LALO SCHIFRIN
(21 June 1932 – 26 June 2025)
Apart from the James Bond theme, the universally recognised film signature tune has to be Lalo Schifrin’s main theme for Mission: Impossible. It started out as the music for the television series (1966-1973) and later in the eight feature films (so far). The theme was and still is memorable perhaps because it was written in 5/4 time with the Morse Code letters of M and I interpolated into the tune. Sadly, the genius creator of this theme and many others has died aged 93, through complications with pneumonia. He wrote music for television, beginning with The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and later on composed a notable tune in waltz time for Mannix, the private eye series with Mike Connors. That ran for eight seasons from 1967 to 1975. Lalo Schifrin also made contributions to many feature films for which he was showered with awards from cinema, television and the music industry. His contribution to jazz and classical music also remains unbounded.
Lalo Schifrin was born Boris Claudio Schifrin in Buenos Aires to father Luis, a Jewish violinist for the Buenos Aires Philharmonic Orchestra, and Clara, his Catholic mother, also from a musical family. He acquired the name of Lalo, the usual Argentine nickname for anyone born with the second name of Claudio. At the age of six Lalo, began studying piano with Enrique Barenboim, father of the pianist-conductor Daniel Barenboim, and carried on his studies in piano and harmony with other teachers. Then he found an interest in jazz and, although he majored in sociology at Buenos Aires University, music became the dominant force in his life. In the early 1950s he gained a scholarship to the Paris Conservatoire, took to playing African drumming, worked with bandoneon player Astor Piazzolla, and eventually represented the US at the Paris International Jazz Festival.
Back in Argentina he put together a 16-piece jazz band, appearing on local television every week. Gradually he was offered work for films, more TV, writing for Dizzy Gillespie’s big band and also did arrangements for Xavier Cugat’s Latin dance orchestra. After Gillespie disbanded his own outfit, he formed a quintet and invited Schifrin to work as pianist and arranger. Other work came via Duke Ellington while MGM asked him to score the 1964 action film Rhino! The composer had moved to Los Angeles in 1963 and became an American citizen in 1969. After that came Dark Intruder, a Victorian period mystery with Leslie Nielsen, but the one that really clinched Schifrin as a movie composer was The Cincinnati Kid, Norman Jewison’s drama about a young poker player and with Steve McQueen in the title role it could do no wrong. Then came Cool Hand Luke in 1967, with Paul Newman, and Bullitt (1968) with Steve McQueen again, featuring the most exciting car chase yet captured on film, its success due not only to Peter Yates’s direction but also to Schifrin’s blazing score.
Schifrin’s film career took in all kinds of genres including The Fox, a lesbian drama based on the D.H. Lawrence story, with Sandy Dennis and Anne Heywood, Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows, a ‘nuns’ story with Rosalind Russell and Stella Stevens, the biopic of Guevara in Che! with Omar Sharif, the World War II comedy Kelly’s Heroes with Clint Eastwood, the film that introduced the actor to the music of Schifrin. He then composed all four of Eastwood’s Dirty Harry films as well as others with the star, Don Siegel’s The Beguiled and John Sturges’s Joe Kidd. In a very busy Hollywood career Schifrin managed to write scores that matched a film’s subject matter but without impinging on the audience’s consciousness. If you are aware of the music upfront, somebody hasn’t done their work properly because the film and the score should meld as one, as they always did with Schifrin’s tailor-made music.
His roster of music for the cinema knows no bounds with such titles as Enter the Dragon, The Eagle Has Landed, Voyage of the Damned, Rollercoaster and The Amityville Horror – all scores made perfectly to fit the occasion – and there were many more besides... and more TV themes for Planet of the Apes, Starsky and Hutch, Most Wanted, Chicago Story, etc. As if that were not enough, Schifrin worked for the Verve record label, providing arrangements for artists including Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Jimmy Smith and Sarah Vaughan. He also had his own label, Aleph, for his music and that of others and arranged the album for The Three Tenors, namely José Carreras, Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti. So, he accumulated hundreds of film and television scores, arrangements for celebrated performers, and received multiple accolades, including six Oscar nominations, four Primetime Emmy nominations and five Grammys, plus an Honorary Academy Award.
Lalo Schifrin’s first marriage was to Sylvia Schor in 1958 and they had two children, William and Frances. They divorced and he married Donna Cockrell in 1971 and they had a son, Ryan. Schifrin wrote a memoir in 2008 called Mission Impossible: My Life in Music in which he said that, "in music the choices are infinite... what has been done in the field of electronic music so far has not even scratched the surface..." Well, he certainly scratched many surfaces and the film, television and music industries and their audiences are now the poorer without him.
MICHAEL DARVELL