Music / Film & TV
Laurence Rosenthal
born 1926 · composer, arranger, conductor
Detroit-born composer and arranger for Broadway, film and television, whose scores include The Miracle Worker, Becket and Clash of the Titans and who won seven Emmy Awards.
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Rosenthal was born in Detroit in 1926 and trained as a pianist and composer at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, before studying in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. He began his career in the theater: he arranged music for Meredith Willson's The Music Man and for Donnybrook!, composed the dance music for Take Me Along and wrote the scores of the musical Sherry! and of John Osborne's A Patriot for Me. Hollywood followed, with film scores for A Raisin in the Sun, The Miracle Worker, Becket, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Clash of the Titans, The Return of a Man Called Horse and Meetings with Remarkable Men. His television work, especially for large-scale historical miniseries and films, won him seven Emmy Awards from thirteen nominations, and he was twice nominated for an Academy Award. In 2023, in his late nineties, he received the World Soundtrack Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award.
Highlights
- Broadway arranger for The Music Man; composer of Sherry!
- Film scores for The Miracle Worker, Becket and Clash of the Titans
- Seven Emmy Awards and two Academy Award nominations
- World Soundtrack Academy Lifetime Achievement Award, 2023