Biography
Ron Grainer was one of the outstanding composers of music for British television. He was born in a small mining town called Atherton, Queensland, Australia on 11th August 1922, where his father owned the local milk bar. His mother played piano and Ron was on the keyboard from the age of two and considered a child genius, playing concerts for the local community by the age of six. He also showed the first sign of his versatility at the tender age of four when he began to learn the violin, practicing for two hours before and after school. In order to develop this talent further, he also studied the piano to such a level that, by his early teens he was a proficient performer on both instruments. He was never allowed to play any games which might injure his fingers so led a pretty lonely life. During these years he was an excellent scholar who also had to complete homework assignments. Maths was his special subject, which helped enormously in his orchestrations later on.
Before the second world-war, he studied music under Sir Eugene Goosens at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, but this was interrupted by World War II. He was called up to serve in the army on the islands after Japan invaded and Australia sent forces to monitor planes flying over. It was there that a barrel crashed against his leg when he was travelling in a truck and they had to drive over open ground very fast. He managed to get one leg over the tailgate but the other leg was crushed. There were no doctors at the base and he was in terrible pain and unconscious for several days before he was given medical treatment, by then osteomyelitis had entered the bone marrow. They wanted to amputate but he couldn't have survived the anaesthetic, so he did not lose his leg but was in and out of hospital for years and received an army disability pension.
He returned to Sydney Conservatorium when the war ended but he gave up the violin to concentrate on composition. During this time he rented a room from Margot who became his wife. She had her daughter living with her who had an aversion to meat and so she and Ron bonded as Ron had become total vegetarian during his treatment.
The couple decided to move to England, as a means of raising his international profile. However, on arriving in 1952, with Margot, he initially found regular work as a pianist in light entertainment, touring as part of a musical act - 'The Alien Brothers & June' - with other acts such as Billy Daniels, Guy Mitchell, Frankie Laine, Al Martino and Billy Eckstine. Playing in such exalted company, he was rewarded with no less than three appearances at the London Palladium and also gained something of a reputation as a piano accompanist, often helping out at charity shows organised by Record & Show Mirror proprietor, Isodore Green, the brother of the well-known jazz critic, Benny Green.
During this period, Grainer made his first recordings, albeit as an accompanist, backing Irish folk-singers Charlie McGhee and Patrick O'Hagan, and was also heard on a Christmas record by Shari. He became fascinated with the sound produced by the antique instruments he had started to collect, and soon developed this interest by writing works for some of them. The virginal, the heckle-phones, the shaums, the tenor comporium, as well as the more modern ondes martinet were amongst those he successfully tackled, and one of these early works was an ambitious jazz-ballet score.
After Grainer had divorced Margot, and married his second wife, Jennifer, he settled in Roehampton. He began to act regularly as musical adviser to many gala programmes produced by Associated Rediffusion TV, including those featuring Tito Gobbi and Maria Callas. His 'bread-and-butter' work, however, still lay as a pianist and he was much in demand at the BBC TV rehearsal rooms, which eventually opened a number of important musical doors for him. From this vantage point he was asked to write music for a number of television plays, including The Birthday Party (1960), and also accepted the job as musical adviser to a [link=nm0000267 series. He made such a strong impression on executive producer Andrew Osborn, that he was commissioned to write both the theme and incidental music for a new detective series - Maigret (1960) - based on the books written by Georges Simenon. In using harpsichord, banjo and clavichord, Grainer perfectly captured the Gallic atmosphere and, in doing so, contributed enormously to the ultimate success of the series. This proved to be a major landmark in Grainer's own career. His work on Maigret, which began in 1960 with Rupert Davies in the title role, was directly responsible for him securing his first recording deal with Warner Bros., who issued both a single and an EP featuring musical extracts from the BBC series. Bandleader Joe Loss also recorded the theme and perhaps surprisingly it was his single which reached number 20 in the charts.
Over the next few years, a succession of TV themes and scores followed, many for the BBC. The first of these was 'Happy Joe' in 1962, the theme to Comedy Playhouse (1961) - a series designed to give 'try-outs' to pilots for potential new comedy series. This cheerful sounding melody became extremely familiar with its catchy whistling, encouraging 'Pye', Grainer's new record company to issue it on a single. One of the first Comedy Playhouse (1961) pilots to get its own series was Steptoe and Son (1962), which starred Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H. Corbett as the feuding father and son rag and bone men. Grainer was invited to compose the theme, which he named 'Old Ned' - a reference to the horse which in the opening sequence was shown pulling the cart along. Helped by the enormous success of the series, the theme to Steptoe and Son was recorded by many artists although this saturation coverage spoilt the chances of any one version charting. 'Old Ned' won for Grainer his second successive Ivor Novello Award, following success with Maigret the previous year.
