MOVIE MUSIC UK

Composer, arranger, conductor and pianist Joe Harnell died in Sherman Oaks, California, on July 14, 2005, at the age of 80, from heart failure.

A musician whose career stretched from the big-band era to modern television, Harnell was best known for his haunting music for The Incredible Hulk, especially the melancholy piano piece “The Lonely Man,” which became one of the most memorable television themes of the 1970s. His other major screen credits included The Bionic Woman, V, Santa Barbara and Alien Nation.

Harnell was born Joseph Hittelman in the Bronx, New York, on August 2, 1924. His father performed in vaudeville and played in jazz and klezmer groups, and Harnell began piano lessons at six. By 14 he was already performing professionally. He studied music at the University of Miami before joining the United States Army Air Forces during World War II, where he toured with Glenn Miller’s celebrated military band.

Following the war Harnell continued his studies, including composition lessons with Aaron Copland, while establishing himself as a pianist, arranger and musical director. He worked with artists including Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Lena Horne, Pearl Bailey and Peggy Lee, accompanying Lee in concert and contributing to several of her recordings.

Harnell achieved his greatest success as a recording artist during the early 1960s. His bossa nova arrangement of Bart Howard’s “Fly Me to the Moon” became a major hit and earned him a Grammy Award. He subsequently recorded numerous easy-listening and jazz albums as pianist and orchestra leader, combining sophisticated arranging with the melodic accessibility that would later characterize his television work.

From 1967 until 1973 Harnell served as musical director of The Mike Douglas Show, working with an enormous range of guest performers. After moving to California he increasingly concentrated on dramatic television, beginning an important association with writer-producer Kenneth Johnson.

Harnell contributed extensively to The Bionic Woman before Johnson hired him for The Incredible Hulk in 1977. His score balanced muscular action writing with a much more intimate musical identity for Bill Bixby’s tragic David Banner. The most enduring element was “The Lonely Man,” the simple piano theme heard over the closing credits as Banner walked alone toward another uncertain destination. Restrained, wistful and immediately recognizable, it became inseparable from the character and remains Harnell’s most famous composition.

He scored dozens of episodes during the series’ five-year run and received an Emmy nomination for his work. Harnell reunited with Johnson for the enormously successful science-fiction miniseries V (1983), creating a broad orchestral score combining militaristic power, suspense and a memorable heroic theme. The music brought him another Emmy nomination and became one of the most admired television scores of the decade.

Other credits included Cliffhangers!, Cagney & Lacey, Shadow Chasers, Santa Barbara and Alien Nation, as well as television movies such as Senior Trip and The Liberators. He ultimately received three Emmy nominations and composed hundreds of hours of music for television. He also wrote a familiar musical logo used by United Artists during the early 1980s.

In later years Harnell taught film scoring at the USC Thornton School of Music and continued performing and composing. In 2001 he published his autobiography, Counterpoint: The Journey of a Music Man. He is survived by his wife Alice, sons Joel, Jess and Jason, two stepsons, a brother and grandchildren.