, and at 17 Martin enlisted in the Fleet Air Arm, serving as an aircraft observer. While in the service, he both acquired a mentor in Sidney Harrison, who critiqued his early scores and encouraged him to follow a career in music, and appeared on a BBC radio show, playing an original piece. Returning to civilian life in early 1947, Martin found himself at a career crossroads, without much formal education or training. Sidney Harrison encouraged him to enter the Guildhall School of Music in London, where Harrison taught, and arranged an audition. Martin passed, and studied for three years at the Guildhall, paying for this with a veteran's grant, and studying oboe as a second instrument.
After graduation and a stint with the BBC Music Library, Martin was offered a job with EMI's Parlophone record label, as assistant to its chief Oscar Preuss. Preuss both signed the label's artists and produced most of their recordings, and it was these jobs that Martin gradually took over as Preuss retired, leaving Martin in charge of the label at age 29--the youngest label-head in England in the pre-rock era. Parlophone featured mostly classical and regional music, which Martin conducted and produced; he augmented these later with both highly-successful comedy records (including Peter Ustinov's "Mock Mozart" and several Goon Show recordings with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan, who became close friends) and rock-n-roll when it reached Britain. Despite his triumphs, George Martin nearly went down in music history as "The Man Who Turned Down Tommy Steele," passing up his chance to produce Britain's first genuine rock star to instead sign up Steele's backing group, the Vipers. This mistake was luckily overshadowed by another signing of Martin's, a few years later...
Martin and Beatles' manager Brian Epstein learned of each other when Epstein decided to have acetate test-records made of a Beatles audition tape, during his make-or-break final visit to London to try to get the band a recording contract. Nearly every label in England had turned the band down, and while Martin wasn't bowled over by their demo, he was impressed enough to give them a studio audition. Martin came away from this satisfied with everything he'd heard, except for Pete Best's drumming, and when he offered the band a singles contract in the fall of 1962, it was with the understanding that Best would not play on the records. This was reason enough for the band to want to replace him completely, and Ringo Starr took his place, shortly before the Beatles recorded their first Parlophone single, "Love Me Do".
Martin's first collaboration with The Beatles wasn't a big hit, but their second single with him, "Please Please Me", made an immediate impact, and propelled the band to national stardom in Britain. The hits continued, and Martin's own name began to appear on the recordings he produced (both for The Beatles, and for other artists) a few months later, as the record-producer's role became more widely recognized in the industry. It was Martin's friendship with music publisher Dick James that resulted in the creation of Northern Songs as the Beatles' publishing company; however, Martin never profited directly from this, or even from their early hits--he turned down the chance to become a Northern Songs partner, and as an EMI staff producer, he was paid no royalties. In fact, EMI's antiquated pay-scale was one of the many factors that caused Martin and several other EMI staffers to resign in the mid-Sixties, and establish their own company AIR (Associated Independent Recording). EMI now had to hire Martin back as an independent producer for their artists, and he began receiving producer's royalties on AIR's behalf.
The story of George Martin's relationship with the Beatles has been told again and again, but perhaps best by the man himself, in both radio and television specials, and his own book "All You Need is Ears", which reads both as pop-history and a kind of record-producer's textbook. He has graciously answered questions about the band (sometimes as the only clean-n-sober participant at recording sessions) and his own experiences again and again, proving to be an ideal, well-balanced spokesman. Many of the Beatles' more elaborate productions, especially in their later "studio years," were shaped by George Martin, who arranged their songwriting into final scores and recordings.
Throughout the Beatles' career and beyond, Martin continued to record and produce other artists, including Shirley Bassey, Bernard Cribbins, Flanders and Swann, and later America and Seatrain. He was also able to realize his earlier dream of scoring movies, beginning with his original orchestral score for Yellow Submarine (1968),which he also produced for film and record. In the late 1970s, Martin was approached by RSO's Robert Stigwood to produce the soundtrack for the Bee Gees's Beatles homage Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978); despite his initial misgivings, he signed onto the project knowing nobody else had his insider's knowledge of their music... and the payment to come would erase a lot of earlier financial shortings from his EMI days.
While George Martin supervised parts of "The Beatles Anthology" in 1994 and 1995, the task of producing the new recordings included with the compilation was given to Jeff Lynne; Martin explained to the press, "I don't produce anymore, because I'm too old." Martin recently celebrated his retirement from the music business, with both a knighthood and the release of "In My Life", an all-star tribute album to the band who gave him his biggest success.Live And Let Die.
(Note: so 70s, love it).- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
German-American pianist, composer, arranger and conductor André George Previn (born Andreas Ludwig Priwin, in Berlin) was for eight decades a hugely influential and prolific figure in jazz, as well as classical and film music. Being Jewish, Previn's family was forced to leave Hitler's Germany in 1939. Hollywood naturally beckoned, since André's grand uncle (Charles Previn) was already well established as musical director at Universal (1936-42). Child prodigy André recorded his first piano jazz album at the age of sixteen while continuing studies at Beverly Hills High School.
He joined MGM at age 17 in 1946 (initially as an uncredited music supervisor/arranger), later as orchestra conductor and still later as a composer of film scores. He remained under contract at the studio until 1960. During his tenure in Hollywood, he was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, winning four (all for Best Adapted Score: Gigi (1958), Porgy and Bess (1959), Irma la Douce (1963), and My Fair Lady (1964)). In the 1950s, he recorded several acclaimed jazz albums with drummer Shelly Manne and pianist Russ Freeman, featuring excellent tracks like "Who's on First" and "Strike Out the Band". He began conducting with the St. Louis Symphony in 1961 while still working primarily as a jazz and studio musician. Much of his recorded work consisted of show tunes adapted for jazz. Gradually, his interest in classical music won out.
By the late 1960s, Previn had settled in England and in 1968 was made principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, a position he occupied for eleven years. His popularity led to cameo TV appearances (including a famous sketch for the 1971 Christmas special of the The Morecambe & Wise Show (1968), in which he appeared as "Mr. Andrew Preview") and television advertising (Vauxhall, Ferguson TX portable television etc.). From 1985 to 1989, he was musical director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic as well as with the Royal Philharmonic (1985-88, subsequently also principal conductor, from 1988-91).
In 1993, he was appointed conductor laureate of the London Symphony and three years later was made an Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to music. He won 10 Grammy Awards (including two for jazz and two for film music) and was nominated for six Emmys. Previn latterly returned to recording jazz albums with, among others, Ella Fitzgerald (1983), Joe Pass & Ray Brown (1989), and Kiri Te Kanawa (1992). Two excellent tribute albums released, respectively in 1998 and 2000 for Deutsche Grammophon, were 'We Got Rhythm: A Gershwin Songbook' and 'We Got it Good: An Ellington Songbook'.