One of BBC's very first cooking programmes, 'Fanny Craddock', transmitted in 1963, also benefited from a Grainer theme, as did 'Giants Of Steam', The Flying Swan (1965) and The Old Curiosity Shop (1962) in the same year. While Grainer worked on the score for the feature film, Some People (1962), he encountered the Eagles, an instrumental group which hailed from Bristol, where the film was being shot. If not actually Grainer discoveries, they were certainly his protégées; they eventually re-recorded a plethora of Grainer originals, and at one time even shared his new home. Their recording of Oliver Twist (1962), for example, written by Grainer for the BBC's adaptation for children's television in 1962, is to this day the only recorded version.
In the same year further film work ensued in the form of Trial and Error (1962), A Kind of Loving (1962) and Live Now - Pay Later (1962), while the following year he was assigned to write the music for The Mouse on the Moon (1963), a comedy written by Michael Pertwee and directed by Richard Lester. Despite these credential and an excellent cast which included Margaret Rutherford, Ron Moody, Bernard Cribbins and Terry-Thomas, the film failed to live up to expectations. Grainer's theme was covered by 'The Countdowns', who are actually an orchestra under the direction of John Barry. Also in 1963, Grainer was asked to provide a theme for a new children's BBC's science fiction series entitled Doctor Who (1963). Despite some changes to the arrangement, this theme is still being used over 40 years later, as the series enjoys renewed success. The very first episode of Doctor Who was broadcast in November, on a day when television was dominated by the news of the shooting of President John F. Kennedy, so tended to pass almost unnoticed, but soon became one of the most popular children's programmes of all time.
Producer Ned Sherrin was impressed with Grainer's ability to create themes for such a wide variety of programmes and in the same year commissioned him to compose the theme for the ground-breaking satirical BBC TV show, That Was the Week That Was (1962) and its successor, Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life (1964). Lyricist Caryl Brahms provided the words sung by Millicent Martin. Around this time, Grainer started experiencing eye problems. Fortunately, prompt treatment helped alleviate blindness with doctors attributing the condition to excessive working under artificial lighting. Despite this obvious handicap, Grainer's output continued apparently unabated. In 1964 he wrote the film-score for Nothing But the Best (1964) - a comedy drama written by Frederic Raphael which starred Alan Bates, Denholm Elliott, Harry Andrews and Millicent Martin. Director Clive Donner had previously worked with Grainer on 'Some People'.
Grainer's first excursion on to the London stage came with 'Robert and Elizabeth' which he wrote with lyricist Ronald Millar. This was a musical about the lives of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, based on 'The Barretts of Wimpole Street', with an original cast including June Bronhill, Keith Michell and John Clement, who also featured on the original cast album. Work on this musical won for Grainer a third Ivor Novello Award. In 1966, a second musical, 'On the Level', also written with lyricist Ronald Millar wasn't quite so successful, though an original cast album did materialise featuring Sheila White and Rod McLennan. However, in 1970, he returned to the world of stage musicals with 'Sing a Rude Song', which benefited from lyrics written by Caryl Brahms and Ned Sherrin. It opened at the Greenwich Theatre prior to a London West End run at the Garrick Theatre.
After concentrating for a few years on films and theatre work, 1967 saw him back on the small screen. Man in a Suitcase (1967), an ITC series starring Richard Bradford as McGill - a one man investigator, featured another exciting Grainer theme. Next up, he produced an unforgettable theme for The Prisoner (1967). What's often not related is the fact that Grainer was originally ITC's third choice as composer for the cult series, after they rejected earlier efforts from Robert Farnon and Wilfred Josephs. Moreover, Grainer's own original attempt, 'Age of Elegance', was deemed inappropriate by producer and star, Patrick McGoohan, who initially disliked the tempo, deeming it far too languorous. Grainer's swift response was to speed it up. What transpired was precisely the type of theme McGoohan envisaged and is the one which eventually graced each episode.
Although Grainer did not write the popular title song, To Sir, with Love (1967), his association with the success of the film led to further offers and in 1968 he scored three more. The Assassination Bureau (1969), was a frantic black comedy starring Oliver Reed and Diana Rigg, Only When I Larf (1968), which boasted a screenplay based on the Len Deighton book, and a cast which included Richard Attenborough, David Hemmings and Alexandra Stewart as a trio of confidence tricksters, and Lock Up Your Daughters! (1969) - the bawdy comedy based on the very successful stage musical of the same name. The stage version had featured music and lyrics by Laurie Johnson and Lionel Bart, but Grainer was in sole charge of the film score.
