Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Dr. Strangelove

Laurie Johnson Avengers Composer Dies at 96

The composer and bandleader Laurie Johnson has died at a venerable age.

Among other things, Johnson was the composer of super-cool TV music for shows such as “Jason King,” “The Professionals,” and of course “The Avengers” – by which I mean the elegant and often surreal spy-fi series, starring Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg. You won’t find the incredible Hulk shooting very many corks out of champagne bottles.

Johnson was already composing and arranging for the Ted Heath Band by his late teens. At 21, he was recording with his own band for EMI. He spent four years in the Coldstream Guards. In the 1950s, he became well-established as a composer and arranger for many of the major big bands.

His music for the stage included collaborations with Lionel Bart (of “Oliver!” fame), Peter Cooke (of “Beyond the Fringe”), and Harry Secombe (of “The Goon Show”).

Later, he cofounded Mark 1 Productions, the television company responsible for “The Avengers” and “The Professionals,” and became co-owner of Gainsborough Pictures.

Among his feature film scores were those for Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove” and the Hammer cult classic “Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter.”

Arbiters of “serious music” are too often dismissive of the kind of skill it takes for an artist of Johnson’s ilk to succeed. It requires versatility, speed, polish, and instant memorability. What’s more, those putting up the money want it on the cheap. You won’t find many Stravinskys or Schoenbergs in the field (although, Lord knows, both tried to break in).

Johnson was tutored at the Royal College of Music by Herbert Howells and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

In addition to conducting albums of his own works, he recorded film scores of Dimitri Tiomkin and “North by Northwest” by Bernard Herrmann. He also wrote an autobiography, “Noises in the Head.”

He directed, toured, and recorded with his own big bands well into old age. I own a number of their recordings. I’m thinking I might resurrect one of his more ambitious works, the “Symphony (Synthesis),” this weekend on my radio show, “The Lost Chord.”

In 1971, a critic for Gramophone magazine described the symphony as a masterpiece: “This is perhaps the first truly successful combination of the Jazz and European music traditions,” he wrote.

Johnson died on Tuesday at the age of 96. R.I.P.

January 22, 2024
Dr Strangelove & Journey to Earth Movie Discussion

If you’re wondering about my peculiar garb last night, it was not my intention to kick off the holidays with my Bob Cratchit impression. I’ve been trying to beat a sore throat the last couple of days. But a mug of tea with honey and lemon had me good-to-go for Roy and my discussion of “Dr. Strangelove” (1964). On the whole, the show got me out of my head and made for a cheering evening, especially some of the digressions, including an unexpected shout-out to Marlin Perkins!

Next week, we “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (1959) with Jules Verne and James Mason. Composer Bernard Herrmann pulls out all the stops on this underground classic – quite literally, with cathedral organ and four electronic organs, alongside an obsolete Renaissance instrument called the serpent.

Watch the movie, then join us for a subterranean chat, on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. Monitor those monitor lizards (really rhinoceros iguanas) in the comments section. We’ll be carrying the torch when we livestream on Facebook, next Friday evening at 7:00 EST!

https://www.facebook.com/roystiedyescificorner

November 6, 2021
Sterling Hayden Easton PA? A Lost Encounter

Is it possible Sterling Hayden once poured me a drink at a party in Easton, PA? This would have been in the mid-1980s. My bosom chum Matt Anthony seems to think so. But I think by then surely I would have known who he was? Hayden was the hard-bitten noir antihero of John Huston’s “The Asphalt Jungle” (1950) and the title character in Nicholas Ray’s campy, kinky western “Johnny Guitar” (1954).

Granted, at that point I may not have seen those movies, but I did see “Dr. Strangelove” (1964), which we’ll be discussing tomorrow night on “Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner.” Hayden plays the rogue, cigar-chomping, machine gun wielding Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper, who hates commies, but sure does value his essence.

Hayden himself was always a maverick. As early as 1941, he expressed dissatisfaction with Hollywood, calling himself more of a sailor than an actor. He enlisted in the U.S. Army, hoping to fight in World War II, but broke his ankle in basic training. Undeterred, he joined the Marines under an alias, and distinguished himself for his courage, running supplies and conducting rescue missions behind enemy lines.

After the war, he intimated to the press that he thought it was his patriotic duty to return to the movies. It was an altruistic impulse that was not to last. In 1958, following a bitter divorce, he dropped out again. He defied a court order and took off with his four kids, sailing for Tahiti. Again, he considered himself a sailor, not an actor, and decided to make a go at writing. He had little patience for phonies and turned that same hard judgment on himself, considering himself a failure. Even so, somehow whenever he needed money, there always seemed to be a part waiting for him in Tinseltown.

He was still active in the 1970s, appearing in “The Godfather” (1972) and in the television miniseries “The Blue and the Gray” (1982, as John Brown no less). It’s sobering to realize, at the time he played Capt. McCluskey in “The Godfather,” he was probably about my age! That may be one of the few times you’ll read the words “Hayden” and “sober” in the same paragraph. He died in Sausalito in 1986 at the age of 70.

Anyway, I’ve always been fascinated by classic movies, even before I entered elementary school, and by 1985 I would have seen “Dr. Strangelove.” Granted, by that point, Hayden was notorious for having grown a castaway beard and basically living on a barge in Paris. When he wasn’t in the U.S., that is. He also kept homes in Connecticut and California.

As I say, he hated Hollywood, but he loved money, and he was often in need of it. For all his bluster, on some level he probably also liked acting, since he continued to do theater toward the end of his life. Of course, he also had a few problems with the tax man.

I’m thinking the best shot that there is any validity to this story of Hayden having poured me a shot is if he happened to be appearing in a show in the Lehigh Valley or New Jersey. Or possibly New York. But I can’t find any record of that being the case online. Does anyone have any recollection of it being so?

The only other wrinkle is that the party was thrown by a showboat lawyer, who’d gained a degree of notoriety well beyond the boundaries of Easton. Who knows, maybe somehow he attracted the attention of a grizzled, malcontented movie star who didn’t give a damn if we happened to be under 21?

Everything about life is stranger than fiction in “Dr. Strangelove.” We’ll chuckle about Stanley Kubrick’s doomsday comedy of errors, on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. See to the purity of your essence in the comments section. It will be an Armageddon arms race, when we livestream on Facebook, this Friday evening at 7:00 EDT!

https://www.facebook.com/roystiedyescificorner

November 4, 2021

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