It’s 92 candles on the cake for John Williams – a suitable tribute for the brightest light among living film composers.
Williams’ career has spanned some 70 years. I know it’s trite to say, but the man is living history. No, really.
Well before he became a household name in the 1970s, with blockbusters like “Jaws” and “Star Wars,” he worked as an orchestrator and session pianist on such films as “Sweet Smell of Success,” “Bell, Book and Candle, “God’s Little Acre,” “The Big Country,” “Some Like It Hot,” “The Magnificent Seven,” “Studs Lonigan,” “The Apartment,” “Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “The Guns of Navarone,” “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” “Charade,” “The Pink Panther,” “The Great Race,” “West Side Story,” and any number of other screen musicals.
He collaborated or apprenticed with many of the greatest film composers who ever lived, including Elmer Bernstein, Jerry Goldsmith, Bernard Herrmann, Henry Mancini, Jerome Moross, Alfred Newman, Dimitri Tiomkin, and Franz Waxman.
Of course, he was also composing his own original scores. His first A-list movie assignment was “How to Steal a Million” in 1966. Prior to that, he’d scored some goofy comedies and did TV work. Eddie Cantor once quipped, it takes 20 years to become an overnight success. By the time the wider public began to sit up and take notice of John Williams, with “Jaws” in 1975, that’s about right. By then, he’d already quietly amassed a string of hits and even landed his first Oscar (for adapting “Fiddler on the Roof” in 1971).
Curious to hear Williams’ first film score? While serving in the U.S. Air Force, Williams was assigned to the Northeast Air Command Band and stationed at Fort Pepperell in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada. There, he was approached by a local production company, Atlantic Films, to score a tourism short in 1952, titled “You Are Welcome.” His contribution consists largely of arrangements of local folk tunes, so don’t go into it expecting the unmistakable “Williams sound” he honed in Hollywood. But it will give you a real sense of history.
Mighty oaks from little acorns grow. You’ve come a long way, baby! Happy birthday, John Williams!
PHOTOS: Williams today (top), and recording “You Are Welcome” in 1952
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