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Frank De Vol, 1911-1999
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. Read more…
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