Composer John Williams was voted the 2021 Forrest J Ackerman Award for Lifetime Achievement by the members of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society at their October 7 meeting.
The Forrest J Ackerman or Forry Award has been given by the LASFS annually since 1966 for lifetime achievement in the SF field. Usually, it is presented at Loscon, the convention hosted each Thanksgiving Weekend by the club. Ackerman joined LASFS in the year the club was founded, 1934.
Williams has been the signature composer of the sf genre for decades. In 2005, the American Film Institute selected his score to 1977’s Star Wars as the greatest film score of all time. He wrote the theme for TV’s Time Tunnel in the Sixties. His sff movie scores include the Star Wars saga, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the Indiana Jones films, the first two Jurassic Park films, and the first three Harry Potter films. He has won 25 Grammy Awards and five Academy Awards.
The names of all previous Forry Award winners can be seen here.
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Lost in Space, too.
“Johnny” Williams wrote BOTH Lost in Space themes, 1965-67 and 1967-68, plus all the in-episode music. I love that there’s a marching band arrangement of the second theme; it sounds great.
In addition to Lost in Space, John Williams also wrote for Gilligan’s Island, I understand.
I’ve had the pleasure of attending concerts led by Williams, who spends summers in the Berkshire mountains of western Massachusetts and has led both the Boston Pops and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He led the BSO in the world premiere of his second violin concerto, at Tanglewood this summer.
The election process was conducted in safety on a Zoom link provided by club member Susan Fox, and was a true test of the patience and enthusiasm of the membership.
CLJII
One of his scores that’s sadly neglected is the soundtrack for the 1979 Dracula starring Frank Langella. Very different from the rest of his portfolio, it’s a brilliant soundtrack reveling in pure Romantic era music.
gottacook:
“Johnny” wrote some, not all, of the incidental music in Lost in Space. Another major contributor was none other than Bernard Herrmann, albeit by way of recycled film scores, especially that of The Day the Earth Stood Still. (Is there any other series featuring music by the two titans of 20th Century film music? I think not!) Other prominent musicians contributing include Herman Stein, Alfred Newman, Alexander Courage(!), and Leith Stevens(!). One can’t fault the show in musical terms.
Deserving particular attention is a theme Williams wrote for the episode “My Friend, Mr. Nobody”, for the scene in which Penny wanders into a lush garden region and first encounters her nonimaginary friend. Absolutely beautiful.