|
John Addison
A composer with strong theatrical links who made his
name with film scores
John Mervin Addison was born 16 March 1920 in Cobham, Surrey
and educated at Wellington College and at the Royal College of
Music from 1938-1939. These studies were interrupted by his wartime
service as a cavalry officer, but in 1947 he returned to the
Royal College, where in 1950 he was made Professor of Composition.
His first classical composition dates from 1948 (Three Terpsichorean
Studies for orchestra) and his first feature film score (Brighton
Rock) from 1946. His music for the stage began with a terrific
score for the four-hander revue Cranks in 1955. There was something
distinctly unusual in this highly flavoured and adventurous music,
some of it mercifully captured on the original cast recording
(none of Addison's future stage scores got into the recording
studio). It had a verve and originality that might have proved
invaluable to British musicals.
But the success of Cranks - taken up from its humble origins,
it became a favourite of the trend-setting Princess Margaret
- wasn't properly followed up. It was hardly surprising, because
there were four film scores that year, including Touch and Go
and The Cockleshell Heroes, and so it continued: three films
in 1956, three in 1957; a list that only ended in 1985 with Codename:
Emerald. He became a favourite film composer of Holywood, his
music attracting good notices. The theatre had to make do with
his songs (what used to be called 'incidental') for John Osborne's
The Entertainer, originally delivered by Laurence Olivier at
the Royal Court Theatre in April 1957. They were effective and
neat pastiches of tawdry music-hall numbers, but hardly did much
to advance Addison's reputation. Neither did his score for Keep
Your Hair On, which reunited him with the writer John Cranko.
A handful of the songs got into print ('I do, I do, I do', 'Misfit',
'One Day - but When?' and 'Crocodile Tears') but Keep Your Hair
On was headed for quick oblivion when it put its head above the
parapet at the Apollo Theatre in February 1958, and Addison's
music sank from view.
A lot of musical dabbling went on between Keep Your Hair On
and Addison's next musical score proper - a great deal of incidental
music for plays. It was the early 70s before Addison ventured
into musical theatre with both feet, but the two remaining efforts
didn't meet with much success, and there was an air of half-heartedness
about what he did. He shared music credits with the prolific
David Heneker for The Amazons, from the original play by Pinero,
at Nottingham Playhouse in April 1971, but it wasn't a good time
for British musicals, and London turned its back. The following
year there was a collaboration with Heneker for the adaptation
of Ben Travers' old farce, Rookery Nook, now titled Popkiss.
After opening at Cambridge, it got to the Globe Theatre in August
1972, but lasted only 60 performances. It was Addison's last
major contribution to musical theatre, but its music seemed light
years away from the spirited stuff he had written for Cranks.
When he eventually moved to America to live, firstly in California
and from 1990 in Vermont, it seemed his links with British musicals
were broken. They were forgotten while he earned an Emmy for
his music for Murder, She Wrote, and an Oscar for A Bridge Too
Far. A substantial number of his film scores (and they included
some distinguished titles such as A Taste of Honey, Look Back
in Anger, Lucky Jim and The Charge of the Light Brigade) are
kept at Brigham Young University Library, Utah, and it may be
that some of his theatre music lurks within this archive. He
died in Vermont on 7 December 1998.
RETURN TO WRITERS & COMPOSERS |
