Angela Morley (formerly Wally Stott) dies
David Samuel Barr
January 20, 2009
Angela Morley: Composer and arranger
Angela Morley was a versatile musician, a composer, arranger
and conductor, who began her professional life as Wally
Stott and became nationally known in the 1950s as a stalwart
of The Goon Show before undergoing a sex-change.
The change of gender, and its unwelcome publicity, ushered
in a difficult period in her private life, but she was able
to pick up her career, eventually moving to the United
States where she worked on a number of popular films and
television shows.
She was born Walter Stott in Leeds in 1924. His father was a
watchmaker and owned a shop selling watches, jewellery and
silver plate. A musical memory was of sitting on the floor
surrounded by records of the Jack Payne and Henry Hall bands
and playing them on a wind-up gramophone.
At eight he started piano lessons but these came to an end
when his father died suddenly a few months later. He toyed
briefly with the violin and accordion before taking up the
clarinet and playing in the school orchestra. Next it was an
alto saxophone and a first taste of band music, performing
under Bert Clegg at the Empress Ballroom in Mexborough,
South Yorkshire.
He left school at 15 and toured with a juvenile band for ten
shillings a week. His career started to take off during the
Second World War when bands were losing musicians to the
forces. The young Wally Stott spent a couple of years going
from band to band until, at 17, he joined Oscar Rabin as
lead alto.
In 1944, aged 20, he joined the Geraldo Orchestra, familiar
to millions through its BBC radio broadcasts. As the
orchestra played in various combinations, from swing band to
symphonic, Stott was able to hone his skills as an arranger,
inspired by two masters of the craft, the Canadian-born
Robert Farnon and Bill Finegan, who worked for Tommy Dorsey.
The self-taught Stott decided it was time to seek
professional instruction and studied harmony, counterpoint
and composition with the Hungarian composer Matyas Seiber
and took a conducting course with Walter Goehr.
At the beginning of the 1950s he gave up playing to
concentrate on writing, arranging and conducting. He became
musical director of the new Philips record label, began to
write film scores and moved into broadcasting on The Goon
Show and Hancock's Half-Hour.
Disillusioned with the quality of recording in the cinema he
turned down film offers for some years, but in the late
1960s he wrote music for The Looking Glass War, When Eight
Bells Toll and Captain Nemo and the Underwater City. After
the sex change operation in 1972 he became Angela Morley,
taking his mother's maiden name, and for a while she put her
career on hold. But by 1974 she was working on Stanley Donen's
film The Little Prince, with the songwriting team of Lerner
and Loewe, and she went on to collaborate with Robert and
Richard Sherman on the score for Bryan Forbes's Cinderella
story The Slipper and the Rose. Both films brought her Oscar
nominations. In 1977 she was the credited composer on
Watership Down, an animated film based on Richard Adams's
novel. Malcolm Williamson had originally been commissioned
and wrote what became the first six minutes of music on the
film, but had to withdraw through illness. At this period
Morley was also a regular conductor of the BBC Radio
Orchestra and worked with John Williams on the orchestration
of his scores for Star Wars, Superman and The Empire Strikes
Back.
She attended the two Oscar ceremonies at which she was
nominated, and liked California so much that she settled
there in 1980. From then on her work was in the US, much of
it for television on such shows as Dallas, Dynasty, Falcon
Crest, Cagney and Lacey and Wonder Woman.
She helped John Williams with his scores for E.T., Hook, the
Home Alone films and Schindler's List and won three Emmy
awards for arranging.
Over the years life in Los Angeles became steadily less
appealing and after the 1994 earthquake, with its epicentre
only six miles from her house, she made her home in
Scottsdale, Arizona. Here she founded the Chorale of the
Alliance Française of Greater Phoenix, for which she wrote
more than 30 arrangements of French songs.
Wally Stott was married twice. His first wife, who founded
the Beryl Stott Singers, predeceased him, as did a daughter.
In 1970 he was married to Christine Parker and, despite the
trauma of the sex change only two years later, she and
Angela Morley stayed together.
Morley is survived by her and a son.
Angela Morley, conductor, composer and arranger, was born on
March 10, 1924. She died on January 14, 2009, aged 84
Roger the Saurus
"David Samuel Barr" <dsb...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:OJ6dnRLhyJ4D4-jU...@earthlink.com...
How sad. She must have been one of the Goon Show regulars left and now she
has died.A lot of the appeal of the Goon Shows came from the musical links
and incidental music. Remember Neddie Seagoon in "Dishonoured again" saying
"I'll join the navy" followed by a medley of nautical songs to be followed
by "No, I'll join the army. It's too noisy in the navy". How about that
wonderful national anthem in "The Prince". The music was an essential
ingredient that enhanced the humour, too often without getting the credit
due. Farewell Wally/Angela. You were brilliant
--
Roger the Saurus
(remove bollix to reply)
Offramp
say.
Pope Pie (Sy Lehrman)
> More famous probably for Hancock's Half Hour than The Goons, I would
> say.
That was Wally? Did I not know that or had I forgotten?
Bill Taylor
whose bollix have not yet been removed, wrote:
> Remember Neddie Seagoon in "Dishonoured again" saying
> "I'll join the navy" followed by a medley of nautical songs to be followed
> by "No, I'll join the army. It's too noisy in the navy".
Ah, thankee dear snotty lad, for bringing back one of my
most cherished memories, (along with that touch of malaria
that always seems to come back at this time of year).
That was indeed one of the high points of the whole
Goons' ouvre, (a form of French omelet). I'm glad
to see there's some other Charlie here with the same
attitude, (which will never look decent on my head again!)
*** Can I come in?
== Have you committed any crimes?
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== Then, you can't come in!
*** Take off your hat!
== Certainly.
<CLONK!> Ouuuwwwwwwwwwww!!
== All right, now you can come in!