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Home > Composers Datebook > Marvin Hatley goes cuckoo


	Podcast:		Composers Datebook
	Episode:		Marvin Hatley goes cuckoo
	Category:		Health
	Duration:		00:01:59
	Publish Date:		2018-04-03 00:00:00
	Description:		The composer of this tune, the "Dance of the Cuckoos,” was born on this date in 1905. Thomas Marvin Hatley worked for the Hal Roach film studio that produced the famous Laurel and Hardy comedies. Along with fellow-composer LeRoy Shield, Hatley wrote memorable music for those films. His “Cuckoo” theme was originally used as a time cue for a radio station located on the Hal Roach studio lot, but when Stan Laurel heard it, he knew it would be perfect as the Laurel and Hardy signature theme. Between 1929 and 1940, Hatley wrote over 800 compositions for the studio. His scores for two Laurel and Hardy films were nominated for Academy Awards. But Hal Roach didn’t seem to appreciate Hatley’s music as much as LeRoy Shields’, who was paid much more for his work. In 1939, Hatley was fired by Roach, but at the insistence of Stan Laurel returned to score one final Laurel and Hardy film. Hatley went on to become a Los Angeles-area cocktail lounge pianist, and quipped he earned more in that career than he did working for Hal Roach. In his senior years, Hatley would attend meetings of Laurel and Hardy fan clubs in California, happily playing the piano to accompany silent film era Hal Roach comedies, and, in 1982, just four years before his death in 1986, attended a national Laurel and Hardy convention in Detroit, where a banquet was given in his honor.
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