Married (and divorced) five times, his ex-wives included Dory Previn and Mia Farrow. Previn died in New York on February 28, 2019, aged 89.Dead Ringer.
(Note: the Dead Ringer score was pinched by composer Richard LaSalle and used in several Irwin Allen productions like Land Of The Giants and The Swiss Family Robinson).- Music Department
- Composer
Don B. Ray was born on 7 June 1925 in Santa Maria, California, USA. Don B. was a composer, known for Hawaii Five-O (1968), I Love You All (1980) and Playhouse 90 (1956). Don B. died on 16 April 2005 in Santa Monica, California, USA.Hawaii Five O Original Series
(Note: the other great 70s crime show Columbo never had the outstanding music heard in Five O).- Composer
- Music Department
Richard Shores was born on 9 May 1917 in Rockville, Indiana, USA. He was a composer, known for Hunter (1976), The Twilight Zone (1959) and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (1966). He died on 12 April 2001 in Encino, California, USA.Hawaii Five O Original Series
(Note: the other great 70s crime show Columbo never had the outstanding music heard in Five O).- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Polish-born composer and violinist, under contract at RKO from 1938. Sawtell was initially hired as a writer of music for serialised B-pictures, which included the 'Mexican Spitfire' and 'Falcon' series. In the 1940s, he free-lanced for two of the so-called Poverty Row studios (Eagle-Lion and Republic) before joining Universal in 1944. There, Sawtell scored two noteworthy entries in the Basil Rathbone/ Nigel Bruce 'Sherlock Holmes' cycle of films: The Pearl of Death (1944) and The Scarlet Claw (1944). He later returned to RKO and wrote a number of scores in collaboration with Roy Webb,among them several 'Tarzan' outings for producer Sol Lesser.
In the 1950s, Sawtell formed a fruitful and (importantly, for the studios) cost-effective partnership with pianist/composer Bert Shefter. The duo worked on many low-budget horror and science fiction films. The best of which were for Irwin Allen and included Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962) and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961). On his own, Sawtell scored the sci-fi cult classic The Fly (1958). His solo work was prolific, to say the least: literally hundreds of credits as composer or musical director for film and television. His prodigious output was apparently motivated by a pressing need to provide alimony for several ex-wives!Batman and Robin (serial),
Mysterious Island (serial),
The Fly,
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea The Movie,
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea TV Series
(Note: he did a great score for the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea TV series pilot but his music for other season one episodes was not so good).- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Mort Stevens got his start in the 1950s as Sammy Davis Jr.'s arranger and conductor. He then went into composing various scores for network television, as well as becoming music supervisor for CBS in the 1960s. His many fine television scores include, "Hawaii Five-O" (Emmy winner), "Police Woman" and "Gunsmoke." He also scored some mini-series, including, "Masada" (1981) and "Wheels" (1978) (he received Emmy nominations for his work on these two productions). Just before his passing in November, 1991, he was arranging music for John Williams and the Boston Pops and was Music Director for Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, Liza Minnelli and Dean Martin concerts in the late 1980s. His contribution to television music is considered some of the finest and only lets one appreciate the art all the more.Hawaii Five O Original Series,
Time Travellers,
Code Red (theme).
(Note: he scored one first season episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea but the score was poor).- Composer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Oliver Nelson began playing piano at age six and picked up the saxophone when he was eleven. Later he continued his musical education at Washington University in St. Louis, as well as studying with composer Elliott Carter. Nelson gained practical experience by playing in bands with Erskine Hawkins, Louie Bellson, Quincy Jones and Duke Ellington. In the late 1950s he began recording with his own ensemble and earned attention as a promising jazz artist with the release of LPs like "The Blues and the Abstract Truth" (1961). It might be difficult to compile a complete list of the films and TV shows Nelson contributed to, since it's common for arrangers and orchestrators to work without credit in Hollywood. One of his better-known efforts is the score for Alfie (1966), where he collaborated with sax man Sonny Rollins. Nelson's arrangements provide a buoyant, swinging backdrop for Rollins' assured playing. However, he is also sensitive to the film's quieter moments. The breadth of Nelson's ability as an arranger/orchestrator is demonstrated by his contribution to Last Tango in Paris (1972). In his work with Gato Barbieri on this film, Nelson moves from the melancholy ruminations of the opening cue to the brittle elegance of the tango to the driving sound of a large ensemble. The score for Zig Zag (1970) is an example of Nelson's work as a composer. In this soundtrack he creates tension by combining dense harmonies and aggressive percussion. It has been suggested that Nelson's hectic schedule, which included work as composer, arranger, performer and teacher, may have helped to bring about his early death. He suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of 43.The Six Million Dollar Man.
(Note: He may only have one title under his name but that one title is a monster - he scored 50 episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man! And when he left the series, the show was never the same again. Nelson music played a mighty big role in the entertainment value of this series. Imagine episode "The Seven Million Dollar Man" without that energetic music playing over it, some of the fun would have been lost).- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Composer and accomplished double-bass player and cellist, Mischa fled his country after the October Revolution of 1917, along with his brothers Vladimir and Constantin. He arrived in America in 1926, and, five years later, got a job with Columbia in Hollywood. He was at first utilised as a musician, but his talents came to be more widely employed during the 1930's as orchestrator, conductor and (occasional) composer of film scores. More often, he created the incidental or linking music for numerous low-budget westerns, sci-fi's, horrors and serials.
Mischa spent his entire career at Columbia, under contract as musical director from 1944, until his death in 1960. He often worked closely with other long-standing studio colleagues, George Duning and Morris Stoloff.Batman and Robin (serial),
Mysterious Island (serial),
Captain Video (1951 movie serial).
(Note: These old time cliff-hanger movie serials each had a few composers working on them because the STOCK music was going almost non-stop for about four hours. They had to get the music from somewhere! But this composer is the only one to get a credit in the Columbia serials).- Composer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
R.H. Bassett was born on 3 September 1878 in Oakland, California, USA. He was a composer, known for Angela's Ashes (1999) and What Price Glory (1926). He was married to Estelle Carleton Day, Rosina Elizabeth McIntosh and Alyse Lourdes Hunt. He died on 24 April 1951 in Los Angeles, California, USA.Batman and Robin (serial).
(Note: My favourite cliff-hanger movie serial).- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Composer, conductor and violinist, educated at the National Conservatory in New York (on a scholarship) and at the Naples Conservatory. He also studied with Martucci Dworczak. He was an opera coach in Milan in 1910, and a concert violinist and opera conductor throughout Europe and the United States. Joining ASCAP in 1946, his popular-music compositions include "Calm", "Song to Pierrot", "Waiting" and "Dusk of Roses".Batman and Robin (serial),
Mysterious Island (serial).
