Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
MORECAMBE & WISE
6, 1929, in Germany, he was entered in the Berlin Conservatory of Music when he was six after his parents realised he had perfect pitch.
His father Jacob, a Polish-born Jewish lawyer, had been an amateur pianist in the German capital. Forced to flee the Nazis, the family ended up in Los Angeles, via Paris.
At the age of 16, while still at Beverly Hills High School, with the help of his great uncle Charles Previn, Previn found work as a composer and orchestrator at Universal Studios.
“At that time, movies ate up music the way TV does now,” he recalled. “They were always looking for somebody who was talented, fast and cheap, and because I was a kid, I was all three. So they hired me to do piecework and I evidently did it very well.”
His career was interrupted by the draft in 1950, but his military stint failed to stop his prolific writing.
He wrote compositions for the Sixth Army band and played in San Francisco jazz spots before leaving the army in 1952.
He then adapted stage musicals Kiss Me, Kate, Kismet, Silk Stockings and Bells Are Ringing for the big screen while writing songs for the likes of Judy Garland and Doris Day.
Hollywood critics described him as the “Mickey Mouse maestro” or the “wunderkind in a turtleneck” when he was in his 20s and 30s, comparing him to conductor, composer and pianist, Leonard Bernstein.
Away from his music, he was courted by the film industry elite, being invited to the most exclusive parties. The most famous of the Previn stories recounted in his 1991 memoir No Minor Chords, detailed how actress Ava Gardner asked him when he was 16-years-old to take her home. Previn, young and naive, didn’t understand what the star meant, thinking she wanted him to call her a taxi.
“It’s one of the great sorrows of my life,” he once told a photographer, who insisted on shaking the hand of the man who turned down Gardner.
Previn went on to write or arrange the music for several dozen movies and was the only person in the history of the Academy Awards to receive three nominations in one year.
Audiences also knew him as a jazz pianist, who appeared with the Queen of Jazz, singer Ella Fitzgerald.
Jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie once said after seeing him perform: “He has the flow, you know, which a lot of guys don’t have and won’t ever get.”
In the early 1960s, Previn, who went on to win 10 Grammys, made a
decisive break with Hollywood.
“I had to move physically, not just philosophically,” he recalled.
He set out to establish himself as a conductor, but encountered hostility from the classical music establishment. “In America, they would just as soon forgive you for an axe murder as for having done a movie,” he said.
The UK was less stubborn and, in 1968, he was appointed music director of the London Symphony Orchestra.
It was a gamble for bosses to give such a prestigious post to a fledgeling conductor – but one that paid off.
He stayed until 1979, all the while running alongside his position as principal conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, which he held between 1965 and 1988.
Away from the baton, Previn was legendary around women, marrying five times. His first marriage was to jazz singer Betty Bennett in 1952.
They had two daughters, Claudia and Alicia, but divorced after six years.
His second marriage in 1959 was to MGM lyricist Dory Langan, who, after they separated, recorded several albums as a singer-songwriter under the name Dory Previn.
Their divorce in 1970 was prompted by a well-publicised affair Previn had with the actress Mia Farrow.
Eventually, she left her husband, Frank Sinatra, and married the conductor in 1970. Together they had three children, Matthew and Sascha, who were twins, and Fletcher. They also adopted Summer Song, known as Daisy, and Soon-yi.
The musician’s fourth wife was Heather Haines Sneddon. They had a son, Lukas, in 1984, and divorced in 1999. That year he wrote a violin concerto for German violinist Annesophie Mutter. They married in 2002 – and divorced in 2006, but continued to perform together.
Talking about his life four years ago, Previn spoke candidly of his career.
“I’m very aware of how lucky I am,” he said. “When I first started composing, nobody wanted to know. Now, if I write a piece... they all want to do it.”