Bonanza, My Favorite Martian, Rossini, and Prokofiev

Here's a twofer installment of "Tune Detective!"

My sister Laura was visiting this weekend, and at one point the conversation drifted to TV shows from our childhood. My wife brought up "Bonanza." Remembering the theme song, I first thought of how it evoked thundering horses' hooves, which led me straight to the extremely similar single-note, repeated-rhythm motif in Rossini's "William Tell Overture." I am quite certain that this resemblance is no accident.

The "Bonanza" theme was written by David Rose, who wrote music for movies and television from 1938 until his death in 1990. Here is his IMDB page.

Of course, the "William Tell" theme had already long been used in "Lone Ranger" radio and TV shows.

My sister then mentioned a conversation she had years ago with George Greeley, a somewhat distant relative of ours by marriage, when she lived in Los Angeles. Laura had been introduced to George by our cousin. George had a long career in the Hollywood music business as pianist, composer, conductor, and musical director; his IMDB resumé begins in 1949. His musical career began as an arranger for several prominent pre-WW II big bands. 

Among many other credits, George wrote the theme song for "My Favorite Martian," a TV show that my sister had been a fan of, as a kid. George mentioned to her that in writing the theme, he had been influenced by Prokofiev. When Laura told me that, and played me the "Martian" theme on Youtube, it was pretty clear that George had taken a cue from Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf."

I hadn't known much about George Greeley, but looking at his IMDB bio, he had an incredibly active and productive career: Arranger for Tommy Dorsey, Glen Gray, Abe Lyman, and other big bands; conductor for a World War II Air Force band; then arranger for Hollywood radio shows; staff pianist and orchestrator for Columbia Pictures, where he "would fill out the sketches provided by composers that included Max Steiner...Leonard Bernstein, and Dmitri Tiomkin;" pianist on "hundreds of motion pictures;" his work in movies as composer, conductor, and musical director; and later as concert pianist. His complete IMDB bio is here. I'm honored to be even distantly related, though there is absolutely no genetic connection, and I never met George.