John Hollingsworth

John Hollingsworth's career in music took him from the Guildhall School of Music to the concert hall and the ballet, and finally into motion pictures. Born in 1916, he was 21 when he began his professional career and served for a time as an assistant to conductor Sir Malcolm Sargent (a musical figure known for his flamboyance, and often referred to derisively as "Flash Harry" by his critics). At the outbreak of World War II, Hollingsworth joined the Royal Air Force and served from 1940 through 1945 as the assistant conductor of the RAF Symphony Orchestra, in addition to being as conductor for the Crown Film Unit (which produced documentaries supporting the British war effort). Following the end of the war, Hollingsworth joined the Royal Ballet and began making occasional recordings as well, mostly of orchestral dance pieces such as Sir Charles Mackerras' Gilbert & Sullivan pastiche Pineapple Poll. He had a long association with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and beginning in 1949, with the BBC Proms concerts.
Hollingsworth's earliest association with motion pictures goes back to the mid-'40s and documentaries such as North East Corner, Crofters, and Burma Victory. But in 1945 he also moved over into commercial feature films when he served as associate music director on David Lean's Brief Encounter, a very music-heavy drama that helped make the Rachmaninov Second Piano Concerto even more popular than it already was. By the second half of the decade, he was conducting the scores of such top-notch films as They Made Me a Fugitive and Snowbound, as well as serving as assistant music director on Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948), which featured a score by Sir William Walton. He still occasionally returned to documentary work, as on Flight of the White Heron (1954), a feature-length account (in CinemaScope, no less) about Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip's visit to the United States. His most important work of the mid-'50s onward, however, was as the music supervisor for Hammer Films -- his baton led the orchestra in spirited, precise performances of scores by James Bernard on such hit films as The Creeping Unknown, The Curse of Frankenstein, Horror of Dracula, etc. He also did regular work as conductor or music supervisor for the larger studios, in bigger films not oriented toward science fiction or horror, such as the drama The Mark (1961), the comedies The Wrong Arm of the Law and Heavens Above!, and Joseph Losey's terrifying nuclear-era chiller These Are the Damned (which also incorporated some contemporary rock & roll). During this period, Hollingsworth served as friend, mentor, and advisor to up-and-coming composer Richard Rodney Bennett, who had begun working in film music around that time. He was one of the busiest men in British film music at the time of his death from pneumonia late in 1963, at age 47.

~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide