While doing film history research for my day job, I came upon a fascinating document titled “Composers and Prices as of October 1, 1968.” An A-list director (who worked with many top composers throughout his career, and whose films inspired at least three unused scores) was preparing his next project, an adaptation of a Tony and Pulitzer-award winning play, and a list of possible composers (and their expected fees) was prepared for his consideration.
Having just completed my “last” edition of the top 40 countdown, I thought the discovery of this document might provide a good opportunity to use it as the basis of a composer countdown from the perspective of 1968.
On the original document, the composers were listed under 17 different pay categories (asking prices) – I will not specify the asking prices here, especially as some of these composers are still alive and even working. However, the top two on the list are long deceased, so I will list their rates in the third and final part of this series, to give some financial perspective to the list.
The facts I include about each composer -- age, filmmaker relationships, awards and nominations, top grossing films -- are as of October 1, 1968. However, during that period, accurate box-office information for films was not as easily available as it is now, and the trade papers reported the films’ "rentals" -- the amount the studio received from the theaters -- not the full grosses. Rentals tended to be a little more than half of the grosses, though the percentage varied from film to film, with the studios contracting to get a bigger cut from films that were expected to make more money. (A relatively more recent example of this occured in 1987, when Lethal Weapon had higher grosses than Predator but smaller rentals, since Schwarzenegger was a bigger star than Gibson at the time so Fox contracted for a larger percentage of Predator than Warners did for Lethal.)
However, unlike today, where the trade papers and websites like Box Office Mojo have reliable and regularly updated box-office totals, in decades past that kind of information was much harder to come by, with the rentals-versus-grosses disparity only adding to the confusion. So my lists of the top grossing films for each composer are not nearly as complete and accurate as I would like -- let the reader beware.
Ironically enough, that A-list director -- whose films often featured brief or restrained scores -- didn’t end up using an original score for the film in question.
17A. LUCHI DE JESUS
AGE: 45
BIRTHPLACE: New York, New York
At that time, De Jesus had not yet scored a feature film, and his scoring credits as of 1968 consisted of episodes of That Girl. He went on to score a handful of features in the 1970s including memorable black-themed action films like Slaughter, Detroit 9000, Black Belt Jones, Friday Foster and Adios Amigos, as well as episodes of Macmillan and Wife, Banacek, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman and CHiPs. He died in 1984 at the age of 61.
17B. IRVING GERTZ
AGE: 53
BIRTHPLACE: Providence, Rhode Island
Gertz had his last scoring credits in 1968 -- for the Universal military comedy Nobody’s Perfect (starring Doug McClure and Nancy Kwan) and episodes of Daniel Boone, Land of the Giants and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. He died in 2008 at the age of 93.
17C. JIMMIE HASKELL
AGE: 33
BIRTHPLACE: Brooklyn, New York
1 GRAMMY
FILMMAKER RELATIONSHIPS: Lesley Selander, R.G. Springsteen
TYPECAST IN: Westerns
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. I’ll Take Sweden--1.5 (U.S. rentals in millions)
Haskell continued scoring for television and features, including such films as Night of the Lepus, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry and Death Game (recently remade by Eli Roth as Knock Knock) and many episodes of The Doris Day Show and L and of the Lost. He received three Emmy nominations, winning in 1978 for the drama See How She Runs. He died last year on February 4th, at the age of 79.
17D. RICHARD LASALLE
AGE: 50
BIRTHPLACE: Louisville, Colorado
TYPECAST IN: Westerns
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number--4
For the next fifteen years LaSalle scored low-budget features as well as TV episodes and movies-of-the week. His final scoring credits were on two Irwin Allen TV productions in 1983, Cave-In and The Night the Bridge Fell Down. He died a little over two years ago, on April 5, 2015, at the age of 97.
17E. WILLIAM LAVA
AGE: 57
BIRTHPLACE: St. Paul, Minnesota
WHAT’S NEXT: Assignment to Kill
By the late ‘60s, Lava was working mostly in animated shorts. His final feature credits were the 1969 comedy-Western The Good Guys and the Bad Guys, starring Robert Mitchum and George Kennedy, and the low-budget Dracula vs. Frankenstein, featuring horror veterans Lon Chaney Jr. and J. Carrol Naish, released several months after Lava’s death in early 1971 at the age of 59.
