OBIT: Angela Morley, "Watership Down"

Angela Morley (born Wally Stott on 10 March 1924, died 14 January 2009) was an English composer and conductor.

Life
Angela Morley was born in Leeds, Yorkshire on 10 March 1924. She attributes her entry into successful composing and arranging largely to the influence and encouragement of the Canadian light music composer Robert Farnon.

She is a transsexual woman, and was originally credited under her birth name Wally Stott. She underwent sex reassignment surgery in 1972. In the later part of her life, Angela Morley lived in Scottsdale, Arizona, and was awarded 3 Emmy Awards for her work in television musical scoring, also receiving two Academy Award Nominations.


Works
Angela Morley is perhaps best known as a composer of light music, with the jaunty Rotten Row her best known piece. Also notable is A Canadian in Mayfair, a homage to Robert Farnon's Portrait of a Flirt.

In 1953, she began a long association with the Philips record label, arranging for and accompanying the company's artists, as well as releasing records under her own name, including the 1958 LP 'London Pride'.

She is also well known for writing the theme tune and incidental music for Hancock's Half Hour and was the musical director for The Goon Show from the third series in 1952 to the last show in 1960. Another very short, but fondly remembered, theme was the 12-notes-long "Ident Zoom-2", written for Lew Grade's Associated TeleVision (ATV) and in use from the introduction of colour television in 1969 until the demise of ATV in 1981.

In the 1960s she worked with Shirley Bassey, Dusty Springfield and the first three highly regarded solo albums by Scott Walker. In 1962 and 1963, she arranged the United Kingdom entries for the Eurovision Song Contest, Ring-A-Ding Girl and Say Wonderful Things, both sung by Ronnie Carroll. The former was conducted on the Eurovision stage in Luxembourg by her as well.

Morley orchestrated, arranged, and supervised the music for the final musical film collaboration of Lerner and Loewe, The Little Prince(1974). In 1976 she was music supervisor, arranger, and conductor for the Sherman Brothers' musical adaptation of the Cinderella story entitled, The Slipper and the Rose. She won Oscar nominations for both films. Additionally, she wrote most of the score for the 1978 film version of Watership Down, although the prelude and opening was by Malcolm Williamson. From about this point she began a collaboration with John Williams, the composer for Star Wars and other films, though working in an uncredited capacity.

During the 1980s she wrote numerous arrangements for the Boston Pops and scored many episodes of TV shows, including Dynasty, Dallas, Falcon Crest, and Hotel.

She died on 14 January 2009, following a long struggle with cancer.

kriegerg69, January 17, 2009; 11:49 PM