John Morris

John Leonard Morris is an American film and television composer from Elizabeth, New Jersey. Born in 1926 and dying in 2018, he also works as a pianist, arranger, orchestrator and music director. The name also refers to a separate figure connected with the Woodstock festival, but the composer is the one associated with the film and television credits.

Film and television music

Morris is best known for his long association with filmmaker Mel Brooks. He begins working with Brooks in 1968 on The Producers, Brooks’s first film, and continues to write scores and songs for most of Brooks’s films. He does not compose the music for Robin Hood: Men in Tights or Dracula: Dead and Loving It, which are scored by Hummie Mann because Morris has other commitments. He also writes the music for To Be or Not to Be, a film in which Brooks acts and co-writes but does not direct.

Outside the Brooks collaboration, Morris also scores The Elephant Man, a film produced by Brooks. Brooks later identifies The Elephant Man and Young Frankenstein as Morris’s strongest scores for his films.

Other work

Morris also films The Ramones live at CBGB in 1974, and some of that footage is later used in the DVD release It’s Alive.