Artist:Cyril Ornadel
Song:Overture
Album:My Fair Lady: Original Cast
Cyril Ornadel was a composer and songwriter primarily known as a musical director in London. That's what he did on the 1958 production of My Fair Lady. He also worked in TV and recorded many easy listening albums. He was born Dec. 2, 1924 in London, England. After studying at the Royal College of Music, he became famous in England for conducting the orchestra for ITV TV show Sunday Night at the London Palladium. This led to him as musical director of the 1958 production of the Lerner and Loewe musical My Fair Lady. That show was produced on Broadway in 1956 and then came to London. The original cast of the London production was reissued on CD and remastered in 1998. It's available as a budget CD. The London album has a gold cover. The Broadway album has a white cover. Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews starred in both but everyone else was different. Ornadel was also musical director on London productions of the musicals The Sound of Music and The King and I. He wrote the 1963 musical Pickwick with Leslie Bricusse starring Harry Secombe. The song If I Ruled the World won an Ivor Novello Award. Pickwick ran for two years in London but flopped on Broadway. Ornadel wrote the song Portrait of My Love with EMI A&R director Norman Newell and it was a top ten hit in England in 1960 for Matt Monro. Steve Lawrence's 1962 recording was a top 10 hit in the US. Ornadel recorded many instrumental albums with symphony orchestras for MGM and Columbia. He got into film and TV work in the late 60s including the 1974 TV movie Brief Encounter starring Richard Burton an Sophia Loren and the science fiction TV series Sapphire & Steel. He scored several films for exploitation director Pete Walker including Man of Violence (1969) and Die Screaming, Marianne (1971). It looks like Ornadel retired in the early 80s and died on June 22, 2001 at age 86. Here's a video for the Overture from the 1958 London production of My Fair Lady by Cyril Ornadel.
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