Alexander Courage

In his two-and-a-half-hour interview, Alexander "Sandy" Courage (1919-2008) describes his work as a conductor, arranger, and composer in network radio on The Screen Guild Theater, The Adventures of Sam Spade, and Hedda Hopper's This Is Hollywood. He describes his entrance into feature filmmaking as an arranger at MGM, detailing his screen highlights on Showboat, The Band Wagon, and Seven Brides For Seven Brothers. He talks about his entrance into composing for television at Revue Productions. He details his work on the MGM series National Velvet and talks about several pilots he scored for the studio. Courage talks of his move to 20th Century Fox, working on the feature films The Pleasure Seekers and Doctor Doolittle and on the television series Daniel Boone, for which he composed dozens of episodes. He describes in detail his work writing the fanfare, theme, and music for the two pilots of Star Trek, as well as his work on several later episodes. Courage speaks of his extensive composition work on over one hundred episodes of The Waltons, discusses writing the theme for Judd For The Defense, and composing for Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and several Academy Award telecasts. He discusses his later work for television on the miniseries QBVII and the television special Julie Andrews: The Sound of Christmas, the latter of which earned him an Emmy award. Jon Burlingame conducted the interview on February 8, 2000 in Malibu, CA.