(Note: Mysterious Island was almost a non-stop parade of music cues).- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Respected composer and teacher, educated at the Cherubini Royal Institute of Music. He studied with Ildrebrando Pizzetti and Edgardo del Valle de Paz. It is generally thought that Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco actually composed more film music than he is credited with, and that he was often called upon to ghost-write film music for other composers who were under time constraints or had other difficulties completing their assignments.Batman and Robin (serial),
Mysterious Island (serial),
Captain Video (1951 movie serial).
(Note: Captain Video does not survive repeat viewings too well, but when the whole four hours is watched just once - not bad).- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Sidney Cutner was born on 16 April 1903 in Mariupol, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire [now Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine]. Sidney was a composer, known for Around the World in 80 Days (1956), Gun Crazy (1950) and Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962). Sidney died on 20 September 1971 in Los Angeles, California, USA.Batman and Robin (serial),
Mysterious Island (serial).
(Note: The same music cues are heard in both serials).- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Ross DiMaggio was born on 27 March 1906 in Louisiana, USA. He was a composer, known for Flame of Stamboul (1951), Mystery in Swing (1940) and Double Deal (1939). He died on 30 August 1980 in Laguna Hills, California, USA.Batman and Robin (serial),
Mysterious Island (serial).
(Note: The same music cues are heard in both serials).- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
George Duning was educated in Cincinnati, Ohio, and during his early 20s played trumpet and piano for the Kay Kyser band, later arranging most of the music for Kyser's popular "Kollege of Musical Knowledge" radio program. It was during the Kyser band's appearance in Carolina Moon (1940) that Duning's work was noticed, leading to a contract with Columbia Pictures.Batman and Robin (serial),
Mysterious Island (serial).
(Note: he scored some of Star Trek Original Series, but his music was not that good).- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Hugo Friedhofer -- how many times have you seen that name in the credits of 1930s and '40s movies for "orchestration" or "musical arranger" and thought -- Gee, what a busy guy! He was, and, ironically, much of that work went uncredited. He is not usually mentioned with the great film composers of early Hollywood, but he was very much an equal and as prolific once he received the opportunities to compose as well. Friedhofer began studying the cello at age 13. In 1917, he dropped out of high school in support of a teacher who had been fired for radical and anti-war beliefs. He worked as a cellist for the People's Symphony Orchestra in San Francisco (always a liberal kind of place). He married quite young at 19 and had a child by the age of 22. He quickly put his music expertise to a working life by playing in theater orchestras and accompanying silent films and stage shows between features. He also started writing arrangements of music and worked at the Granada Theater (became the Paramount in 1931), with the opportunity to write some incidental music.
Friedhofer came to Los Angeles in the later 1920s and became a friend of the violinist George Lipschultz, who just happened to be the musical director at Twentieth Century Fox. It was 1929, and Lipschultz asked him to fill in a musician spot for film music recording at a small studio. That was the beginning of Friedhofer's career in films. When this small studio was taken over by Fox, he and other musicians were on the street. But he was brought to the notice of Erich Korngold, a relatively new film composer at Warner Bros. where Max Steiner was king. Friedhofer was hired by Warner Bros soon after to arrange scores for musicals and orchestrate scores-mostly for these two composers. Including orchestrating all of Korngold's movie scores and fifty of Steiner's, Friedhofer would orchestrate or musically direct 105 films into the mid 1950s during his career.
But he was already doing significant film composing as well from 1930 along with incidental and stock music for several studios before his stay at Warner. Friedhofer's developing style was in the romantic vein of his contemporaries. He studied composition with Ernst Toch after aiding the composer with contributions to Peter Ibbetson (1935) at Paramount. With the move to Warner, Friedhofer's problem became being just too valuable as an orchestrator and musical director for Warner to free him for composing assignments until the late 1930s. With tight budgets and the need for musical managers to wear several hats, Friedhofer's legendary efficiency was hard to give up. His first full film score was for Samuel Goldwyn's The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938) after being recommended by another film composer great Alfred Newman. His first for Warner's was The Oklahoma Kid (1939) (with James Cagney debuting as a cowboy!). He did not get credit for this nor for The Mark of Zorro (1940) (co-work with Newman) and Santa Fe Trail (1940) both in 1940. Into and after the war years Friedhofer was very busy -- but still not getting the composing credit due -- as for Gilda (1946). All told, he was not credited as composer for some 120 films.
Friedhofer broke from the confines of Warner Bros. finally in 1946 to freelance and received the grand prize right off. Again, it was Newman who recommended him for scoring Goldwyn's wonderful post-war drama of adjustment The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and Friedhofer showed his power as composer with a score that engaged the story at every turn and most deservedly won the Oscar for Best Score. Other memorable credited scores included such classics as: the gripping music for Lifeboat (1944), directed by Alfred Hitchcock; the delightful Christmas strings score of The Bishop's Wife (1947); and the soaring music for 'Ingrid Bergman' in Joan of Arc (1948).
Though he continued in demand, much of Friedhofer's scoring output through the 1950s went to films mostly relegated to Saturday mornings these days, but there were notables, as the 1957 duo An Affair to Remember (1957) and the well-received The Sun Also Rises (1957). And the next year came the engaging and thought-provoking The Barbarian and the Geisha (1958) (a fine performance by John Wayne) under the always versatile direction of John Huston. He also did some TV episodic and mini-movie music through the 1960s in addition to more films.
Friedhofer had all the qualities of an accomplished, indeed, incisive and intuitive film composer -- proved with a total of eight Oscar nominations -- and yet he was his own worst enemy. Anxieties about his abilities brought self-criticism and doubts that boiled out in a misanthropic view of the world in general that no amount of praise from public or friends could dislodge. At the least he should have believed that he had succeeded in grand style -- with nearly 250 pieces of screen music as a realistic basis for affirmation.Batman and Robin (serial).
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,
Airport.
(Note: some of his Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea TV series music was pinched from the movie: The Young Lions).- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Composer ("The Emperor Jones") and pianist, educated at the Vienna Conservatory (Master Class), and a student of F. E. Koch. He came to the USA in 1885 and made his debut as pianist with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Berlin in 1912. From there and through 1919 he continued giving concert tours throughout Europe and the USA. Between 1931 and 1933 he was chairman of the composition department at the Chicago Musical College. His leadership positions included the presidency of the International Society of Contemporary Music, and he was a co-founder of the League of Composers and a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.Batman and Robin (serial).
(Note: My favourite cliff-hanger movie serial).- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Earl E. Lawrence is known for The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957).Batman and Robin (serial),
The Incredible Shrinking Man.
