I’m selling Kwai composer’s legacy – and threw his ashes in garden
Carer says battle with Sir Malcolm Arnold’s family drove him to suicide bid – but children say he treated father ‘like a puppet’
HE WAS the troubled composer who won worldwide fame when he penned the Oscar-winning score for the epic 1957 war film The Bridge On The River Kwai.
But when Sir Malcolm Arnold died aged 84 in 2006, he left a far from harmonious legacy. For eight years his children battled his longterm companion through the courts over ownership of manuscripts and royalties worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Former hairdresser Anthony Day, 67, was ultimately victorious but now claims the stress of the legal battle caused him to attempt suicide after dumping Sir Malcolm’s ashes in the back garden.
In a fresh twist, Mr Day is selling off many of the manuscripts, awards and mementoes fought over during the costly legal battle.
Speaking at the cottage he shared with Sir Malcolm in Attleborough, Norfolk, he told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I don’t even want to know his name any more. I spent 23 years caring for him and I was then put through hell by his family. Why would I want to remember anything to do with him? I just want to forget he ever existed.’
Valued at about £350,000, more than 200 lots, including two Ivor Novello awards, dozens of scores, including Symphony No 9, and his trumpet will be auctioned in Norwich on April 6.
It is the latest tangled chapter in the story of Sir Malcolm, who wrote the scores to classic movies including Whistle Down The Wind, Dunkirk and the St Trinian’s films, yet struggled with alcoholism, schizophrenia and manic depression.
Last night his daughter Katherine Arnold, 68, said: ‘I did not see my father in about nine years, purely because of him [ Anthony Day]. He tried to turn my father against us and he hated the idea of him wanting to see us. Day used my father like a puppet for over 20 years for his own amusement.’
The composer had been given just two years to live when Mr Day stepped in. Sir Malcolm recovered and enjoyed one of the most productive periods in his career.
He left the bulk of his £1,071,229 estate to Mr Day, along with half his royalties – worth an estimated £200,000 a year – his cottage, car and many manuscripts.
Mr Day said the court battle drove him to attempt suicide.
‘I was fed up with the fighting. At the time I needed a triple heart bypass, I had prostate cancer, I had arthritis that was so bad I couldn’t shave or clean my teeth so I decided it was time to go.
‘In 2012, just before the court case, I took his picture off the wall and threw his ashes in the garden. Then I took 80 sleeping pills and sat by the fire watching television.
‘I didn’t want to live any more. I was fed up. I went to sleep and two days later a friend came over because he couldn’t get hold of me by phone and he kept banging on the door until I woke up.’
When Mr Day began looking after the composer, he said Sir Malcolm had written his children out of his will and wanted nothing to do with them. He claims he engineered a partial rapprochement.
He added: ‘ One of things that really upset me was that his son said he considered me as staff. How can you live with someone for 23 years, 24 hours a day, and not have a relationship? It wasn’t a sexual relationship but it was a loving relationship.’
Sir Malcolm’s son, Robert, 66, said last night: ‘ I have no hard feelings about Mr Day. He looked after my father for 20 years and that is something I certainly could not have done. It could not have been an easy job.’
He added: ‘ I am not as concerned with money as Mr Day. I am quite content with my lot in life.’
‘I took 80 sleeping pills and sat watching TV’