16A. VAN ALEXANDER
AGE: 53
BIRTHPLACE: New York, New York
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. Strait-Jacket--2
2. Baby Face Nelson--1.25
3. I Saw What You Did--1
He didn’t score any features after 1966’s Tarzan and the Valley of Gold, and the rest of his credits were in television, working particularly as an arranger for variety programs. He died in July of 2015, two and a half months after his 100th birthday.
AGE: 46
BIRTHPLACE: Mexia, Texas
RELATIONSHIPS: American International Pictures, Roger Corman
TYPECAST IN: Biker movies, horror
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. Wild in the Streets--4
2. Fireball 500--2
3. Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine--1.9
4. Goliath and the Barbarians--1.5
The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini--1.5
6. The Raven--1.3
7. Pit and the Pendulum--1.2
Beach Party--1.2
9. Master of the World--1.1
Tales of Terror--1.1
WHAT’S NEXT: All the Loving Couples, Hell’s Belles, Target: Harry, Terror in the Jungle, The Young Animals
Baxter continued scoring films for A.I.P. including such memorable horrors of the era as The Dunwich Horror and Frogs. He worked occasionally in episodic TV, including the limited series The Curse of Dracula and one episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. His final feature to receive a major release was The Beast Within in 1982, and while film music fans know him best for his A.I.P. scores, many of which have finally been commercially released, in popular culture he is probably better remembered for his lounge music albums -- his piece “Simba” received a memorable placement in Inherent Vice. He died in 1996 at the age of 73.
16C. RICHARD MARKOWITZ
AGE: 42
BIRTHPLACE: Santa Monica, California
TYPECAST IN: Westerns
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. The Hoodlum Priest--1
While Markowitz went on to score a handful of features, he worked much more extensively in television, including 71 episodes of Murder, She Wrote, and was Emmy nominated for his theme for The Law and Harry McGraw. He died in 1994 at the age of 68; his main title for The Wild Wild West continues to be one of the greatest series themes in TV history.
15A. BENNY CARTER
AGE: 61
BIRTHPLACE: New York, New York
1 GRAMMY NOMINATION
Much better known as a jazz musician than as a film composer, he worked mostly in television, scoring episodes of The Bold Ones, Ironside, The Name of the Game and Night Gallery, as well as Sidney Poitier’s 1972 feature Western Buck and the Preacher, which teamed Poitier with Harry Belafonte. Carter’s many honors included the NEA Jazz Masters award in 1986, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1994, and the NEA’S National Medal of Arts in 2000. He died in 2003 at the age of 95.
15B. BOOKER T. JONES (AND THE MG’S)
AGE: 23
BIRTHPLACE: Memphis, Tennessee
1 GRAMMY NOMINATION
WHAT’S NEXT: Uptight
Uptight was released in the U.S. on December 28, 1968. A remake of John Ford’s The Informer, set against the backdrop of the Black Power movement, it was directed by Jules Dassin and starred Raymond St. Jacques, Ruby Dee and Julian Mayfield (in the role played in The Informer by Victor McLaglen), with Dee and Mayfield co-writing the screenplay with Dassin. Uptight was ultimately the only film that Booker T. Jones scored. Most famous for the 1962 hit “Green Onions” (which is also used in Uptight), Jones and the MGs were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, and Jones released his tenth album in 2013. He has earned four Grammys over the course of his career, and is still with us at age 72; while Uptight the film is rarely seen today, the soundtrack album is still available.
15C. JOHN DANKWORTH
AGE: 41
BIRTHPLACE: Woodford, England
BEST PICTURE NOMINEE: Darling
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. Darling--3
2. Modesty Blaise--2
3. Fathom--1
The Magus--1
WHAT’S NEXT: The Other People
The acclaimed British jazz artist scored only a few more films over the next few years, including the memorable true-crime drama 10 Rillington Place in 1971, and his final scoring credits were Gangster No. 1 (2000) and Kiss Kiss (Bang Bang) (2001). His jazz career continued and he was named a Knight Bachelor by the Queen in 2006. He died in 2010 at the age of 82, survived by his widow, the singer Dame Cleo Laine (she and Dankworth were among the few married couples where both partners were titled in their own right), and their children, bassist Alec Dankworth and singer Jacqui Dankworth.
