 A prolific composer of film music since the early 1950s, when he began writing scores for documentaries, while also writing arrangements for the leading bands and orchestras of the day, including Geraldo. Trained at the Guildhall School of Music, he was musical director of Parlophone Records from 1950, and began broadcasting with his own orchestra. His feature film scores were first heard in The Man with a Gun (d. Montgomery Tully, 1958) and Whirlpool (d. Lewis Allen, 1959) and, on the nearly 60 that followed, he was often conductor or music director as well as composer. Much of his work was for action films (like Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, d. Ken Annakin, 1965), but he is equally adept with comedies (e.g., two for Morecambe and Wise) or melodrama (e.g., I Thank a Fool, d. Robert Stevens, 1962; Of Human Bondage, d. Ken Hughes, 1964). Often a guest conductor with famous orchestras, has won several Ivor Novello Awards, including one in 1994 for Lifetime Achievement. Brian McFarlane, Encyclopedia of British Film
|
FILM & TV CREDITS
