Irving Gertz:IRVING GERTZ, a film and television composer who has died aged 93, contributed music to 1950s science-fiction films such as It Came From Outer Space and The Incredible Shrinking Man and to 1960s TV series such as Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.
From the late 1940s to the late 1960s, Gertz wrote music for 200 movies and television episodes.
Among his film credits are Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, Francis Joins the WACS, The Alligator People, The Monolith Monsters, The Creature Walks Among Us, Overland Pacific, To Hell and Back, The Thing That Couldn't Die and Flaming Star.
Among his TV credits were productions such as Daniel Boone, The Invaders, Land of the Giants, Peyton Place and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.
"He had a tremendous dramatic sense of writing the appropriate music for a picture; he was just a superb composer," said David Schecter, a friend, noting that most of the work Gertz did at Universal-International in the 1950s was uncredited.
As was customary at the time, he said, the studio used multiple composers on the same picture, such as Henry Mancini, Hans Salter and Herman Stein, but only the head of the music department received screen credit.
Gertz also composed concert works, including Boutade for Orchestra, Leaves of Grass, Liberty! Liberte! and Salute to All Nations.
The youngest of eight children, Gertz was born in 1915, in Providence, Rhode Island. He played a variety of instruments at an early age and went on to study at the Providence College of Music.
Although his classical compositions were being performed by the Providence Symphony Orchestra, Schecter said, Gertz had developed an interest in film music and landed a job in the music department at Columbia Pictures in Hollywood in 1938.
With his fledgling career in Hollywood put on hold by the second World War, he served as an artillery gunner and then as an officer in the US Army Signal Corps.
He returned to Columbia after the war and began composing for films.
After leaving Columbia and writing music for one-hour plays based on current movies for NBC Radio, he joined Universal-International in the early 1950s.
He was hired by 20th Century Fox in 1960 and spent the decade working there as a composer and music director.
Gertz is survived by his wife of 64 years, Dorothy; two daughters, Susie Anson and Madeleine Herron; and four grandchildren.
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Irving Gertz: Born May 15th, 1915; died November 14th, 2008