Angela Morley (1924-2009) was a prolific composer who scored films, TV shows, and became a household name for listeners of the BBC. She won three Emmys and was the first openly transgender person to be nominated for an Academy Award.
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Hello, from Wonder Media Network, I’m Jenny Kaplan and this is Encyclopedia Womannica.
Today, we’re taking a look at the life of a prolific composer who scored films, TV shows, and became a household name for listeners of the BBC. She won three Emmys and was the first openly transgender person to be nominated for an Academy Award.
Let’s talk about Angela Morley.
Angela was born in 1924 in Leeds, Yorkshire. Her father was a jeweler, and the family lived above the shop where he spent long days fixing watches and resizing rings.
When Angela was young, she was inspired by musical influences around her. On Sunday evenings, her father would play the ukulele-banjo, and her mother would sing along with a deep contralto voice.
But what she loved best was the old-fashioned gramophone. It was large and housed in a mahogany cabinet. To play a record, Angela would wind up the crank at the side. When she first started listening, she could hardly reach the crank. But she loved to listen to her parents’ dance band albums.
When Angela was eight years old, the family got an upright piano, and installed it in the sitting room. Angela started taking lessons from a local teacher. But then, three months later, her father died suddenly at the age of 39. The lessons stopped. But, her musical journey didn’t.
Angela took violin lessons for about a month, which she loved. But her grandfather, whom they moved in with, didn’t, and he smeared grease on her bow, effectively ending that phase.
Next up, she started learning the accordion, which she actually won prizes for her playing. But she was encouraged to learn an instrument that could be played in a band or an orchestra, if she wanted to have better luck building a musical career. So, again, Angela changed instruments, picking up a pawn shop clarinet, and later the alto saxophone. She had finally found her instrument.
At the age of 15, Angela left school to join a touring juvenile band. Her new bandmates asked her “What’s your favorite band?”
Angela answered: “Ambrose,” a highly-acclaimed British dance band in the 1930s. Her bandmates just laughed and asked, hadn’t she heard of Tommy Dorsey? Or any American bands? They took her to a record shop and set her up in a listening booth. Angela later credited that moment as the start of her education.
Not long after, in the fall of 1939, World War II began. At that point, her tour was canceled and she had to go home. She took the first job she found, a trainee projectionist at a cinema. She didn’t last long.
By the end of that year, the band was getting back together again. And because many of the older members were getting drafted, Angela, and other younger musicians became a hot commodity. Angela bounced from band to band, eventually landing with one of the best bands in the UK at the time -- the Geraldo Orchestra. It was 1944, and she was just 20 years old.
It was with the Geraldo Orchestra that Angela got a real education in arranging. The band played for the BBC, and they morphed to perform a wide variety of tunes, from swing, to jazz to orchestral music. This versatility became her calling card.
She officially made the switch to composing, orchestrating, and arranging at age 26. In her long career she wrote music for TV shows like Dallas and Dynasty.
She also wrote arrangements that were used as source music for a number of famous films, including ET, Star Wars, Superman, and Home Alone. She wrote melodies for musical greats like Itzak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, and Joshua Bell. She was prolific and moved seamlessly from genre to genre, though much of this work was uncredited. While the composer often gets the credit, the orchestrator and arranger are like the thread that stitches the musical ideas together and brings the piece together.
Throughout her life, Angela struggled with her gender and her identity. After the death of her first wife, Angela married Christine Parker. In her relationship with Christine, Angela felt comfortable enough to, as she put it: “deal with the trauma and begin to think about crossing over that terrifying gender border.”
In 1972, she began living publicly as a woman, and took some time away from composing.
In 1977, she returned to work when she was asked to score the animated film Watership Down -- a whirlwind experience that was later turned into a radio drama itself called 1977.
Angela first got a call from the conductor on a Thursday evening. They had a recording studio booked. The orchestra was assembled and contracted to play the following Monday. The problem was: The original composer was busy with the Queen’s Jubilee, and the stress was making him ill. He hadn’t finished the score. In fact, he’d barely written anything at all.
Angela brought on another orchestrator, Larry Ashmore, to help build out the two musical sketches into finished pieces that were recorded the following Tuesday.
The producers asked Angela to stay on and compose for the rest of the film. She was hesitant at first -- she hadn’t even read the book the movie was based on. But in the end, she was convinced. The score is atmospheric, quirky, and creates an air of importance. It even featured her primary instrument, the alto saxophone.
She finished the job in just a few weeks’ time. The soundtrack was later named one of the ten best scores of 1978 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Angela Morley died in Scottsdale, Arizona on January 14, 2009 at the age of 84.
While she may not be a household name for the general public these days, Angela is revered by her musical colleagues. In one obituary, John Williams said: "She was certainly one of the finest musicians I've ever known or worked with. As an orchestrator, her skill was unsurpassed, with a technical perfection that was drawn on and nourished by a lifelong devotion to music.”
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