Happy 100th to Laurence Rosenthal

Happy 100th birthday to Laurence (Larry) Rosenthal, the fabulous composer of The Miracle Worker, Requiem for a Heavyweight, Return of a Man Called Horse, Clash of the Titans and so many more.

Larry was one of several composers I was astonished to learn had a season residence on Martha’s Vineyard, where I was lucky to grow up. In fact, know how his promo CDs were released by his company, “Windemere Music”? Years later, my grandmother spent her final years in long-term care at the M.V. Hospital at a facility called Windemere. It’s the name of a street in Oak Bluffs.

When I began reaching out to composers in the early days of FSM (early 1990s), I got word back that Larry was actually on the island. Even more absurdly, he was composing for Young Indiana Jones in a rented office that was next door to the supermarket that had been my summer job for several years. (Today, it’s a sandwich shop adjacent to the West Tisbury post office.)

That blew my mind: new Indiana Jones music was being written walking distance from my house!

I walked over there, and he was on deadline, but took a short break to chat—and he was friendly, nice and interested in this young man who was covering film scores.

One sort of funny moment: I was actually bold enough to ask about a rumor that he had done the Man Called Horse sequel—Leonard Rosenman did the original—because the filmmakers got confused as to who was who. I wouldn’t say he was angry, really, but like a practiced college professor he made sure I understood just how stupid a question I had asked. Gulp! As if the producers of a multi-million dollar film production really didn’t know the difference between two established composers (with very different styles) who by that time had each done numerous world-famous movies?

Around ten years later, I was traveling back to the Vineyard to see my folks and was spending a few minutes in a bookstore at Logan airport when I was like, huh, that fellow looks like Larry Rosenthal. A few hours later I saw him and his wife on the Islander ferry—yes, it was Larry Rosenthal, and we caught up a bit.

So wishing Larry all the best on his centennial birthday!

Also, not to be pushing product, but speaking of Windemere Music, in the 1990s Intrada put together a 2CD set of suites from his best scores. And it is so, so very good. We have several copies at FSMCDs.com (here’s the list of all his stuff we have in stock) called Laurence Rosenthal 2CD set and it really belongs in everybody’s collection. When I first got it, I remembering listening to it over and over again.