(Note: Shrinking Man had almost non-stop music in the film's second half).- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
John Leipold was born on 26 February 1888 in Ulster County, New York, USA. He was a composer, known for Stagecoach (1939), Souls at Sea (1937) and The Big Wheel (1949). He was married to Caroline E. Palen. He died on 8 March 1970 in Dallas, Texas, USA.Batman and Robin (serial).
(Note: this one serial has so many composers because B&R was 4 hours and 20 minutes of non-stop music).- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Ben Oakland was born on 24 September 1907 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He was a composer and actor, known for The Lady Objects (1938), The Three Stooges (2012) and The Awful Truth (1937). He died on 26 August 1979 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.Batman and Robin (serial),
Mysterious Island (serial).
(Note: both serials often had the same music cues).- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
George Parrish was born on 26 September 1901 in Missouri, USA. He was a composer, known for Frenchman's Creek (1944), Reign of Terror (1949) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943). He died on 11 April 1982 in Los Angeles, California, USA.Batman and Robin (serial).
(Note: this one serial has so many composers because B&R was 4 hours and 20 minutes of non-stop music).- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Pianist, arranger and composer Marlin Skiles was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in December 1906. He studied music at his local conservatory, later perfecting his training under Ernst Toch in Los Angeles. By the 1920's, he was employed as a pianist, arranger and orchestrator with big name dance bands like those of Paul Whiteman and Irving Aaronson and His Commanders. In Hollywood from 1932, he was under contract at Republic and Columbia (1944-1948), often writing incidental music for second features. He occasionally composed original soundtracks for better productions, like A Thousand and One Nights (1945) or Dead Reckoning (1946). Skiles served as musical director for Columbia's mega-hit Gilda (1946), starring Rita Hayworth in her most famous role. He became a member of ASCAP that same year. Skiles worked as a free-lancer from the 1950's and retired in 1971.Batman and Robin (serial).
(Note: this one serial has so many composers because B&R was 4 hours and 20 minutes of non-stop music).- Composer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Robert Prince was born on 10 May 1929 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a composer, known for Annabelle Comes Home (2019), The Name of the Game (1968) and J.D.'s Revenge (1976). He died on 4 March 2007 in Los Angeles, California, USA.The Fantastic Journey.
(Note: the opening episode of this series, when the boat gets sucked into the green cloud, contains some really outstanding and perfectly matched music).- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Bill Conti was born on 13 April 1942 in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. He is a composer and actor, known for For Your Eyes Only (1981), Rocky (1976) and The Karate Kid Part II (1986). He is married to Shelby Cox. They have two children.Rocky (theme),
For Your Eyes Only,
Dynasty Original Series,
The Colbys (theme),
Falcon Crest (theme).
(Note: the grand energetic themes to Rocky and The Colbys are played at the gym to make me go faster on the treadmill).- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Franz Waxman (Wachsmann) pursued his dream of a career in music despite his family's misgivings. He worked for several years as a bank teller and paid for piano, harmony and composition lessons with his salary. He later moved to Berlin, where he continued his study and progress as a musician. He was able to support himself by playing and arranging for a popular German jazz band, Weintraub Syncopaters, in the late 1920s. Friedrich Hollaender, who had written some music for the Weintraubs, gave Waxman his first chance to move into movie scoring by hiring him to orchestrate and conduct Hollander's score (an arrangement of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) for the film that launched Marlene Dietrich, The Blue Angel (1930), directed by Josef von Sternberg. During 1932 Waxman, a Jew, joined many other Jews leaving Germany as the Nazi vise closed irrevocably on free society. He continued working with Germanfilm makers in France. Waxman did musical arranging and co-scoring, usually with Allan Gray, for approximately 15 European movies (his first independent score was in 1932). "The Blue Angel" producer Erich Pommer liked Waxman's work and offered him the composing job for Liliom (1934), directed by Fritz Lang in France.
Pommer decided to do Music in the Air (1934), a Jerome Kern musical, which meant going to Hollywood. Waxman was asked to come along to do the arranging. Needing no further reason to remain in Europe as the Nazi clouds darkened over it, Waxman began a new chapter in Hollywood film music history. He fortunately had some spare time to study with 'Arnold Schoenberg' after coming to Los Angeles, but he was soon talking to another new arrival, English director James Whale, about scoring Bride of Frankenstein (1935) for Universal. Waxman gave Whale what he wanted--an unusual score to fit the quirky, somewhat over-the-top content of the film (in fact, some of this score was later used in other films). As Waxman worked for Universal through the 1930s, he found himself in assembly-line mode, sometimes sharing scoring credit, and doing a lot of arranging stock music, which was usually used for the studio's many serials. This cranked up Waxman's yearly film output to around 20 or so through 1940.
By 1940, however, he was composing original music scores for other studios, beginning with the romantic music for Selznick Studios' Rebecca (1940)--the first Hollywood film for Alfred Hitchcock--and whimsical fare for MGM's The Philadelphia Story (1940). In 1941 he was doing more work for MGM with Honky Tonk (1941) and his second Hitchcock score, Suspicion (1941) from RKO. By 1943 and for the rest of the decade Waxman was usually scoring for Warner Bros., starting with Destination Tokyo (1943) and including music for some of that studio's classics of the period, such as To Have and Have Not (1944) with Humphrey Bogart. Through the decade he was nominated for an Oscar seven times for Best Film Score.
Waxman moved on to Paramount through the first half of the 1950s and garnered his two Oscars in back--to-back wins for Sunset Boulevard (1950) and A Place in the Sun (1951). This recognition finally underscored what was at the heart of all of Waxman's music: seriously focused attention on relaying a film's story through the content of the music. He would continue his scoring work for several studios into the 1960s, with three more nominations. Some of his music in the 1950s was recycled from his previous scores, as in the case of his third assignment for Hitchcock, Rear Window (1954) which contained used music. Waxman was also active in contemporary classical music. In 1947 he founded the Los Angeles International Music Festival and, as Music Director and Conductor, brought the premieres of works by world renowned contemporary composers to the Los Angeles cultural scene. Among his own output of such music was his popular "Carmen Fantasy" for violin and orchestra. Waxman also composed for TV's Gunsmoke (1955), The Fugitive (1963), Peyton Place (1964) (he had composed the music for the film the series was based on, Peyton Place (1957)) and others. Waxman died relatively young, but because of his steady output, only fellow emigrant Max Steiner (who was nearly 20 years older and whose output entailed more than 200 arrangements of stock music, rather than original scores) was a more prolific early Hollywood composer.Buck Rogers (serial),
Sunset Blvd.
(Note: much of the Buck Rogers music was pinched from the famed 1935 Universal film: Bride Of Frankenstein).- Music Department
- Actor
Aquaman (1967 cartoon).
