Morricone, maestro of the movie theme tune, dies at 91
THE opening eerie whistle and wah-wah-wah howl of his most famous work instantly conjures up images of Clint Eastwood as The Man With No Name.
But Ennio Morricone was renowned for far more than the theme to The Good, The Bad And The Ugly.
The Oscar-winning Italian composer, who died in hospital in Rome yesterday aged 91 after breaking his leg in a fall, wrote the scores for more than 400 films. They included The Mission, Cinema Paradiso, Days Of Heaven and The Untouchables.
He gained fame in the mid-1960s for his work on three spaghetti westerns directed by his former schoolmate Sergio Leone – A Fistful Of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad And The Ugly.
The iconic theme for the last of the trilogy has been sampled or used in dozens of songs and adverts. A cover version by Hugo Montenegro became an unlikely UK No1 single in 1968.
Morricone would enjoy unexpected chart success of his own in 1981 with Chi Mai, the theme to the BBC drama The Life And Times Of David Lloyd George.
Morricone was the son of a trumpet player and studied the instrument before he turned to composition. He said it sometimes annoyed him that he was best known for spaghetti westerns when he had ‘written for so many other types of films’.
He collaborated with directors including Quentin Tarantino, Brian De Palma and Bernardo Bertolucci but admitted one of his few career regrets was not working with Stanley Kubrick on A Clockwork Orange in 1971 – after Leone blocked him from doing so, telling Kubrick that Morricone was too busy.
For Roland Joffe’s 1986 film The Mission, starring Ray McAnally, Jeremy Irons and Robert De Niro, Morricone collaborated with his lyricist wife Maria Travia.
His work on Cinema Paradiso in 1988 led to a long association with director Giuseppe Tornatore.
Having been awarded a lifetime achievement Academy Award in 2007, he won the best original score Oscar in 2016 for Tarantino’s western The Hateful Eight, for which he also landed a Golden Globe award.
Morricone – who is said to have influenced many rock bands including Muse, Dire Straits and Radiohead – also provided music for advertisements, among them one for Dolce & Gabbana starring Sophia Loren.
He is survived by his wife Maria, whom he married in 1956, and their four children.
‘Written for so many types of film’