Person

Addinsell, Richard, 1904-1977

1904-1977

English composer Richard Addinsell is best known for his romantic “Warsaw Concerto,” used in the soundtrack for the now mostly forgotten film “Dangerous Moonlight.” Home-schooled, he studied law in Oxford at Herford College but abandoned the legal field after only 18 months; he enrolled in 1925 at the Royal College of Music but quit after two terms. He began collaborating with various producers of theatrical musical revues, including Noel Gray and Clemence Dane. He spent 1929 touring European musical centers, particularly Berlin and Vienna. In 1932, Eva Le Gallienne asked him to create the incidental music for her Broadway adaptation of "Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass." His real talent, however, seems to have been composing for film. Between 1932 and 1965, he composed music for more than 40 films, many of them well known. Even though “Dangerous Moonlight” (released in North America as “Suicide Squadron”) was not a great success, his Rachmaninov-inspired “Warsaw Concerto” that characterized the score has been recorded more than a hundred times and sold over three million copies. In 1942, he collaborated with Joyce Grenfell and with Laurier Lister for some West End revues. In the 1960s he withdrew from his group of friends and retired from public life. His last years were spent with his good friend Victor Stiebel, comforting him during the difficult decline due to multiple sclerosis. Stiebel died in 1976 and Addinsell a year later.