Darrell Calker
Darrell Wallace Calker (February 18, 1905 – February 20, 1964) was an American
Early life and education
Calker was born in Washington, D.C. to Morris H. and Lugenia E. (Lily) Wallace of Philadelphia. He grew up with his younger sister Rena in the District of Columbia, where he attended Episcopal Cathedral School[1] and sang with a church choir in his teens.[2] He studied with Edgar Priest and David Pell, graduating from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
Career
Calker's early work in Hollywood included orchestration for Victor Young. He was also active as the composer of scores for the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo and Sadlers Wells Royal Ballet.[3] Among his compositions were the suites for orchestra, Golden Land and Penguin Island.[4]
After arriving in Los Angeles by the mid-1930s, Calker worked as a session musician, and composed songs including Strings Full of Swing and Dixieland Strut.[5] He formed his own band, which appeared on radio in the early 1940s.[6]
It was at this time
Feature films
Calker's first feature film was the independently made Dangerous Millions (1946). The musical supervisor was David Chudnow, who later took music that had been composed for films he worked on and released it as television stock music in the Mutel Library.[8] He also composed, with Del Porter, the Reddy Polka[9] in 1945, used in industrial films about Reddy Kilowatt, the cartoon spokesman for electrical power.
Calker spent the 1950s working on
He returned to the Lantz studio in 1961 and scored twelve cartoons before his death, aged 59, in
References
- ^ Music and Dance in California and the West, Richard Drake Sauners
- ^ Washington Post, December 24, 1915; November 1, 1921.
- ^ Hollywood Rhapsody: Movie Music and its Makers, 1900 to 1975, Gary Marmorstein.
- ^ Los Angeles Times, Dec. 29, 1940
- ^ Catalog of Copyright Entries, Library of Congress, 1939
- ^ Los Angeles Times, September 4, 1940
- ^ Of Mice and Magic, Leonard Maltin.
- ^ Performing Arts: Broadcasting, Paul Mandell, published by the Library of Congress.
- ^ Catalog of Copyright entries, Part 3 Library of Congress, 1945
- ^ Keep Watching The Skies!: American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties, Bill Warren.
External links
- Darrell Calker at IMDb