MOVIE MUSIC UK

Composer, conductor and arranger Ken Thorne died on July 9, 2014 in hospital in the West Hills area of Los Angeles, California, at the age of 90.

Best known for his long association with director Richard Lester, Thorne enjoyed a career spanning more than five decades, encompassing film, television and popular music. He won an Academy Award for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and later became familiar to a generation of filmgoers through his scores for Superman II and Superman III.

Thorne was born in Dereham, Norfolk, on January 26, 1924. A pianist from an early age, he began his professional career playing with British dance and big bands during the 1940s before turning increasingly to arranging and composition. By the beginning of the 1960s he had entered the film industry, with early credits including Three on a Spree and Richard Lester’s musical comedy It’s Trad, Dad!

His career changed significantly when Lester invited him to provide the incidental music for the Beatles’ second film, Help! (1965). Unlike A Hard Day’s Night, whose score had been overseen by George Martin, Help! required Thorne to weave the Beatles’ songs into a broader comic-adventure soundtrack. He arranged several pieces in deliberately incongruous styles and provided original incidental material, resulting in a score whose musical wit complemented Lester’s fast-moving visual comedy. The soundtrack earned Thorne a Grammy nomination.

Thorne’s greatest professional recognition followed with Lester’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966). Working with Stephen Sondheim’s songs, he adapted, arranged and conducted the music for the screen, while also providing additional instrumental material. His work won the Academy Award for Best Scoring of Music—Adaptation or Treatment, making it the most prestigious honor of his career.

The partnership with Lester continued on How I Won the War (1967), the director’s surreal anti-war comedy starring Michael Crawford and John Lennon, and later included films such as The Bed Sitting Room, Juggernaut and Royal Flash. Thorne’s versatility made him particularly suited to Lester’s unpredictable style: his scores could move between parody, dramatic underscoring, popular idioms and deliberately old-fashioned orchestral writing without drawing attention away from the films’ eccentric rhythms.

Outside the Lester partnership, Thorne worked on numerous films and television productions. He provided music for the Monkees’ psychedelic Head (1968), and during the 1970s became increasingly active as an arranger, conductor and musical director, working with performers including Andy Williams and assisting other composers on major productions.

Thorne reunited with Lester for one of his most prominent later assignments, Superman II (1980). John Williams was unavailable to return, and Thorne was asked to adapt Williams’s themes from the original Superman while composing additional material of his own. He retained the famous Superman march and other established motifs while reshaping them to fit Lester’s sequel. He performed the same task on Superman III (1983), again combining Williams’s musical vocabulary with original scoring.

In later years Thorne concentrated increasingly on television, scoring series, miniseries and television movies including Return to Lonesome Dove, while continuing to work as an arranger and conductor. His career ultimately stretched from post-war British dance bands to Hollywood films and major television productions.