Maurice Jarre

Maurice-Alexis Jarre was born in France on 13 September 1924 and trained as a conductor before the cinema pulled him in. In 1962 he scored Lawrence of Arabia for David Lean - the first of a run that would last two decades and yield all of Lean's remaining films, including Doctor Zhivago in 1965 and A Passage to India in 1984, each winning Jarre an Academy Award. Between and beyond those anchors he worked for Hitchcock, Huston, Visconti, Frankenheimer, and Weir, composing for The Longest Day, The Collector, Grand Prix, Witness, Fatal Attraction, Dead Poets Society, and Ghost, the last three earning Oscar nominations in four years. His "Lara's Theme" became a pop standard when lyricist Paul Francis Webster added words and the Mike Sammes Singers took it to Number 14 in Britain. He died on 28 March 2009, father to musician Jean-Michel Jarre and adoptive father to screenwriter Kevin Jarre.