15D. GERALD FRIED
AGE: 40
BIRTHPLACE: New York, New York
1 EMMY NOMINATION
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. Paths of Glory--2
WHAT’S NEXT: The Killing of Sister George
Fried continued to balance film and television work, receiving an Oscar nomination for 1975’s Birds Do It, Bees Do It, and five Emmy nominations including an award for the first part of Roots (and his fight music for Star Trek’s “Amok Time” may be even more widely recognized). Earlier this year, he celebrated his 89th birthday.
15E. PETE KING
AGE: 54
BIRTHPLACE: Ohio
2 GRAMMY NOMINATIONS
TYPECAST IN: Comedy
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. The Family Jewels--2
2. The Last of the Secret Agents?--1
King did not have any feature scoring credits after The Last of the Secret Agents? in 1966. He was elected president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 1967, and he scored many episodes of the first two seasons of TV’s Happy Days. He died in 1982 at the age of 68.
15F. FRED STEINER
AGE: 45
BIRTHPLACE: New York, New York
Steiner continued to work largely in television, on TV movies as well as episodes of such series as The Guns of Will Sonnett, Bonanza, Mannix, Hawaii Five-0, Dynasty, Amazing Stories, and even one early episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. He received an Oscar nomination as one of Quincy Jones’ many collaborators on the Color Purple score, and wrote scholarly pieces on film music as well as conducting several re-recordings, including one of Max Steiner’s King Kong. He died in 2011 at the age of 88; his theme for TV’s Perry Mason remains an all-time classic.
AGE: 59
BIRTHPLACE: Mount Moriah, Missouri
3 OSCAR NOMINATIONS
1 EMMY NOMINATION
TYPECAST IN: Westerns
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. The Interns--5
2. The Five Pennies--2.5
3. It Happened at the World’s Fair--2.25
4. The War of the Worlds--2
A New Kind of Love--2
6. When Worlds Collide--1.6
7. Julie--1.4
8. Destination Moon--1.3
9. But Not For Me--1.1
For the remainder of his career he worked largely in episodic TV, including episodes of Judd for the Defense, Lancer and Land of the Giants. He died in 1970 at the age of 60.
15H. NATHAN VAN CLEAVE
AGE: 58
BIRTHPLACE: Bayfield, Wisconsin
TYPECAST IN: Science-Fiction
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. Conquest of Space--1
Van Cleave’s final feature score was for Willam Castle’s truly bizarre 1968 science-fiction thriller Project X. Van Cleave died in 1970 at the age of 60. (That is not a copy-editing error -- Van Cleave died exactly three weeks before Leith Stevens, and both at the same age).
14A. ROBERT EMMETT DOLAN
AGE: 62
BIRTHPLACE: Hartford, Connecticut
8 OSCAR NOMINATIONS
BEST PICTURE NOMINEES: Going My Way, The Bells of St. Mary’s
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. The Bells of St. Mary’s--8
2. Going My Way--6
3. The Perils of Pauline--3.8
4. Monsieur Beaucaire--3.5
5. My Favorite Brunette--3.1
6. The Great Gatsby--2
7. The Three Faces of Eve--1
He was the musical director for the 1969 Broadway musical Coco, about the life of Coco Chanel, with Katharine Hepburn in the lead (her only stage musical) and a song score by Andre Previn and Alan Jay Lerner. He died in 1972 at the age of 66.
AGE: 46
BIRTHPLACE: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
TYPECAST IN: Comedy
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. Advise and Consent--2
2. McHale’s Navy--1.9
3. McHale’s Navy Joins the Air Force--1.5
WHAT’S NEXT: The Wild Bunch
The Wild Bunch would prove to be a career-making assignment for Fielding -- it earned him the first of three Oscar nominations (the other two were for Straw Dogs and The Outlaw Josey Wales), and over the course of the next decade he had ongoing collaborations with Sam Peckinpah (who was initially critical of the Wild Bunch score) and Clint Eastwood. He died much too young, in 1980 at age 57, and won a posthumous Emmy for his TV movie score High Midnight. Fortunately, the great majority of his feature scores are now available on CD, as well as some of his TV work including his two Star Trek episodes.
AGE: 67
BIRTHPLACE: San Francisco
1 OSCAR, 9 NOMINATIONS
BEST PICTURE NOMINEES: The Best Years of Our Lives, The Bishop’s Wife
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. The Best Years of Our Lives--11
2. Vera Cruz--5
3. The Young Lions--4.5
4. One-Eyed Jacks --4.3
5. Joan of Arc--4.1
6. An Affair to Remember--3.85
7. Broken Arrow--3.55
8. Body and Soul--3.25
9 The Bishop’s Wife--3.0
10. Never So Few--2.9
Friedhofer scored only a few more features, including Roger Corman’s Von Richtofen and Brown (1971) and Paul Bartel’s Private Parts (1972). He helped Alfred Newman complete his final score, Airport, and his own final scoring credit was for a 1978 episode of Barnaby Jones. He died in 1980 at the age of 81.
AGE: 37
BIRTHPLACE: New Haven, Connecticut
TYPECAST IN: Westerns
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. Hang ‘Em High--5
2. The Marriage Go Round--1
WHAT’S NEXT: Popi
Frontiere was prolific in the 1970s and early 1980s, balancing film and television work. He never surpassed the commercial success of his Morricone-esque theme from Hang ‘Em High, whose cover version by Booker T. & The M.G.’s made it to #9 on the Pop chart, but he had his biggest critical success with his droll score for Richard Rush’s 1980 film The Stunt Man, which won Frontiere a Golden Globe for Best Original Score – Motion Picture (he also won a Music Direction Emmy for the 1970 NBC special Swing Out, Sweet Land.) He had a major career and personal setback in 1986 when he spent nine months in a federal penitentiary for a ticket scalping case involving his then-wife, Los Angeles Rams owner Georgia Frontiere. His last major feature, 1994’s Color of Night, reunited him with Stunt Man director Richard Rush. He is still with us at age 86, and we hope he is enjoying his retirement.
AGE: 52
BIRTHPLACE: Brooklyn, New York
RELATIONSHIPS: Don Knotts
TYPECAST IN: Comedy
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. The Ghost and Mr. Chicken--2
2. The Shakiest Gun in the West--1.65
3. The Reluctant Astronaut--1.5
A Very Special Favor--1.5
5. Don’t Make Waves--1.24
WHAT’S NEXT: The Love God?
After two more Don Knotts feature vehicles, the rest of his scoring career was in television. His theme for The Addams Family remains an all-time classic; without that theme, one can only wonder if they would even have made a feature film version. He died in 2009 at the age of 93.
14F. MARTY PAICH
AGE: 43
BIRTHPLACE: Oakland, California
1 EMMY NOMINATION
1 GRAMMY NOMINATION
WHAT’S NEXT: Changes
The obscure 1969 drama Changes (directed by veteran producer Hall Bartlett) would be the only remaining film Paich would score. He scored nearly four dozen episodes of TV’s Ironside and earned four Emmy nominations for his TV work, winning an Emmy in 1974 for an original song, written with his son David, from an Ironside episode. David Paich was a founding member of Toto and with the group composed the score to David Lynch’s Dune, with his father composing additional music as well as conducting. Overall, Marty Paich is best remembered not for his film work but for his career as a jazz musician, arranger and performer. Paich went on to conduct many of James Newton Howard’s first decades of scores, including such top-notch works as Alive, Dave and Wyatt Earp, before his death in 1995 at the age of 70.
14G. PETE RUGOLO
AGE: 54
BIRTHPLACE: San Piero, Italy
4 EMMY NOMINATIONS
1 GRAMMY NOMINATION
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. The Sweet Ride--1.5
2. Jack the Ripper--1.1
WHAT’S NEXT: The Sound of Anger [TV]
After 1968, Rugolo worked much more in television than in features, including TV movies as well as episodes of many shows including Alias Smith and Jones, The Bold Ones, Family, The Invisible Man, Police Woman, The Rookies and one episode of the short-lived Blue Thunder series. In 1997, at the age of 83, he returned to features for one more project, a low-budget adaptation of Jim Thompson’s unfinished This World, Then the Fireworks. Ultimately best remembered for his jazz work, particularly his years as an arranger for the Stan Kenton Orchestra, he died in 2011 at the age of 95.
