MOVIE MUSIC UK

Composer, arranger, conductor and actor Frank De Vol died in Lafayette, California, on October 27, 1999, at the age of 88, from congestive heart failure.

One of Hollywood’s most versatile musical craftsmen, De Vol wrote more than 50 film scores while also enjoying major careers in radio, recordings and television. He received five Academy Award nominations and five Emmy nominations, and composed some of the most familiar television themes of the 1960s and 1970s.

Frank Denny De Vol was born in Moundsville, West Virginia, on September 20, 1911, and grew up in Canton, Ohio, where his father conducted the orchestra at a local vaudeville theatre. He played violin and piano professionally while still a teenager and later taught himself saxophone. By the late 1930s he was arranging for Horace Heidt and subsequently worked with guitarist Alvino Rey before settling in California, where he became a successful radio musical director.

During the 1940s and early 1950s De Vol became one of the busiest arrangers in popular music, working with singers including Dinah Shore, Doris Day, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett and Vic Damone. His experience writing quickly and effectively for orchestras proved ideal preparation for Hollywood, and in 1954 director Robert Aldrich hired him to score the low-budget thriller World for Ransom. It began one of the most important professional relationships of De Vol’s career.

De Vol eventually scored some 16 films for Aldrich, including Kiss Me Deadly (1955), The Big Knife (1955), Attack! (1956), What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), The Flight of the Phoenix (1965), The Dirty Dozen (1967), Ulzana’s Raid (1972), The Longest Yard (1974) and Hustle (1975). The partnership demonstrated a tougher side of a composer often associated with light entertainment: De Vol’s tense rhythms, aggressive orchestral writing and dark dramatic colors proved particularly effective in Aldrich’s violent and psychologically heightened films.

His work elsewhere showed remarkable versatility. De Vol provided elegant, romantic music for Doris Day comedies including Pillow Talk (1959), which earned his first Academy Award nomination, and Send Me No Flowers (1964). He scored the western comedy Cat Ballou (1965), the adventure film Duel at Diablo (1966), and Stanley Kramer’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967). His score for Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte received an Oscar nomination, while its title song, written with lyricist Mack David, brought him another; Cat Ballou and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner were also nominated for their musical scoring.

Other notable film credits included McLintock! (1963), The Glass Bottom Boat (1966), The Happening (1967), The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968), Emperor of the North (1973), Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (1975), and the Disney comedies Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo (1977) and Herbie Goes Bananas (1980). De Vol’s gift was less a single recognizable musical style than an arranger’s instinct for exactly what each picture required, whether romantic comedy, western, thriller or large-scale action.

Television ultimately made De Vol’s music even more familiar than his films. He wrote the memorable themes for My Three Sons, Family Affair and The Brady Bunch, with the latter earning one of his five Emmy nominations. He also maintained a parallel acting career, appearing in The Parent Trap and numerous television programs, and memorably played the perpetually solemn bandleader Happy Kyne on the satirical series Fernwood 2 Night and America 2-Night.