Emmy-winning composer Dominic Frontiere, who had worked for shows like “The Outer Limits” and “The Flying Nun”, is dead. He was 86.
Frontiere died on Thursday in Tesuque, New Mexico, variety.com reported on Saturday.
Throughout the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, he composed hundreds of hours of music, mostly for TV but also for films including “Hang ‘Em High”, “Cancel My Reservation”, “Hammersmith Is Out”, “Freebie and the Bean”, and “The Aviator”.
He won a Golden Globe award for his score for “The Stunt Man” in 1980.
He also won an Emmy as musical director of “Swing Out, Sweet Land”, a patriotic TV special hosted by John Wayne in 1970.
Frontiere’s TV work dominated, however, including themes and scores for many series including “The New Breed”, “That Girl”, “Stoney Burke”, “12 O’Clock High” and “Branded”.
His largest-scale work for TV was the 12-hour mini-series “Washington: Behind Closed Doors”, composed during his stint as head of music for Paramount in the mid-1970s.
Frontiere was born June 17, 1931, in New Haven, Connecticut.
He performed with Horace Heidt’s big band in the late 1940s and early 1950s, moving to Hollywood where he met fellow New Haven native Alfred Newman, then music director at 20th Century-Fox.
Newman took him under his wing, gave him jobs as an accordion player on many Fox films, and guided his career as a budding composer and arranger in the late 1950s and early ’60s.
He is survived by his wife Robin, and five children.
