The music I first remember from the Avengers, was composed by Johnny Dankworth (1927 – 2010). He will be discussed in a post next week. This week, all I will say is that his music was jazz influenced, and seemed to suit the personality of Honor Blackman (1925 – 1920), as Cathy Gale, the first woman assistant, of five notables in the series, if one includes The New Avengers and The Avengers (1998) film. The others being: Diana Rigg (1938 – 2020) as Emma Peel, Linda Thorson (1947 – ) as Tara King, Joanne Lumley (1946 – ) as Purdey in the New Avengers, and Uma Thurman (1970 -) as Emma Peel, in the film. Music for that film was provided by Joel McNeely (1959 – ), who will not be discussed further in this series, but who will be the subject of another weblog post in the future. Compared to Dankworth, Johnson’s compositions were punchier. His first theme begins with percussion as a champagne bottle held by Steed is uncorked by a bullet shot from Emma Peel’s pistol, before he fills two glasses with drink. Then it switches to brass, followed by a string arrangement. We are then introduced to John Steed, a secret agent for The Ministry. No equivalent introduction is made for Emma Peel. Towards the theme’s end, Steed’s umbrella reveals a hidden steel blade that he uses to pluck a rose from a vase that Mrs Peel places in his buttonhole.
This series of posts was inspired by Laurie Johnson, a composer of some of the most distinctive television themes of all time, at least from my perspective.
One of the most dramatic themes, accompanied by stylish visuals, was for The Avengers, a series combining espionage with fantasy. It was revamped in 1965 for its fourth season. This coincided with the series’ sale to US television, a change to shooting from video to film, and the arrival of Diana Rigg as Emma Peel to assist Patrick Macnee as John Steed.
This theme was not original, it was based on a previous Johnson composition, The Shake, influenced by a mid-1960s dance craze. Indeed, I can understand critics who maintain that the theme was The Shake, slightly repackaged in terms of timing. Johnson wrote most of the incidental music for The Avengers from 1965 until 1969. After Rigg left and Linda Thorson joined as Tara King for the last iteration, he rearranged the title theme, with more frenetic percussion and a trumpet counter-melody.
Later, for the sequel The New Avengers (1976-77) – with Macnee as Steed, Gareth Hunt (1942 – 2007) as Mike Gambit, and Joanna Lumley as Purdey – Johnson came up with a military-style melody to reflect the red, white and blue title graphics.
Johnson began composing for the screen after success as a conductor for stage productions. Among his early television themes were music for the crime series No Hiding Place (1959-67), the espionage drama Top Secret (1961-62), as well as a theme for Animal Magic (1962-84), titled Las Vegas, that captured the whimsical tone of the long-running children’s programme presented by Johnny Morris (1916 – 1999). Johnson also composed The Trendsetters, the Whicker’s World theme used between 1965 and 1968.
Then came music for This Is Your Life after the celebrity life show switched to ITV from the BBC in 1969. Titled Gala Performance and later rearranged by Carl Davis and others, it remained even after the programme’s return to the BBC (1994-2003).
In 1964 Johnson had written original music for the Dr Strangelove, a film with Peter Sellers (1925 – 1980), a black comedy directed by Stanley Kubrick (1928 – 1999), one of many movies that he worked on as a composer. The film showcased his musical composing and arranging talents. These involved tension, irony and soothing comfort in the orchestral performance of Try a Little Tenderness.
Johnson was born in London, educated at Harrow and studied at the Royal College of Music, where one of his tutors was Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872 – 1958) and where he started composing his first published orchestral works.
Johnson played French Horn with the Coldstream Guards, the oldest continuously serving regular regiment in the British Army, dating back to 1660. From 1944 to 1948. He then became a composer and arranger for the Guards.
Johnson’s first film music productions included: The Good Companions (1957), The Moonraker (1958), No Trees in the Street (1959) and Tiger Bay (1959). Over the following decade his music was heard in Bitter Harvest (1963), The Beauty Jungle (1964), First Men in the Moon/East of Sudan (1964), the comedy You Must Be Joking! (1965) as well as Hot Millions (1968).
In a different vein he employed the sounds of trumpets, English horns and woodwind in The Belstone Fox (1973) and scored the Hammer horror film Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974).
Television producers increasingly saw Johnson as a go-to composer. His repertoire was wide, ranging from the original World in Action theme (1963-65) and the children’s drama Freewheelers (1968-73) to the sitcom Shirley’s World (1971), with Shirley MacLaine (1934 – ), and Jason King (1971-72). This last series is best described as a fictional biography of a spy writer such as Ian Flemming, with a leading actor who does not know either his real name or even his birthdate, but is estimated to be Peter Wyngarde (1927 – 2018).
Johnson eventually went into partnership with the Avengers producers Brian Clemens (1931 – 2015) and Albert Fennell (1920 – 1988) to form Mark 1 Productions and make The New Avengers. They followed it with a theme for The Professionals (1977-83), with Martin Shaw (1945 – ) and Lewis Collins (1946 – 2013). This theme expresses vitality and excitement. Johnson rearranged it for the sequel, CI5: The New Professionals (1999).
With Fennell and the director John Hough (1941 – ), Johnson also formed Gainsborough Pictures, named after a defunct British film studio, to make feature-length TV adaptations of Barbara Cartland (1901 – 2000) novels such as A Hazard of Hearts (1987), A Ghost in Monte Carlo (1990) and Duel of Hearts (1991).
While Johnson preferred film to theatre, he had some stage musical success writing Lock Up Your Daughters (Mermaid theatre, 1959) with lyrics by Lionel Bart (1930 – 1999), and The Four Musketeers (Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, 1967-68) with Herbert Kretzmer (1925 – 2020).