Maury Laws, Rankin-Bass Composer-Arranger, Dies at 95
Laws arranged and conducted the "Rudolph" song score and was Grammy-nominated for writing the music for TV's animated "Hobbit."
He was not on the list.
Maury Laws, who as musical director for Rankin-Bass
productions supervised the scoring of such animated TV classics as “Rudolph the
Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Frosty the Snowman” and “The Hobbit,” died March 28 in
Appleton, Wisc. He was 95.
Laws’ greatest achievement in TV was arranging and
conducting all of the music for the 1964 stop-motion animation version of
“Rudolph,” which featured new songs by original “Rudolph” songwriter Johnny
Marks. Laws’ warm orchestral settings for such songs as “Holly Jolly
Christmas,” “There’s Always Tomorrow” and the title tune helped to make the
hour-long show a holiday season perennial.
The success of “Rudolph” led to a series of animated
specials by the Rankin-Bass company. Laws worked with Fred Astaire on “Santa
Claus Is Comin’ to Town” (1970), Danny Kaye on “Here Comes Peter Cottontail”
(1971), Angela Lansbury on “The First Christmas” (1975) and Judy Collins on
“The Wind in the Willows” (1987), often writing the songs with lyricist and
co-producer Jules Bass and then creating the dramatic underscore.
Laws was nominated for a 1979 Grammy for the music of “The
Hobbit,” a 1977 animated TV adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien prelude to “The
Lord of the Rings” novels. He later scored “The Return of the King,” a 1980
TV-movie sequel also based on the Tolkien saga.
Rankin-Bass historian Rick Goldschmidt told Variety that
“Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” and “Here Comes Peter Cottontail” were among
the composer’s favorites. “Maury’s music was full of magic,” Goldschmidt said.
“He wrote his music with a super-bouncy feel loaded with glockenspiels and
xylophones. He said this came from his work on holiday commercials for General
Electric, a few years before ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.’ His songs are as
much a part of Christmas as decorating the tree and exchanging presents.”
For the big screen, Laws scored the Hans Christian Andersen
anthology “The Daydreamer” (1966), the cult favorite “Mad Monster Party” (1967)
with Boris Karloff, the live-action Marco Polo musical “Marco” (1973), the
fantasy “The Last Dinosaur” (1977) and the period adventure “The Bushido Blade”
(1981).
His television credits also included the Saturday morning
cartoon “King Kong” (1966), “Cricket on the Hearth” (1967), “The Little Drummer
Boy” (1968) and the animated classic-literature anthology “Festival of Family
Classics” (1972).
Laws was born in Hurdle Mills, N.C., in 1923. He taught
himself to play guitar and was performing professionally by the age of 16.
After service in World War II, he settled in New York to pursue a musical
career, eventually becoming an arranger for such singers as Betty Hutton and
Vaughn Monroe.
He wrote the arrangement of the hit novelty tune “Itsy Bitsy
Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini” without credit in 1960. He met Bass while
scoring TV commercials in 1962 and joined the Rankin-Bass company, doing
orchestrations for its “Return to Oz” special in 1964 before “Rudolph”
catapulted them into the major leagues.
In his later years, Laws arranged a suite of his Rankin-Bass
music for orchestras. As he told writer Greg Ehrbar for “The Cartoon Music
Book”: “I can’t believe how much people really want to hear this music. We had
no idea what it was to become when we first created it. Of everything I’ve ever
done in my life, this has become the biggest thing to people, and I couldn’t be
more delighted and gratified.”
Laws is survived by his wife Karen, three children, two
sisters, nieces and nephews. Services will be private, although plans for a
memorial are underway.
Maury Laws died in Appleton, Wisconsin on March 28, 2019.
Read More
Filmography
Rudolph the
Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)
Return to Oz
(1964)
The Daydreamer
(1966)
The King Kong Show
(1966–1969)
Ballad of Smokey
the Bear (1966)
Mad Monster Party?
(1966, 1967)
Cricket on the
Hearth (1967)
The Wacky World of
Mother Goose (1967)
Mouse on the
Mayflower (1968)
The Little Drummer
Boy (1968)
The Smokey Bear
Show (1969–1970)
Frosty the Snowman
(1969)
The Mad, Mad, Mad
Comedians (1970)
The Reluctant
Dragon & Mr. Toad Show (1970–1971)
The Tomfoolery
Show (1970–1971)
Santa Claus is
Comin' to Town (1970)
Here Comes Peter
Cottontail (1971)
The Jackson 5ive
(1971–1972)
The Enchanted
World of Danny Kaye: The Emperor's New Clothes (1972)
The Osmonds (1972)
Mad Mad Mad
Monsters (1972)
Willie Mays and
the Say-Hey Kid (1972)
The Red Baron
(1972)
Festival of Family
Classics (1972–1973)
That Girl in
Wonderland (1973)
Marco (1973)
'Twas the Night
Before Christmas (1974)
The Year Without a
Santa Claus (1974)
The First Christmas:
The Story of the First Christmas Snow (1975)
Rudolph's Shiny
New Year (1975, 1976)
The First Easter
Rabbit (1976)
Frosty's Winter
Wonderland (1976)
The Little Drummer
Boy, Book II (1976)
The Muppet Show
(1976-1981)
The Easter Bunny
is Comin' to Town (1977)
The Last Dinosaur
(1977)
The Hobbit (1977)
Nestor the
Long–Eared Christmas Donkey (1977)
The Stingiest Man
in Town (1978)
Rudolph and
Frosty's Christmas in July (1979)
The Return of the
King (1979, 1980)
Pinocchio's
Christmas (1980)
The Bushido Blade
(1981)
The Leprechaun's
Christmas Gold (1981)
The Flight of
Dragons (1982)
The Wind in the
Willows (1985, 1987)