Monty Norman

Monty Norman, born Monty Noserovitch on 4 April 1928 in Stepney, in the East End of London, was a British composer, lyricist, and singer who worked across stage, film, and television. He died on 11 July 2022 at a hospital in Slough at the age of 94, following a short illness. His father, Abraham Noserovitch — whose surname was anglicised to Norman — was a Jewish cabinet maker who had emigrated to the United Kingdom from Latvia as a child, and his mother, Ann (Berlyn), also Jewish, worked as a seamstress. Norman spent his earliest years living with his Jewish immigrant grandparents. During World War II he was evacuated to St Albans before returning to London during the Blitz. His mother gave him his first guitar, a Gibson, when he was sixteen. He later completed national service in the Royal Air Force, where he developed an interest in singing as a profession, and worked as a barber during the same period.

In the 1950s and into the early 1960s, Norman sang with a number of prominent big bands, including those led by Cyril Stapleton, Stanley Black, Ted Heath, and Nat Temple. He also appeared in variety shows alongside performers such as Benny Hill, Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, Tommy Cooper, and Tony Hancock. One of his songs, "False-Hearted Lover," achieved international success. Toward the end of the 1950s, Norman transitioned from performing to composing and writing lyrics, contributing material for artists including Cliff Richard, Tommy Steele, Count Basie, and Bob Hope.

His stage work during this period included lyrics for Make Me an Offer and Expresso Bongo, both written in 1957 and 1958. Expresso Bongo, written by Wolf Mankowitz, became a West End hit and was later adapted into a 1960 film starring Cliff Richard; it was described by Time Out as the first rock and roll musical. Norman also wrote the English-language version of Irma la Douce, adapted from a 1956 French musical by Alexandre Breffort and Marguerite Monnot. That production earned a Tony Award nomination for Best Musical in 1961, one of two Broadway nominations Norman would receive over the course of his career. His later stage work included Songbook, produced in New York as The Moony Shapiro Songbook, which earned him a second Tony nomination, this time for Best Book of a Musical in 1981, as well as an Ivor Novello Award. His 1982 musical Poppy was also nominated for the Ivor Novello Award and won the SWET Award — later renamed the Laurence Olivier Awards — for Best Musical.

Norman's film work included music for the Hammer production The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960), The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), the Bob Hope film Call Me Bwana (1963), and the television miniseries Dickens of London (1976). He is most widely recognized, however, for composing the James Bond Theme, which was first heard in the 1962 film Dr. No. The producers engaged John Barry to re-arrange the theme after expressing dissatisfaction with Norman's original arrangement, and Barry subsequently claimed authorship of the composition. Norman disputed that claim and prevailed in two separate libel actions, the latter against The Sunday Times in 2001. Between 1976 and 1999, Norman collected approximately £485,000 in royalties for the theme's use. In the documentary Inside Dr. No, he performed a piece he had originally written for an unproduced stage musical based on A House for Mr Biswas, titled "Bad Sign, Good Sign," which he identified as the melodic source for the Bond theme.

In his personal life, Norman married actress Diana Coupland in 1956; the couple had a daughter before divorcing in 1975. He later married Rina Caesari in 2000, and they remained married until his death. He was a worshipper at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue. In his later years, Norman worked on an unpublished autobiography titled A Walking Stick Full of Bagels.