Sunday, February 13, 2022

Lalo Schifrin - Theme from Mission: Impossible

Classical music is alive and well, it's just given up the concert hall for the cinema.  Sometimes, it's gone to the Television Set.  Lalo Schifrin wrote musical scores for both films and television, blending classical, jazz, and themes from his native Argentina.  This won him five Grammys and nominations for six Oscars and four Emmys.

You will remember his music from the Dirty Harry films and Cool Hand Luke, but this is his most famous composition.


The Queen Of The World suggested this song for today, and pointed out that Peter Graves (from Mission: Impossible) and James Arness (Marshall Dillion from Gunsmoke) were brothers.  I had not known that.

And speaking of Peter Graves, this is perhaps his funniest scene:



5 comments:

Ed Bonderenka said...

Video unavailable.
But I can hear it in my head clearly.

BobF said...

Worked for me, but at YouTube.

Had no idea of the brothers. Had a cousin who used to say James Arness had the butt seen by more people than anyone else's, thanks to the opening scene.

Aesop said...

Nota bene that the work of world famous concert composer and conductor J. Williams can be heard in his earliest iterations as the theme from Irwin Allen's "Lost In Space" in the early/mid-1960s, when he was still known as "Johnny".
You can already hear some of the early operatic phrasing for the themes from Jaws and Star Wars in that show's music.

By the same token, some of the first work for film director Richard Donner (Lethal Weapon I-V, etc.) was as the director for the segment of The Banana Splits Show starring Jan-Michael Vincent, Danger Island.
"Uh oh, Chongo!".
(Mentioning this to Donner currently is a good way to get thrown off of his set. Ask me how I know.)

Ken said...

Schifrin also scored Kelly's Heroes. You can really hear his signature in the sequence in which the Heroes are getting ready to "lock horns with three Tigers."

Mike V said...

I like this version better, but to each his own.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaNrAiUNHtQ