- In 1974, Angela Morley became the first openly transgender person to be nominated for an Academy Award, when she was nominated for one in the category of Best Music, Original Song Score/Adaptation for The Little Prince (1974), a nomination shared with Alan Jay Lerner, Frederick Loewe, and Douglas Gamley.
- Had a sex change operation in 1972.
- Former principal saxophonist with the Oscar Rabin band and the Geraldo orchestra in the 1940s.
- Conductor of the BBC Radio Orchestra in the 1970s.
- In 1970, while still Wally Stott, he married Christine Parker and despite the sex change to become Angela Morley in 1972, they remained together, a close and devoted couple until Angela's death almost thirty-seven years later.
- Living in Scottsdale, Arizona since 1994, and before that Los Angeles since 1980. (April 2006)
- Morley was a fan of dance music before being able to read the labels on the records, listening notably to Jack Payne and Henry Hall as a child, and began learning the piano at the age of eight on a Challen upright piano.
- She permanently relocated to Los Angeles in 1979 and began working primarily on American television soundtracks, including those of Dynasty, Dallas, Cagney & Lacey, Wonder Woman, and Falcon Crest, working with the music departments of major production companies, including Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Universal Pictures and 20th Century Fox Television.
- Was an English composer and conductor who, as Wally Stott, became a familiar household name to BBC Radio listeners in the 1950s.
- Her death was almost exactly 50 years since her no. 1 hit with Shirley Bassey, "As I Love You".
- Morley studied harmony and musical composition in London with the British-Hungarian composer Mátyás Seiber and conducting with the German conductor Walter Goehr.
- Morley was twice married. Her first wife, Beryl Stott, was a singer and choral arranger who founded the Beryl Stott Singers, also known as the Beryl Stott Chorus or Beryl Stott Group. Beryl Stott died prior to Morley's gender transition. Morley met Christine Parker, also a singer, in London, and they married on 1 June 1970. Parker was a major support to Morley through her transition. Morley stated that: "It was only because of her love and support that I then was able to deal with the trauma, and begin to think about crossing over that terrifying gender border.".
- Following the success of Watership Down, Morley lived for a time in Brentwood, Los Angeles, where she began working for Warner Bros.
- She was a regular guest conductor of the BBC Radio Orchestra and BBC Big Band.
- Morley continued to play saxophone in British dance bands during the period of World War II, joining the Oscar Rabin Band as lead alto in 1941, at age 17.[6] With this band, Morley began writing arrangements for pay and made a recording debut with the tracks "Waiting for Sally" and "Love in Bloom".[4] Morley later joined Geraldo's band, which performed for BBC Radio several times a week,[6] in 1942[1][7] or 1944. With Geraldo's band Morley gained experience arranging for bands of many sizes and styles.
- Thanks to a mutual friend, Herbert W. Spencer, Morley collaborated with John Williams throughout the 1970s and 1980s, arranging for the Boston Pops Orchestra under Williams' direction and working on films such as Star Wars, Superman, The Empire Strikes Back, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Hook, Home Alone, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, and Schindler's List,[6][16] though in an uncredited capacity.
- Though initially reluctant, citing lack of preparation and unfamiliarity with the novel, Morley wrote most of the score for the animated Watership Down film, released in 1978. She had to work quickly based on work drafted by Malcolm Williamson, then Master of the Queen's Music, who left the project.
- Morley won three Emmy Awards for her work in music arrangement. These were in the category of Outstanding Music Direction, in 1985, 1988 and 1990, for Christmas in Washington and two television specials starring Julie Andrews.
- She attributed her entry into composing and arranging largely to the influence and encouragement of the Canadian light music composer Robert Farnon.
- She was twice nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best Original Song Score: first for The Little Prince (1974), a nomination shared with Alan Jay Lerner, Frederick Loewe, and Douglas Gamley; and second for The Slipper and the Rose (1976), which Morley shared with Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman.
- Morley's early work was also influenced by Robert Farnon and Bill Finegan.
- Morley's father was a watchmaker who played the ukulele-banjo, and the family lived above their jewelry shop. Morley's mother also sang.
- Morley was also the composer, conductor, arranger and orchestrator for the Sherman Brothers' musical film adaptation of the Cinderella story, The Slipper and the Rose: The Story of Cinderella in 1976, however she was only credited as conductor and arranger. She was again nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Music, Original Song Score and Its Adaptation or Best Adaptation Score for this film along with the Sherman Brothers and again was present at the award ceremony.