(Note: I am not the world's biggest cartoon fan but Aquaman captures 1966 Batman and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea - all in one).- Music Department
- Sound Department
- Composer
Los Angeles native Gordon Robert Zahler was a significant innovator in the development of music and sound effects in post war Hollywood. Zahler was born on February 10, 1926, the son of songwriter Lee Zahler and Rose Rosenberg. When he was just fourteen Zahler broke his neck while attempting a gymnastic feat at a Pasadena school. Eventually the medical bills he and later his father (who died in 1947) generated would plunge the family deeply into debt. Gordon Zahler's amazing ability at the age of twenty-one to escape poverty and instead eke out a successful Hollywood career is chronicled in the book "Wheeling the Deal: The Outrageous Legend of Gordon Zahler, Hollywood's Flashiest Quadriplegic" (2006) by Chip Jacobs (Zahler's nephew).
Gordon Robert Zahler passed away in the City of Angels on December 22, 1975 at the age of forty-nine. He was survived by his wife, the former Judy M. Wetzel, whom he'd married in Santa Barbara, California on August 31, 1962.
The Pasadena Weekly, May 5, 2006, California Birth, Marriage and Death Indexes, Rosenberg Family GenealogyAquaman (1967 cartoon),
The New Adventures Of Superman (1966 cartoon).
(Note: I am not the world's biggest cartoon fan but Aquaman captures 1966 Batman and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea - all in one).- Composer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Hugo Montenegro was born on 2 September 1925 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a composer, known for Strange Days (1995), The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015) and Labor Day (2013). He died on 6 February 1981 in Palm Springs, California, USA.The Ambushers,
The Wrecking Crew.
(Note: Dean Martin spy movies with the same sort of campy humour seen in the Roger Moore 007 films - the scores capture the films very well).- Composer
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- Soundtrack
Academy Award-winning composer (score, Pinocchio (1940), conductor, songwriter ("When You Wish Upon a Star" [Academy award, Best Song, 1940) and arranger Leigh Harine was educated at the University of Utah. He was a music student of J. Spencer Cornwall. He arranged the first transcontinental broadcast from Los Angeles in 1932, and that year joined the Walt Disney Studios. From 1941 he freelanced among various Hollywood studios. He joined ASCAP in 1940. His other popular song compositions include "Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee", "Give a Little Whistle" and "Jiminy Cricket".The Enemy Below.
(Note: This score was pinched by the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea TV series and used in several season three/four episodes. The opening title theme was used in Lost In Space's Cave Of The Wizards episode).- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Arthur Bliss was born on 2 August 1891 in London, England, UK. He was a composer and actor, known for Things to Come (1936), Seven Days from Now (1957) and Christopher Columbus (1949). He was married to Gertrude Hoffmann. He died on 28 March 1975 in London, England, UK.Things To Come.
(Note: Done in 1936, this must be one of the very oldest scores on this list! But being so old probably means many epics tried to copy it over the decades. The movie, Things To Come, was all about great images and music, not much else in it really captures the imagination - but still a classic).- Producer
- Composer
- Actor
Norm Prescott was born on 31 January 1927 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He was a producer and composer, known for Footloose (1984), Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973) and Journey Back to Oz (1972). He died on 2 July 2005 in Encino, California, USA.Star Trek (1973 cartoon),
Shazam! (1974 live action series),
Ark 11 (live action series),
The Secrets Of Isis (live action series).
(Note: this was a 70s Filmation Studios composer and there was another guy - Ray Ellis - listed above, who also did all the Filmation music as well).- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Michel Legrand is a three-time Academy Award-winning French composer, conductor and pianist who composed over 200 film and television scores as well as recorded over a hundred albums of jazz, popular and classical music.
He was born on February 24, 1932, in Becon-les-Bruyeres, in the Paris suburbs, France. His father, Raymond Legrand, was a French composer and actor. His mother, Marcelle der Mikaelian, was descended from the Armenian bourgeousie. From 1942 - 1949 young Legrand studied piano at the Paris Conservatoire. There his teachers were Nadia Boulanger and Henri Challan among other renown musicians. He received numerous awards for his skills in composition and piano and mastered a dozen other instruments. In 1947 he attended a concert by Dizzy Gillespie and caught a jazz bug. He started working as a pianist for major French singers. He eventually collaborated with Dizzy Gillespie on several albums and film scores.
In 1954 Legrand became an overnight star after his album "I Love Paris" became a hit, it went on selling over 8 million copies. He followed the success with such albums as "Holiday in Rome" (1955) and "Michel Legrand Plays Cole Porter" (1957). In 1958 he was invited to play at Moscow Festival of Students and Youth. There, in Moscow, he met his future wife, a young French model with who he went on to have three children.
In the late 1950s and 1960s Legrand was caught up in the French New Wave. He scored seven films for jean-Luc Godard, he also made ten films with Jacques Demy, and became responsible for creating the genre of musical in the French Cinema. In 1963 Legrand did The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), the first film musical that was entirely sung. For that film score he received three Oscar nominations. His beautiful, haunting melody, "I Will Wait For You", received nomination for Best Original Song.
In 1966 Legrand decided to take his chances in Hollywood, and moved to Los Angeles with his wife and three children. His friendship with Quincy Jones and Hank Mancini helped him a great deal, especially in meeting the lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman. In 1969 Legrand won his first Oscar for Best Music, Original Song for "The Windmills of Your Mind" and was also nominated for Best Music, Original score for a Motion Picture for The Thomas Crown Affair (1968). Eventually Legrand went on to become a star in the US, he received twelve nominations for Academy Awards, and won two more Oscars. He was also nominated for a Grammy 27 times and received 5 Grammys in the 1970s.
In the 1980s and 1990s Legrand continued giving live concerts with his own jazz trio. He also led his big band which he took on several international tours, accompanying such stars as Ray Charles , Diana Ross , Björk , and Stéphane Grappelli who celebrated his 85th birthday in 1992. He also recorded several classical albums, including an album with cross-genre hits entitled "Kiri Sings Michel Legrand" with the opera singer Kiri te Kanawa. During the 2000s Legrand has been working mainly in the studio, and also made several international tours.
In 2005 a compilation of Legrand's best known film soundtracks was released under the title "Le Cinema de Michel Legrand", featuring 90 songs composed in the course of his career.The Thomas Crown Affair (original),
Ice Station Zebra,
Never Say Never Again.
(Note: Ice Station Zebra is a very loud music score but I personally loved it).- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Born in the Bronx, 1940. Graduated High School of Music & Art in New York, then studied composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris.
Before moving to Hollywood, wrote and played Latin music for Salsa legends including Tito Puente, Ray Baretto and Joe Quijano.