13A. JEFF ALEXANDER
AGE: 58
BIRTHPLACE: Seattle, Washington
RELATIONSHIPS: Burt Kennedy
TYPECAST IN: Comedy
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. Jailhouse Rock--4
2. The Tender Trap--3
Speedway--3
4. The Mating Game--2.5
5. It Started with a Kiss--2.1
6. Ask Any Girl--2.0
7. The Gazebo--1.8
8. Kid Galahad--1.775
9. Double Trouble--1.6
10. Escape from Fort Bravo--1.45
WHAT’S NEXT: Support Your Local Sheriff!
After two comedy-Westerns, Support Your Local Sheriff! and Dirty Dingus Magee (which was shortlisted for Score and Song nominations), Alexander focused on television music, with both episode scoring and TV movies. His final credit was the 1980 TV movie More Wild Wild West, and he died in 1989 at the age of 79.
13B. DON COSTA
AGE: 43
BIRTHPLACE: Boston, Massachusetts
3 GRAMMY NOMINATIONS
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. Rough Night in Jericho--1.75
2. Madigan--1.1
WHAT’S NEXT: The Impossible Years
Costa only scored a handful of films, including the 1973 Blaxplotation Western sequel The Soul of Nigger Charley, as well as working in series TV including episodes of Lanigan’s Rabbi and What Really Happened to the Class of ’65? He continued his work as a conductor and arranger for Frank Sinatra, and had a hit in 1981 with his nine-year-old daughter Nikki’s cover version of Fame’s “Out Here on My Own.” He was planning another collaboration with his daughter (whose musical career continues to this day) when he died in 1983 at the age of 57.
AGE: 24
BIRTHPLACE: New York, New York
TYPECAST IN: Drama
WHAT’S NEXT: The April Fools
At that time, Hamlisch’s only feature scoring credit was on The Swimmer. After scoring two early Woody Allen comedies, he would become an A-list feature composer, earning 12 Oscar nominations as well as the unparalleled achievement of winning in all three music categories in the same year, 1973, for The Way We Were’s original score and song and The Sting’s adaptation of Scott Joplin’s ragtime music. He had comparable success in the theater, with A Chorus Line winning him not only the Tony Award but the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for drama. His final feature score was for Steven Soderbergh’s 2009 comedy The Informant!, an homage to his work on Woody Allen’s Bananas, and he died in 2012 at the age of 68.
AGE: 61
BIRTHPLACE: Salt Lake City, Utah
2 OSCARS, 7 NOMINATIONS
BEST PICTURE NOMINEES: The Pride of the Yankees, The More the Merrier
TYPECAST IN: Comedy, fantasy
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs--15
2. Pinocchio--7
3. The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm--6
4. Road to Utopia--4.5
The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer--4.5
6. Broken Lance--3.8
7. The Farmer’s Daughter--3.3
8. Visit to a Small Planet--3.2
The Facts of Life--3.2
10. The Desert Rats--2.9
His final feature score was for the 1965 Rock Hudson comedy Strange Bedfellows. Harline died in 1969 at the age of 62.
13E. JOHN KEATING
AGE: 41
BIRTHPLACE: Edinburgh, Scotland
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. Hotel--3
He would only go on to score one more film, the 1972 spy thriller Innocent Bystanders. He continued his work in jazz and even published a four-volume academic reference book, Principles of Songwriting: A Study in Structure and Technique. He died in 2015, at the age of 87.
13F. JOSEPH J. LILLEY
AGE: 55
BIRTHPLACE: Providence, Rhode Island
1 OSCAR NOMINATION
RELATIONSHIPS: Bob Hope
TYPECAST IN: Comedy, musicals
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. White Christmas--12
2. Blue Hawaii--4.7
3. G.I. Blues--4.3
4. The Seven Little Foys--4.0
5. Lil’ Abner--3.2
6. Girls! Girls! Girls! --3.0
Roustabout--3.0
8. The Disorderly Orderly--2.5
9. Easy Come, Easy Go--1.92
10. Paris Holiday--1.5
WHAT’S NEXT: How to Commit Marriage
His final scoring credit was the 1969 Bob Hope vehicle How to Commit Marriage, and he worked as a choral arranger on two big budget movie musicals, Paint Your Wagon and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, before his death in 1971 at the age of 57.