- As a mostly self-taught musician able to sight-read, Morley left school at age 15 to tour with Archie's Juvenile Band, earning a weekly wage of 10 shillings, and also worked as a projectionist.Morley's mentor at this time was the pianist Eddie Taylor.
- Morley's father died of angina in 1933 at the age of 39, after which the family moved to Swinton and Morley ceased piano lessons. Morley then tried playing violin at age 10 and the accordion at age 11, including in competitions, before choosing the clarinet and alto saxophone as primary instruments, taking clarinet lessons and playing in the school orchestra.[6] Morley then played in the semi-professional band led by Bert Clegg in Mexborough.
- Morley received eight Emmy nominations for composing music for television series such as Dynasty and Dallas.
- Morley had many friendships with fellow musicians and industry colleagues. While working on The Goon Show, she made the acquaintance of Peter Sellers, and would eventually share fond memories of him to his biographer Ed Sikov.
- While Morley was working with Johnny Franz at Philips Records, Robert Earl noted that Morley and Franz "didn't believe in fade-out endings so all those ballads end on big notes".
- Her last film credit was for the Disney film The Hunchback of Notre Dame II in 2002, where she worked as an additional orchestrator and composer of additional music.
- Morley had two children with her first wife Beryl Stott: a daughter, Helen, who predeceased her in 1967, and a son, Bryan.
- Morley was a transgender woman and began transitioning to live openly as a woman in 1970, at the age of 46.
- Morley underwent sex reassignment surgery in Casablanca in June 1970 and publicly came out as a woman in 1972.[3][Footnotes 1] She chose the new surname Morley as it was her mother's maiden name.
- Laura Horak, - Tracing the History of Trans and Gender Variant Filmmakers, p. 10 - includes Morley among her selected list of trans and gender variant filmmakers as a composer, noting in particular her work on The Little Prince and Watership Down alongside the film works of other transgender and gender variant people in Classical Hollywood cinema such as Dorothy Arzner and Christine Jorgensen.
- She and Max Geldray continued to be good friends following her transition. She also noted that she was lifelong friends with Herbert W. Spencer from 1955, while working on Gentlemen Marry Brunettes, until his death in 1992.
- From some of her earliest composition works, Morley used instruments to represent characters, such as the tuba notes in the theme to Hancock's Half Hour which represented Tony Hancock.
- She also collaborated with André Previn, Lionel Newman, Miklós Rózsa, and Richard Rodney Bennett.[2] Later, she would work with soloists such as Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman.
- Morley is commemorated by a Rainbow Plaque placed by Leeds Pride at the entrance to the BBC Leeds building.
- Morley credited her eventual turn away from film scores to technological changes: tape recording, new types of microphones, and the advent of stereophonic sound had reached the wider music industry, but not film. She wrote that "to go to a cinema to hear one's latest score was absolute torture." Nevertheless, she continued to work intermittently in film until 2002.
- Beyond her light and easy listening work, Morley collaborated with many kinds of artists at Philips Records, from folk music to rock and roll, produced her own recordings of music from Christmas music to show tunes, and later focused her attention on orchestral, classical and choral arrangements that went beyond the scope of light music and easy listening.
- She recorded two CDs with the John Wilson Orchestra.
- Morley's work was influenced by a number of genres and styles. She initially played in British dance bands, and spent much of her career composing music that was labeled as light and easy listening, as well as film scores and television soundtracks. Light music and easy listening were generally not taken seriously or given much respect at the time that Morley was composing, which Dubowsky credits partially to misogyny, due to the genre's association with femininity. Dubowsky ( composer and researcher ) acknowledges that the genre has been seen as derivative, bourgeois, and (in America) racially exclusionary, but calls for the genre and Morley's work to be reconsidered for its influence on film music and the technical skill required in its production. He also, in the conclusion to his chapter on Morley and Wendy Carlos, questions whether Morley was drawn to light music for its perceived feminine qualities.
- She also lectured at the University of Southern California on film scoring and founded the Chorale of the Alliance Française of Greater Phoenix.
- She was nominated six times for Emmy Awards for composing and won three times for music direction, notably of two Julie Andrews television specials.
- According to her friend and colleague Max Geldray, she struggled with her gender identity throughout her life, and according to her wife, Christine Parker, Morley probably tried hormone replacement therapy at some point before they met.
- Morley's talent was noted by many of her peers. Arranger Tony Osborne said that she was "at the top of the range [...] second only to Robert Farnon, and it was a pretty close run thing at that", while Scott Walker compared working with Morley to working with Frederick Delius.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content