In addition to composing over 100 movie scores (including Barbarella and 9-5) and TV themes (Happy Days & Love Boat), Fox wrote the music for many popular songs including "Killing Me Softly With His Song" (Grammy/Roberta Flack-Fugees), "I Got A Name" (Jim Croce), Richard's Window (Olivia Newton John/Oscar Nomination) & "Ready To Take A Chance Again" (Oscar Nomination/Barry Manilow).
Classical compositions include 3 full length ballets: "Song For Dead Warriors" (San Franciso Ballet Company, 1979) , "Zorro" (Smuin Ballet, 2003) and "Salsa Til Dawn" (Smuin ballet 2024). Other larger classical works include: "Lament & Prayer" (Warsaw Opera House/2008), "Fantasie-Homage To Chopin" (Gdansk, Poland/Chopin Festival 2010) and "Clarinet Quintet" (Santa Fe Opera House / 2015).
In addition to winning 2 Emmys, a Grammy & 2 Oscar Nominations, he was given BMI's Richard Kirk Career Achievement Award in 1992 and inducted into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame in 2004. Fox served as a Board of Governor for the Academy's music branch from 2008-2016, and was re-elected in 2022. Charles will receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame April 2024.
Charles' memoirs "Killing Me Softly: My Life In Music", chronicling his composing career and centering on his 3 years studying with Nadia Boulanger, was released by Scarecrow Press in the Fall of 2010.
In 2019, for HBO's documentary "The Bronx, USA", Fox & Paul Williams wrote the title song called "Da' Bronx" which is sung live on the Bronx streets by Robert Klein and Hamilton star Donald Webber Jr. They were nominated for a Hollywood Music Media Award.
Fox has recently returned to his early roots of Latin music-- with a series of concerts in Havana, all original Cuban music, which are featured in a new documentary called Killing Me Softly with His Songs (2022), directed by Danny Gold.
The documentary chronicles Fox's 60 year journey writing music and will be released on Apple and other streaming devices April 2024.Wonder Woman (70s TV series).
(Note: That opening tune of Wonder Woman was even better than the show itself. Fox also did the theme tunes to some terrible shows - The Love Boat, Love American Style, etc - where his themes were much better than the shows themselves).- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Composer, conductor, pianist and author Ronald Stein was educated at Washington University (BA), the Yale School of Music and the University of Southern California. In college he wrote musical shows. He was named the assistant musical director for the St. Louis Municipal Opera in 1950, 1951 and 1954. He served in the US Army Special Services at Fort Dix, NJ, from 1952-1954. Reurning home, he became the piano soloist for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in 1955. From that year to 1959 he was the music director of American-International Pictures, and in 1964 became the associate musical director for Phoenix Star. He joined ASCAP in 1956 and his popular compositions include "Raymie"; "Mexico City"; "Romantic Idyll"; and "The Garden", plus the film themes for Dime with a Halo (1963), The Littlest Hobo (1958) and Of Love and Desire (1963).Spider Baby (intro only).- Composer
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Akira Ifukube was born on May 31, 1914 in Hokkaido, Japan. He was the third son of a chief constable (his grandfather was a priest of Shin-to) and spent a majority of his childhood in areas with a mixed Japanese and Ainu population. Therefore, Ifukube was strongly influenced by their musical traditions and styles. As a result, he studied the violin. Later, he attended secondary school in Sapporo, and decided to become a composer at the age of 14 after hearing a radio performance of Igor Stravinsky's the Rite of Spring.
Ifukube studied forestry at Hokkaido University and composed music in his spare time. His first piece was the piano solo "Piano Suite" and his big break came in 1935, when his first orchestral piece, "Japanese Rhapsody," won first prize in an international contest for young composers promoted by Alexander Tcherepnin. In 1936, Ifukube studied modern Western composition while Tcherepnin was visiting Japan, and in 1938, Ifukube's piano suite obtained an honorable mention at the I.C.S.M. Festival in Venice, Italy. In the late 1930s his music, including "Japanese Rhapsody," was performed in areas throughout Europe.
After completing his studies, Ifukube worked as a forestry officer and lumber processor. Towards the end of World War II, he was appointed by the Japanese Imperial Army to study the elasticity and vibratory strength of wood. He suffered radiation exposure after carrying out x-rays without protection. As a result, Ifukube left forestry work and ultimately became a full-time professional music composer and teacher. From 1946 to 1953, he taught at the Nihon University College of Art. In 1947, after encouragement from a friend, Ifukube came to the Big Screen, and composed the music score for Toho Studio's Snow Trail (1947). Ifukube continued to compose music scores for many drama and comedy movies, many of them produced by Toho. However, classical music remained Ifukube's greatest passion. But yet, the world would probably remember him mostly as the man who brought music and soul to the King of the Monsters: Godzilla.
When producer Tomoyuki Tanaka, director Ishirô Honda and special effects man Eiji Tsuburaya of Toho Studios decided to make a movie about a gigantic monster brought to life by nuclear bomb testing, Godzilla was born. Having placed together all the elements for the intriguing and haunting monster film, Godzilla (1954), only one element was left: the music score. Thus, Akira Ifukube came into the picture. He created a somber and masterful score to match the on-screen drama. He went on to score eight Godzilla films in Toho's "Showa" Godzilla series. In addition to Godzilla, Ifukube also scored a number of other sci-fi films produced by Toho including "Rodan," "The Mysterians," "Atragon" and "Frankenstein Conquers the World."
A number of the Godzilla films contains the "Godzilla Theme," which will forever etch in fans' minds that this is Godzilla's musical cue, and the "Monster Battle Theme," which occur in several Godzilla films whenever monster attacks and battles erupt. Probably Ifukube's most memorable work in these sci-fi films is his "monster marches," which are militaristic and rousing. The film Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965) (Godzilla vs. Monster Zero) was once screened in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo, and the audience was stomping to its feet and clapping their hands to the rhythm - most of these were children who have not seen a Godzilla film in their lives.
Ifukube returned to teaching at the Tokyo College of Music in 1974, becoming president in 1976. In 1978, Ifukube retired from film work and in 1985, he became president of the college's ethnomusicology department. He trained younger generation composers such as Toshiro Mayuzumi, Yasushi Akutagawa and Kaoru Wada. He also published "Orchestration," a 1,000-page book on theory. The Japanese government awarded him the Order of Culture and the Order of the Sacred Treasures.
