The music veteran Monty Norman who composed the famous James Bond theme song passed away at the age of 94. The news of his death was shared on his website.
Announcing the death, his website posted, “It is with sadness we share the news that Monty Norman died on 11th July 2022 after a short illness.”
Monty Norman was most popular for the song Dr. No, which was featured in the 1962 James Bond film starring Sean Connery. The song went on to become the theme for the entire franchise.
VS Naipul’s A House for Mr. Biswas was the inspiration for a musical adaptation of Norman’s unique rolling phrase. At that time Norman had said he based it on a piece called Good Sign, Bad Sign.
The James Bond franchise mourns the death of Monty Norman
Before penning tunes for pioneering British rockers Cliff Richard and Tommy Steele, he worked with large groups. He also shared a stage with comedian Benny Hill in a variety of double acts. The 1976 TV series Dickens of London and the Bob Hope comedy Call Me Bwana were examples of some of his later screen work. Norman also went back to musicals, for the remarkable Songbook in 1979. It was about a fictitious Liverpool-born songwriter named Mooney Shapiro who succeeds on Broadway until returns to Britain just in time enough for the swinging 1960s.
Monty Noserovitch was born in 1928, Norman grew up in London’s East End as the son of Jewish immigrants. He worked as a singer for several well-known big bands in the 1950s and early 1960s. In the latter half of the 1950s, Norman began to write songs for musicals, providing the words to Make Me an Offer and the words and melody to Wolf Mankowitz’s Expresso Bongo.