Alex North
b. 4 December 1910, Chester, Pennsylvania, USA, d. 8 September 1991, Pacific Palisades, California, USA. An important composer for films, theatre, television, ballet and classical music, whose career ranged from the late '30s through to the '80s. After studying at Juilliard with the distinguished composer Aaron Copland, as well as at the Moscow Conservatory (1933-35), North composed for the Federal Theatre Project in the late '30s. During those years, through to 1950, he wrote the scores for government documentary and information films, and served in the US Army in World War II. In 1948 he composed the incidental score for Arthur Miller's landmark play, Death Of A Salesman on Broadway, and repeated the role for the film version in 1951. For that, and for his innovative jazz-tinged score to A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), he gained the first two of his 15 Academy Award nominations. Other early 50s film music included The 13th Letter, Viva Zapata! (considered an early milestone in his career), Les Miserables, the ballet music for Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron in Daddy Long Legs, and Unchained (1955). The last film contained Unchained Melody (lyric by Hy Zaret), a ballad of yearning which was nominated for an Academy Award, and became popular at the time for Les Baxter (US number 1), Al Hibbler, and Jimmy Young (UK number 1), amongst others, and through the years was constantly remembered and revived. The Righteous Brothers' 1965 smash-hit version accompanied an erotic scene in the popular 1990 movie Ghost, and in 1995 the song topped the UK chart once again in a version by Robson Green and Jerome Flynn, two actors from the popular television series 'Soldier, Soldier'. North's other '50s scores included The Man With The Gun (1955), I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955), The Rose Tattoo (1955), The Bad Seed (1956), The Rainmaker (1956), Four Girls In Town (1956), The King And Four Queens (1956), The Bachelor Party (1957), The Long Hot Summer (1958), Stage Struck (1958), Hot Spell (1958), The Sound And The Fury (1959) and The Wonderful Country (1959). 
Early in the '60s North began an association with director John Huston which lasted until Huston's death in 1987. Together they worked on such films as The Misfits (1961), Wise Blood (1979), Under The Volcano (1984), Prizzi's Honor (1985) and The Dead (1987), Huston's Swan-song. North's '60s film work began with the epic Spartacus ('magnificent score, staggering battle scenes'), followed, in complete contrast, by The Children's Hour. His other scores of the decade included another epic, Cleopatra, John Ford's Cheyenne Autumn, The Agony And The Ecstasy, Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, The Shoes Of The Fisherman, Hard Contract, and A Dream Of Kings. In the '70s, as his kind of spectacular, dramatic scores went out of style, North worked less for the big screen. However, in the later years he composed the music for movies such as Pocket Money, Once Upon A Scoundrel, Bite The Bullet, and Somebody Killed Her Husband. In the '80s, besides his collaborations with Huston, North was still being critically acclaimed for scores such as Carny, Dragonslayer, Under The Volcano, Good Morning Vietnam, and his final film, The Penitent (1988). In 1986 he became the first composer to receive an honorary Academy Award 'in recognition of his brilliant artistry in the creation of memorable music for a host of distinguished motion pictures'. He died, five years later, in 1991. As well as films, his occasional television work included the feature documentary, 'Africa' (1967), music for the mini-series 'The Word' which was nominated for an Emmy, and 'Rich Man, Poor Man', which won two; the telefeature, 'Death Of A Salesman' (again), and music for other programmes, such as 'Your Show Of Shows', '77 Sunset Strip', 'Playhouse 90' and 'The F.D.R. Story'. Many of his scores were made available on albums, and several individual items such as the title themes from I'll Cry Tomorrow and The Long Hot Summer, and Unchained Melody, of course, endure.