13G. HUGO MONTENEGRO
AGE: 43
BIRTHPLACE: New York, New York
2 GRAMMY NOMINATIONS
RELATIONSHIPS: Irving Allen
TYPECAST IN: Westerns
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. The Ambushers--4.7
2. Hurry Sundown--4.05
WHAT’S NEXT: Charro!, Lady in Cement, The Wrecking Crew
Montenegro scored a handful of features over the next year but focused largely on TV, including episodes of Here Come the Brides, I Dream of Jeannie and The Partridge Family. He scored two obscure thriller features in 1977, Too Hot to Handle and The Farmer, and he died in 1981 at the age of 55.
AGE: 55
BIRTHPLACE: Brooklyn, New York
1 OSCAR NOMINATION
TYPECAST IN: Westerns
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. The Cardinal--5
2. The Big Country--4
3. Rachel, Rachel--3
4. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn--1.8
5. The Proud Rebel--1.5
WHAT’S NEXT: Hail, Hero!, The Valley of Gwangi
He brought his distinctively American sound to two more features, both released in 1969 -- the youth drama Hail Hero, starring a 25-year-old Michael Douglas, and Ray Harryhausen’s dinosaur Western The Valley of Gwangi. For the rest of his life he focused on concert music, including a 1977 one-act opera, Sorry, Wrong Number. His film music, especially his Big Country score, has only grown more popular over the years, and Ken Mandlebaum’s book Not Since Carrie named Moross’s The Golden Apple as the greatest of all commercially unsuccessful stage musicals (its complete song score was re-recorded and released on CD in 2015). Moross died in 1983 at the age of 69.
13I. HARRY SUKMAN
AGE: 57
BIRTHPLACE: Chicago, Illinois
1 OSCAR, 3 NOMINATIONS
BEST PICTURE NOMINEE: Fanny
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. The Singing Nun--3
2. The Naked Runner--1
WHAT’S NEXT: If He Hollers, Let Him Go!
Sukman worked regularly in TV throughout the 1970s, including the Gene Roddenberry pilots Genesis II and Planet Earth, and his popular score for the two-part 1979 adaptation of Salem’s Lot earned him his second Emmy nomination. It proved to be his final score, and he died in 1984 at the age of 72.
13J. RALPH FERRARO
AGE: 39
BIRTHPLACE: Waterbury, Connecticut
While Ferraro’s film composing career never took off -- his best known scoring credit proved to be 1973’s Flesh Gordon -- he racked up dozens of credits as an orchestrator, first for Leonard Rosenman and later for Randy Edelman. His final orchestrator credit was on Edelman’s Underdog in 2007, and he died in 2012 at the age of 82.
AGE: 46
BIRTHPLACE: Northampton, England
1 OSCAR
1 GRAMMY NOMINATION
BEST PICTURE NOMINEE: The Bridge on the River Kwai
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. The Bridge on the River Kwai--17
2. Trapeze--7
3. Suddenly, Last Summer--6
4. Island in the Sun--5
5. Inn of the Sixth Happiness--4
6. The Roots of Heaven--3
7. The Chalk Garden--2.6
8. The Key--2.2
9. The Heroes of Telemark--1.6
10. The Lion--1.1
Arnold would only score one more feature, 1970’s The Reckoning, and he scored two Dickens adaptations for television, David Copperfield (1970) and Hard Times (1977). Over the next decade or so he dealt with personal, financial and health issues, and completed his ninth and final symphony in 1986. He died in 2006 at the age of 85; today, his concert work may be even better remembered than his film scoring, and every October there is a Malcolm Arnold Festival in his birthplace of Northampton.