Grainer's impressive portfolio of music involving detectives or special agents was further enhanced in 1969 with Paul Temple (1969), created by thriller-writer Francis Durbridge for a series of novels in the 1930s. However, the BBC's adaptation, one of their first major colour productions, placed him in a contemporary setting where he, as a writer turned amateur sleuth, was portrayed by Francis Matthews. The series proved an enduring success, extending to 52 episodes over four seasons, ending in September 1971. However, his talents were not solely confined to this genre as two contemporaneous BBC commissions - Boy Meets Girl and The Jazz Age - bear witness to. Boy Meets Girl (1967), which began in 1967, was a series of plays adapted from modern fiction, of which "The Raging Moon" - later a highly acclaimed film - was one such example, while The Jazz Age (1968) which began a year later, collected the works of such notable authors as Noël Coward and John Galsworthy, as a means of producing a series of plays set entirely in the twenties. His theme for this was a deliberate throw-back to the music of that period.
In the early seventies, Grainer achieved further success as a writer of television themes with three commissions for London Weekend Television: Man in the News (1970), The Trouble with You, Lilian (1971) and The Train Now Standing (1972), as well as one for Thames - For the Love of Ada (1970). The Train Now Standing was a gentle comedy drama set at Burberry Halt - one of the few rural railway stations to escape the Beeching axe. Bill Fraser starred as stationmaster Hedley Green who still worked by the GWR 1933 rule book, and other regulars included Denis Lill and Pamela Cundell. Grainer's theme instantly conjures up images of an era of old-fashioned steam trains, a subject on which he had previously worked for the BBC in the early sixties.
He didn't neglect his film duties either during this period, scoring Hoffman (1970), a curious vehicle for Peter Sellers, and Charlton Heston's The Omega Man (1971) - nowadays regarded as a 'cult' movie. However, his eyes continued to prove troublesome, and in a final attempt to combat this. He decided to move to the Algarve in Portugal, actually a farmhouse in Albufeira, where the natural light was appreciably better. According to a report in the Sun newspaper in 1973, Grainer was enjoying life in Portugal and had no intention of returning to England to pick up his abandoned career. But, in 1976, he divorced Jennifer and two years later moved back to England with his son, Damon, to live near Brighton, at which point he was commissioned by Anglia Television to write the theme for a new mystery series entitled Tales of the Unexpected (1979). Author Roald Dahl, perhaps best known for his children's stories, proved equally as adept at devising and writing many macabre plots for this networked series. Featuring a different cast every week, each self-contained half-hour episode usually ended with a teasing denouement, which, in effect explained its title.
Thames Television provided Grainer with two further commissions in that same year. Born and Bred (1978) and Edward & Mrs. Simpson (1978), two very contrasting programmes. Born And Bred was a comedy series set in Battersea, London, which focused upon the stifled and unrealised aspirations of a group of middle-aged residents, whereas 'Edward & Mrs Simpson' based itself on the uncrowned Duke of Windsor's constitutionally controversial relationship with divorcee and subsequent wife, Duchess of Windsor.
Grainer enjoyed a fruitful relationship, artistically and commercially with the BBC and in 1979 he obtained a further two commissions from them. Malice Aforethought (1979), written by Philip Mackie from the original novel by Anthony Berkeley, told the story of a country doctor (Hywel Bennett) who plots to murder his wife (Judy Parfitt) to enable him to continue with a passionate affair. Managing to retain the suspense of the original novel, this was a delightfully observed representation of life in the English countryside during the thirties. This four-part series was broadcast in the same year (1979) as Rebecca (1979) - a strict adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier's novel, which once again teamed Grainer with producer Richard Beynon, after their success with 'Malice'. Directed by Simon Langton, Rebecca starred Jeremy Brett, Joanna David and Anna Massey.
Ron Grainer continued writing music for television and films right up to his death in 1981. Two comedies for Independent Television: Shelley (1979) and It Takes a Worried Man (1981) benefited from his themes, while his score for 'The Business of Murder', a two-part episode of LWT's Sunday Night Thriller (1981) series, was his very last and was transmitted posthumously. On 21st February, 1981, only ten days after being admitted to Cuckfield Hospital in Sussex, suffering from cancer of the spine, he died at the early age of 58. His former wife, Jennifer, flew from Portugal to be at his side.
Very much the 'unsung hero' amongst film and TV composers, Grainer is still being 'discovered'. In the late nineties, for example, Chris Evans chose his 'Man in a Suitcase' theme to introduce the very popular TFI Friday (1996). Evans also made a feature out of the opening titles of Tales of the Unexpected (1979) (featuring Grainer's music) by inviting the original dancer onto the show. In 2007, news came that an album of his music from this series was being compiled for future release on CD.
