His first film scores (which I have never seen or heard) were reportedly in a swinging, jazzy idiom. Maybe some listers who are older than I am would have seen How To Steal A Million, John Goldfarb, Please Come Home, or A Guide For The Married Man, which are among the first films listed in his bio, from the 60's. I seem to remember the Gidget movies, too, which would have been when he was a young man.
Remember that people in Hollywood tend to be specialists, and to assume that everyone else is a specialist, too. In other words, a composer can be and usually is typecast as composing sweet music, swing jazz, Hollywood lush, disaster, adventure, etc. It can be pretty hard to break through those preconceptions, just as it is for an actor.
This from a workshop Frank Comstock did for the instrumentalists in the All American College Singers and Showband, when I directed the show in 1978. He had been typecast as a "sweet" composer, and it was really his collaborations with Gene Puerling and The Hi-Los that helped him break out of type. He was also a consumate professional and understood the technical requirements of movie making (as JW seems to, as well), so he was often called in to "fix" problems in someone else's score. He said that most Hollywood composers did the same thing for each other, and never expected to get screen credit for their work.
John
-- John & Susie Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