In 1984, after a nine-year hiatus, Toho revived the Godzilla series, and released Godzilla 1985 (1985), thus marked the beginning of the Godzilla "Heisei" series. Five years later, Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989) was released. The composer of the film, Kôichi Sugiyama asked Ifukube if he could use some of his Godzilla themes. He said yes, as long as he doesn't change it into "pop music," which Ifukube dislikes. So, his themes were used, but unfortunately, to the contrary of what Ifukube wished. His daughter told him that no matter how much he stays away from scoring another Godzilla film, his themes will always be heard. So, she suggested that he score the next Godzilla film. Taking his daughter's suggestion into consideration, and after Toho came knocking on his door again, Ifukube came out of retirement; he scored the next three Godzilla films. He brought his classic Godzilla themes with him, utilizing the recognizable "Godzilla Theme" and "Monster Battle Theme" where appropriate, and backed with larger orchestras and enhanced with modern-day digital recording techniques.
Ifukube was usually only given a short amount of time to score a movie. He was given only three days to score Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II (1993). After that film was completed, Ifukube said that he couldn't possibly score any more Godzilla films, especially at his advanced age. Therefore, fellow composer Takayuki Hattori scored the next film, Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla (1994). He was going to take over the reins, but producer Tanaka decided to make one last Godzilla movie. And, what would be more appropriate than to have Akira Ifukube provide Godzilla's final musical bow? Ifukube agreed, and scored Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995). The score for this film is a blending of haunting music, rousing marches and a heartbreaking requiem. Ifukube stated that he regarded this film score as his best work. The rushed job that Ifukube experienced while writing these monster film scores became his magnum opus. Godzilla was a huge part of his life, and Ifukube stated that writing music for the monster was like writing music for his own. Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995) was not only the last Godzilla film of the "Heisei" series and the last Godzilla film Tanaka produced, but was Ifukube's last musical work in films. After the film was completed, Ifukube resumed retirement, this time for good.
Ifukube was known as the "John Williams" of Japan, and became one of cinema's finest composers. He passed away in Tokyo on February 8, 2006 at age 91.He scored several 60s Japanese films - Godzilla, King Kong Escapes and Latitude Zero. His scores are very rich and grand. The first time I was really blown away by his music was a 2006 viewing of Latitude Zero.- Composer
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Riichirô Manabe was born on 9 November 1924 in Tokyo, Japan. He was a composer, known for Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973), Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971) and The Perfect Game (1958). He died on 29 January 2015 in Tokyo, Japan.He did a very unusual score for Godzilla Vs The Smog Monster (1971).- Composer
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- Production Manager
Richard Howard Band is an American composer of film and television music. He has scored more than 100 films, including From Beyond which won the award for Best Original Soundtrack at the Sitges - Catalan International Film Festival. His score for Re-Animator was lauded by the magazine Music From the Movies, which said, "Band's music is dark and direct, creating an intense and eerie atmosphere, but always with a humorous touch... Surely, Richard Band is one of the most underrated composers in the film business."
By the mid-80's Band was renowned for scoring horror and Sci-Fi films by employing strong, memorable and most often very melodic themes all recorded with orchestra. Films like 'Mutant (1984)', 'The Alchemist (1983)', 'The House on Sorority Row (1983)', 'Troll (1986)' and 'The Day Time Ended (1979)' all feature beautiful and lyrical themes that seem to operate as the antithesis of the genre for which the films were produced. As Band explains in liner notes in some of his soundtrack releases, he believes that "film scores exist to add a third dimension to a two-dimensional medium".
As the son of independent film producer, director and writer Albert Band, Richard and his brother Charles Band pursued their father's ambitions in film. Where Charles became a prolific producer, director and distributor, Richard's music and cinematic talent led him into the realm of film composing. Becoming interested in music while living in Europe, Richard toured with various rock groups between 1965 and 1971 before returning to the US. After studying music formally for several years Richard made his scoring debut, alongside Jerry Goldsmith's son Joel Goldsmith, on Compass Films production of 'Laserblast (1978)'. Richard rapidly moved from electronic to orchestral music, resulting in a number of full-bodied, orchestral thematic soundtracks that gave melodic power to a number of movies several of which Charles produced for Empire Pictures, among them The Day Time Ended (1979), Troll (1986), Zone Troopers (1985), ReAnimator (1985), Prison (1987), Ghoulies (1985) and From Beyond (1986).
He also brought on famed composer Shirley Walker as conductor and co-orchestrator on his score for Ghost Warrior (performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, 1984) as well as Ghoulies (1985). It was for the Universal 3D release of Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn (1983), that Richard composed one of his most epic, and adventurous scores.
Beyond Charles' productions, Richard Band showed his diversity with the comedies Lunch Wagon (1981) and Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype (1980), while writing the chillingly melodic score for the slasher favorite The House on Sorority Row (1983). Richard found new acclaim when he teamed with filmmaker Stuart Gordon for the blackly comic Re-Animator (1985), a soundtrack famed for its tribute to the work of Psycho composer Bernard Herrmann. Band's H.P. Lovecraft-themed collaborations with Gordon include the otherworldly tonalities of From Beyond (1986) and the terrifying vengeance of Castle Freak (1995).
The director and composer also adapted the work of Edgar Allen Poe with darkly religious inquisition for their adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum (1991), with Band exploring one of Lovecraft's most terrifying works for director Dan O'Bannon on The Resurrected (1991).
When the direct-to-video label Full Moon Entertainment was launched, Richard would score some of the label's more ambitious productions, including numerous entries in the continuing PuppetMaster franchise, the twisted terror of Demonic Toys (1992) and Shrunken Heads (1994) with Danny Elfman. The children's' comedies Remote (1993), Prehysteria (1993) and the fantasy Dragonworld (1994) were films released through Paramount Pictures.
In the mid 1990's, Richard branched more into television co-scoring the A & E network's documentaries Weapons at War, Most Decorated as well as numerous episodes of Biography and The Civil War Journals. Later in the 90s Band scored multiple episodes of Stargate SG-1 (1997) and Walker, Texas Ranger (1997) His genre notoriety also saw him score three episodes of Masters of Horror, earning him his first Emmy nomination for the Stuart Gordon-directed episode of Dreams in The Witch House (2005).
Richard went on to work with the WB network creating promotional music for most of their prime-time shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gilmore Girls, Dawson's Creek and Smallville amongst others. Band also scored over 200 animated vignettes for Orchestra for the WB's Kids Network.
During the mid 2000, Richard was one among some of the first Hollywood composers to delve into scoring Video Games some of which included Stonekeep, Casper, Waterworld, Star Trek:Judgment Rights, Descent under Mountain, Invictus: In the Shadow of Olympus and Clayfighter.
During this period Band continued to score various TV family films and comedies for Paramount such as In the Dog House (2001) My Horrible Year (2002) and Robo-Warriors while still scoring eccentric thrillers for his brother, including Head of the Family (1996), Unlucky Charms (2013), Trophy Heads (2015) and more recently Ravenwolf Towers (2016), a web series for Amazon.
