Ron Goodwin was an English composer and conductor known for his film music. Goodwin was born in Plymouth and learned to play the piano by the age of five and whilst at grammar school, he learnt to play the trumpet and performed regularly in the school band. In 1943, after a brief spell as an insurance clerk, Goodwin joined Campbell, Connelly and Company, a music publisher. His job was a copyist and arranger and went on to work in that role for the BBC. He entered the world of movie music through documentary films, which he said was “a very good training”.
In 1953, Goodwin began arranging and conducting more than 300 recordings for over fifty performers, which resulted in more than 100 chart successes. He simultaneously made his own series of recordings and broadcasts as Ron Goodwin and his Concert Orchestra, and, in addition, began to compose scores for documentary films at Merton Park Studios. In 1958, Goodwin wrote his first feature film score for Whirlpool, with screenplay by Lawrence P. Bachmann. After Bachmann became executive producer at MGM British Studios in 1959, Goodwin composed and conducted the music for most of its productions, as well as working for other film studios. His singles work included recordings with jazz and calypso singer Frank Holder.
Goodwin is primarily known for his film music and worked on more than 70 scores during his career. He composed his first feature film, Man with a Gun in 1958 and was quickly followed by The Witness and Whirlpool a year later. Early minor film success followed with several films until 1961 when he composed scores for the first of four Miss Marple films (1961-64) starring Margaret Rutherford. He scored two horror films, Village of the Damned (1960) and its sequel Children of the Damned (1964). His music for war films is particularly well remembered. This includes work on 663 Squadron (1964), Operation Crossbow (1965), Where Eagles Dare (1968), Battle of Britain (1969), for which he (mostly) replaced William Walton. After requests from the Band of the Royal Air Force, the opening from Battle of Britain, originally titled Luftwaffe March, was retitled Aces High and is now regularly played by military bands in the UK.
He wrote the scores for Of Human Bondage (1964), Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965), Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy (1972), two movies featuring Morecambe and Wise, and the Norman Wisdom film, The Early Bird (1965). Goodwin’s score for the 1966 film The Trap is now used by the BBC as the theme to the London Marathon coverage. A 30-second variation of his 1969 composition for the film Monte Carlo or Bust is used as the intro for the BBC Radio Four panel game I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue.
Goodwin wrote several Disney film scores during the 1970s, including the one used for ‘One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing’ (1975). He also composed the music and lyrics for a series of animated films. These included The Selfish Giant (1971), The Happy Prince (1974), and The Little Mermaid (1974). Goodwin’s last film score was for the Danish-made animation film Valhalla in 1986. He composed the Yorkshire Television start up music used from their launch in July 1968 to the early 1980s, before ITV had breakfast television. Goodwin wrote the television advertising jingles such as Noddy’s chant, “I like Ricicles: they’re twicicle as nicicles”, and the “Mr Sheen shines umpteen things clean” song, inspired by Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines.
