Dynasty composer dies
RIPThe composer Ben Lanzarone who has died in Los Angeles aged 85, made a Carnegie Hall debut as a classical pianist before finding other things to do. Among those things was being music director on the original 1972-80 production of Grease, touring with Frank Sinatra and composing the theme music for Dynasty, the forerunner of TV family serials.
He is survived by his wife, the actress-singer Ilene Graff.
Bill Conti wrote the theme music for Dynasty. Ben Lanzarone mostly wrote the in-between incidental music for specific TV episodes, not the theme tunes or famous songs
IMDb says he scored 15 episodes of “Dynasty”.
But Bill Conti composed the series theme.
Dynasty was not the fore-runner of primetime family soaps. Dallas was.
And, surely, Dynasty wasn’t the forerunner to anything, but ABC’s response to CBS’s Dallas, which had been pulling big audiences for two years before Dynasty was created?