More recently Richard scored the horror/comedy Exorcism@60,000 Feet (2019), Necropolis: Legend and The Deep ones (2020) for director Chad Ferrin.
Now with over 50 soundtracks to his credit, Richard Band's prolific and stylistic work has made him not only one of the most distinctive composers in the realms of horror and science fiction but arguably include comedy, family films and animation. Band's full-blooded talent remains vibrant to this day.Ghoulies (1984)- Music Department
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Shirley Walker was born in Napa, California in 1945. She was educated at Pleasant Hill High School; attended San Francisco State College on piano scholarship; studied composition with Dr. Roger Nixon; and piano with Harald Logan of Berkeley, California. She was soloist with San Francisco Symphony while in high school; performed with various hotel, jazz & art bands in San Francisco, 1964 - 1967.
Industrial film and jingles work 1967 - 1978. Oakland Symphony Orchestra pianist 2 seasons, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra pianist 2 seasons. Member American Federation of Musicians (AFM) 1962 - present Member National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (NARAS) 1978 - present; Member American Society of Composers Authors & Publishers (ASCAP) 1980 - present; Member Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS) 1987 - present; Awards Committee 1987 - 1988; Member Society of Composers & Lyricists (SCL) 1985 - present; Vice President 1988 - 1992; Board of Directors 1986 - 1994; Working Conditions Committee 1987 - 1989; author SCL Working Conditions Questionnaire; author for The Score, SCL periodical: Packaging Scores, The Business of Quality Orchestration, New Low Budget Film Rate, Assumption Agreements and the Special Payments Fund. Member Recording Musicians Association (RMA) 1990 - present, Board of Directors 1994 - present; Member Broadcast Music Inc., (BMI) 1993 - present; Member Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (AMPAS) 1994 - present; Executive Music Branch Committee 1994 - present.
She married Don Walker in 1967 and they had two sons, Colin born 1970, Ian born 1972.Ghoulies (1984)- Composer
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Robert Drasnin was born on 17 November 1927 in Charleston, West Virginia, USA. He was a composer, known for Lucy in the Sky (2019), Mission: Impossible (1966) and The Twilight Zone (1959). He was married to Marlene Waters. He died on 13 May 2015 in Tarzana, California, USA.He did music for some of my very favourite TV shows ever (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Time Tunnel, Lost in Space, Twilight Zone) but it was not until 1980 that he did a score that blew my socks off! After 12 seasons Hawaii Five-O was limping along and then, out of the blue, it does this knockout score from Drasnin! In the 5-0 episode titled - The Flight of the Jewels (1980) - some young adult students rob a museum by using a model plane. Despite repeating itself a bit, Drasnin creates this cool-sounding music that brings the whole hour to life.- Composer
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The youngest of six brothers, all of them music lovers, Masaru Sato decided early in life that he wanted to be a composer. His models were two other composers born, as he was, on the northernmost Japanese island of Hokkaido: Akira Ifukube and Fumio Hayasaka. "To me", Sato said, "they were like gods". After hearing Hayasaka's score for Rashomon (1950), Sato decided Hayasaka was the only one he wanted for his teacher. He absorbed much of Hayasaka's modernist leanings, and grew to know Hayasaka's best friend Akira Kurosawa during this period. The year 1955 was a vast turning point for Sato: after scoring numerous insignificant pictures for various studios in Tokyo, Sato won the assignment for Gojira no Gyakushu (1955). Then his teacher Fumio Hayasaka died tragically young, while finishing the score for Kurosawa's Ikimono no Kiroku (1955). Sato stepped in to complete the score, uncredited. Kurosawa was sufficiently pleased with Sato to use him for all his pictures for the following ten years. Though the two had a falling-out after Akahige (1965), Sato remained one of Japan's most in-demand film composers, returning to the Gojira series several times and remaining a favorite of many other directors such as Kihachi Okamoto and June Fukuda. After scoring Dun-Huang in 1987, Sato had to call a brief halt to his career in order to tend to family interests in real estate in his native Hokkaido; but within a few years, the problems were wrapped up, and Sato was able to go back to film composing full time, at last reaching and surpassing his 300th movie score. Sato is almost unique among Japan's prolific film composers in that he has written extensively for his chosen field, but has never written for the concert stage.Son of Godzilla (1967). He really missed the target with the goofy opening title music but shortly after he did some of the best Godzilla music ever.- Composer
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Born on the island of Kyushu, Japan, Misawa had an early successful career as the baritone in a vocal quartet called "the Four Coins." The quartet toured the US for six months in the early '60s as "the Tokyo Four". After the death of a group member in the early '70s, the quartet broke up and Misawa began composing and arranging music as a new career. Concentrating primarily on commercial jingles (winning an international category for a Cleo award for a soap commercial jingle) and TV theme songs, Misawa has two gold records for the Japanese TV drama series, "Attention, Please" (about flight attendants) and "Sign wa V" (about women volleyball players). He continued his music career after his move to Hawaii in 1976. He moved to California in the early '80s, and eventually started working in film and TV.He composed the music for the once long lost TV series - Zone Fighter (1973). Ultraseven (1967) is probably a better series than Zone Fighter (1973) but ZF sounded better!- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Born March 14, 1922, at Mexia, Texas. He learned to play the piano at five years of age and studied at the Detroit Conservatory and at Pepperdine College in Los Angeles, California (his uncle was the college's first president). He began his career as a concert pianist but later joined Mel Tormé's "Meltones" in 1945. Baxter conducted a number of radio shows including "The Bob Hope Show". His recording of "The Poor People of Paris" in March 1956 was a #1 hit and sold more single copies than any other recording during that decade (the song got that title by mistake. Originally titled "The Ballad of Poor John" when it was popularized in France, a Capitol Records representative cabled the title to the US; the cable used the word "gens", meaning "people", instead of "jean"). Another major hit was "April in Portugal", which was based on a song by Raúl Ferrão. It was originally entitled "Coimbra" (after a city in Portugal) and later introduced in the US as the whispering serenade. But Jimmy Kennedy wrote a new set of lyrics in 1952 for it and it became a huge hit for Baxter\, who also wrote the scores for over 120 motion pictures.
He died of heart and kidney problems on January 15, 1996.He did a wonderfully goofy score for the Vincent Price flick Master of the World (1961).- Composer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Ben Lanzarone was born on 28 October 1938 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He was a composer, known for Vega$ (1978), Dynasty (1981) and The Love Boat (1977). He was married to Ilene Graff. He died on 16 February 2024 in Los Angeles, California, USA.He scored 15 episodes of Dynasty (1981). The early years of Dynasty. Perhaps most memorable was the score he did when Blake was blinded. Sounded a bit like a old Hollywood melodrama - outstanding!