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Monty Norman, 1928-2022
Composer, lyricist and singer Monty Norman died on July 11, 2022 in Slough, Berkshire, at the age of 94, following a short illness.
Although his career encompassed musical theatre, popular song, television and a small number of film scores, Norman secured a permanent place in cinema history through one composition: the James Bond theme, written for Dr. No in 1962 and subsequently incorporated into the musical identity of the entire Bond series.
Norman was born Monty Noserovitch in Stepney, East London, on April 4, 1928, the son of a cabinetmaker and a seamstress from a Latvian Jewish immigrant family. Given a guitar at 16, he began his professional career as a singer, performing with bands led by Cyril Stapleton, Stanley Black and Ted Heath, and appearing at the London Palladium and on radio and television. He gradually moved into songwriting, discovering that composing offered greater possibilities than performing.
By the late 1950s Norman had become a successful musical-theatre composer and lyricist. His credits included Make Me an Offer, Expresso Bongo and the English-language adaptation of Irma La Douce. His association with writer Wolf Mankowitz also produced Belle, or the Ballad of Dr Crippen, whose financial backers included producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli. Impressed by Norman’s work, Broccoli subsequently invited him to score the first film adaptation of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels.
Norman had already contributed music to films including Hammer’s The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960) and The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), but Dr. No was by far his most significant screen assignment. He travelled to Jamaica during production and drew heavily on local musical styles, writing pieces including “Kingston Calypso,” “Jump Up” and “Underneath the Mango Tree,” the latter accompanying the famous introduction of Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder. The resulting soundtrack gave the film a distinctive Caribbean character quite unlike the increasingly symphonic sound of later Bond films. Read more…
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