AGE: 42
BIRTHPLACE: Pesaro, Italy
1 OSCAR NOMINATION
1 GRAMMY, 2 NOMINATIONS
RELATIONSHIPS: Carlo Lizzani
TYPECAST IN: Romantic comedy, Westerns
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. The Yellow Rolls-Royce--6
2. Anzio--1.4
3. Mondo Cane--1.05
WHAT’S NEXT: Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell; Emma Hamilton; The Last Roman; Quien Grita Venganza?
Ortolani would earn a second Oscar nomination in 1970, for Madron’s song “Til Love Touches Your Life,” and remained a prolific composer though almost exclusively in European cinema. He kept composing until the end of his life, and he died in 2014 at the age of 87.
11A. EARLE HAGEN
AGE: 49
BIRTHPLACE: Chicago, Illinois
1 OSCAR NOMINATION
1 EMMY, 3 NOMINATIONS
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. The New Interns--2
He didn’t score another feature after 1964’s The New Interns (his Oscar nomination was for his work on the 1960 musical Let’s Make Love), but he remained one of the giants of TV scoring, composing some of the most indelible series themes in TV history -- The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, I Spy, The Mod Squad and That Girl. One of his last TV series was The New Mike Hammer, which used his classic “Harlem Nocturne” as its main theme, and he died in 2008 at the age of 88.
11B. LYN MURRAY
AGE: 58
BIRTHPLACE: London, England
TYPECAST IN: Comedy
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. The Bridges at Toko-Ri--5
2. To Catch a Thief--4
3. Son of Paleface--3
4. Period of Adjustment--2
5. D-Day The Sixth of June--1.95
6. Casanova’s Big Night--1.6
7. On the Threshold of Space--1.15
WHAT’S NEXT: Angel in My Pocket
Murray’s final two feature scores were for Universal comedies, Angel in My Pocket and The Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County. For the rest of his career he worked in television, scoring TV movies, documentaries, and episodes of such series as The Bold Ones, Dragnet, It Takes a Thief and The Virginian. He died in 1989 at the age of 79.
11C. STANLEY MYERS
AGE: 34
BIRTHPLACE: Birmingham, England
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. No Way to Treat a Lady--3
2. Ulysses--2
WHAT’S NEXT: The Night of the Following Day, Otley
Myers remained active in feature scoring until his death in 1993 at the age of 63. His most famous film was The Deer Hunter, which used his concert piece “Cavatina” as its main theme, and he worked repeatedly with such directors as Nicolas Roeg ( The Witches) and Stephen Frears ( Prick Up Your Ears). In some ways, his most lasting film music legacy may be his sponsorship of his protégé, Hans Zimmer, who acknowledged his working relationship with Myers as one of the reasons he himself became a sponsor for other rising composers.
11D. WALTER SCHARF
AGE: 58
BIRTHPLACE: New York, New York
7 OSCAR NOMINATIONS
1 EMMY NOMINATION
1 GRAMMY NOMINATION
TYPECAST IN: Comedy, Musicals
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. The Nutty Professor--4
2. The Bellboy--3.55
3. Don’t Give Up the Ship--3.2
4. Rock-A-Bye Baby--3.1
5. The Joker Is Wild--3.0
The Geisha Boy--3.0
Tickle Me--3.0
8. Cinderfella--2.9
9. Pocketful of Miracles--2.38
10. Where Love Has Gone--2.2
WHAT’S NEXT: Funny Girl
Scharf would go on to receive three more Oscar nominations -- for his adaptation scores for Funny Girl and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and for the classic Michael Jackson theme song for the Willard sequel Ben (for which he also wrote the short-listed score). He worked extensively in television throughout the 1970s and the first half of the ‘80s, winning a 1971 Emmy for the Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau episode “The Tragedy of the Red Salmon,” and for the big screen he scored all three of the Walking Tall films. He died in 2003 at the age of 92.
11E. PATRICK WILLIAMS
AGE: 29
BIRTHPLACE: Boone Terre, Missouri
TYPECAST IN: Comedy
TOP BOX-OFFICE HITS:
1. How Sweet It Is!--2
While Williams scored his share of features, receiving an Oscar nomination for Breaking Away’s adaptation score, he had much more success in television, receiving 22 Emmy nominations and earning 4 awards, three for scores and one for a song. His last scoring credit was for a 2005 version of Hercules, and he celebrated his 78th birthday this last April.
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