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Composer Details
Ron Goodwin |
Birthdate
February 17, 1925
Country of origin
Great Britain
Web site
www.rongoodwin.co.uk/
Biography
Born on February 17, 1925 in Plymouth, England. Died on January 8, 2003.
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Highly respected and beloved English composer and conductor, best known for his rousing war movie scores of the 1960s and 70s. Played piano and trumpet as a schoolboy in London, and began his career at the tender age of 14 with his own dance band, ‘The Woodchoppers’, who he styled after Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw. Despite his young age, the success of the band led to him being hired as an arranger for leading British big bands and orchestras including Geraldo, Ted Heath and the BBC Dance Orchestra, while working full-time as a music copyist.
Goodwin eventually went on to work as a musical director at EMI under George Martin, where he produced hit songs for Petula Clark and Jimmy Young among others. Scored his first films in 1959 (one of which was the popular “Whirlpool”,) and over the course of the next 20 years Goodwin would go on to become one of the most influential and well-respected British composers of his era. Among his most successful films were the 1960 sci-fi horror “Village of the Damned”, the 1962 British chiller “Day of the Triffids”, the classic 1964 war movie “633 Squadron”, the 1965 farce “Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines”, the 1968 adventure movie “Where Eagles Dare”, the 1972 Hitchcock thriller “Frenzy”, and the 1978 war movie sequel “Force 10 from Navarone”.
His theme from "The Trap" (1966) subsequently became well known as the theme music for BBC TV's annual coverage of the London Marathon. In addition to all this, Goodwin continued to record dozens of albums of “light music” with his own orchestra, as well as carrying out a gruelling diary of concert performances. During his career, he received three Ivor Novello Awards, the most recent of which was in 1994 for Lifetime Achievement. Following his retirement from active composing in 1992, Goodwin spent the last years of his career travelling the world as a guest conductor, performing with symphony orchestras in Britain, America, New Zealand and Singapore. He died in 2003, aged 77, having suffered from asthma for many years.
Highlight scores: Village of the Damned, Day of the Triffids, 633 Squadron, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, Operation Crossbow, The Trap, Where Eagles Dare, Battle of Britain, Frenzy, One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing, Force 10 from Navarone, Miss Marple (TV).
Awards: Golden Globe nomination for "Frenzy" (1972).
(Thanks to Movie Music UK)
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