Kenneth Thorne (born January 26, 1924) is an Academy Award-winning British-American television and film score composer.

Early life

Thorne was born in East Dereham, a town in the English County of Norfolk. Thorne began his musical career as a pianist with the big bands of England during the 1940s, playing at night clubs and the dance halls. At age 27, Thorne decided to seriously study composition with private tutors at Cambridge and later studied the organ for five years in London.

Film scoring

Thorne began composing scores for films in 1948. Thorne was considered Richard Lester's composer of choice. He was hired for the films Superman II and III to reuse the music by John Williams and recompose them for the sequels, also adding some original work. He also did the music score for The Beatles movie Help! The score was featured in the Help! U.S. album. Since the 1980s, Ken Thorne has mainly focused his work for TV. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.