John Towner Williams (born February 8, 1932, in New York City) is an American film music composer and one of the world's most famous and prolific at it.
Professionally active for six decades, he has been nominated for a whopping 52 Academy Awards (winning five), six Primetime Emmys (winning three, including one for a 1968 Made-for-TV Movie version of Heidi, of "Heidi Game" infamy), 22 Golden Globes (winning four) and 59 Grammys (winning twenty). Only Walt Disney has been nominated for more Oscars, and Williams currently holds the record for most nominated living individual. In 2022, he became the last person to be placed on the Honours List for an OBE by Queen Elizabeth II, though due to her death not long after, the actual knighting ceremony was performed by her successor, King Charles III.
Born in New York City to a musical family (his father was a jazz drummer), Williams got his start as a session pianist in Los Angeles, performing on film scores by composers such as Jerry Goldsmith (Studs Lonigan; City of Fear), Elmer Bernstein (Sweet Smell of Success; God's Little Acre; Staccato; The Magnificent Seven; To Kill a Mockingbird), Henry Mancini (he actually played the well-recognized opening riff to the Peter Gunn theme; Mr. Lucky; Days of Wine and Roses; Charade), Alfred Newman (South Pacific), and Jerome Moross (The Big Country).
Williams' scores are known for their liberal use of Leitmotif — practically every major character and concept has its own musical motif woven into the score. Williams is also fond of the Fanfare. Despite these stylistic preferences, he seems to be willing to experiment with every movie, adding different instruments and techniques with each new film. (For example, one piece
of the Attack of the Clones score uses an electric guitar.) When a Williams composition is playing, you will generally be in for a good movie. If the movie's not good, well, the music certainly will be.
Unless you're hearing impaired or haven't seen a movie in the last 30 years (or maybe not even then), you'll have certainly heard one of Williams' tunes. Most of his themes have become iconic in their own right, such as the opening fanfare of Star Wars, the famous string sting from Jaws or the theme for Indiana Jones. Williams has long been the go-to composer for Steven Spielberg's films (he even wrote the music for the Amblin and DreamWorks SKG logos). Likewise, his music for Superman: The Movie gave the Superhero film genre a rarely equaled feel of heroic majesty.
Interestingly, many connoisseurs of Classical Music actually hold Williams in rather low regard, as many elements of his compositions (including some of his most well-known themes and motifs) are borrowed from older pieces of music. Though even they admit he's less guilty of this than others. For most listeners this is one of his strengths; in the words of the founding editor of Film Score Monthly Lukas Kendall (whose all-time favorite score is The Empire Strikes Back): "His themes sound inevitable. They sound like they fell out of his sleeves; they sound like they've always existed. And it's extraordinary how you get just two notes for Jaws or five notes for Close Encounters of the Third Kind and have them feel like they've always existed."
In addition to his film scores, Williams has composed music for four Olympic Games, The Mission suite for the NBC Nightly News (Also used by Seven News in Australia) and the inauguration of President Barack Obama, among many others. He also conducted the Boston Pops Orchestra from 1980–93 and remains Director Laureate to this day.
Early in his career, Williams worked for producer Irwin Allen (under the name "Johnny Williams"), providing the themes (and pilot scores) for the television series Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel and Land of the Giants and scoring such disaster films as The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. Williams himself credits much of his success to the collegial relationships he developed with his fellow musicians during his own stint in a studio orchestra. He also scored the pilot for Gilligan's Island (but he didn't write the theme song).
Not to be confused with John Williamson, who is a very Australian singer-songwriter. Nor with John Williams the Australian classical guitarist, or John Williams the British character actor, or any of the dozens of other eminent historical John Williamses. He is, however, related to Joseph Williams, the singer from Toto and Simba's singing voice in The Lion King (1994)— that would be his son.
He is also the man. The podcast The Baton: A John Williams Journey is thoroughly recommended.
John Williams-scored films with TV Tropes pages:
- Daddy-O (1958)
- The Killers (1964)
- Penelope (1966)
- How to Steal a Million (1966)
- Valley of the Dolls (1967): His first Academy Award nominated work.
- Fitzwilly (1967)
- Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969)
- The Reivers (1969)
- Jane Eyre (1970): Emmy Award win.
- Fiddler on the Roof (1971): His first Academy Award win.
- The Cowboys (1972)
- The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
- Images (1972)
- The Long Goodbye (1973): His most unusual score, since it's just the melody of the film's theme song, repeated in a myriad of different arrangements.
- The Paper Chase (1973)
- The Sugarland Express (1974): Steven Spielberg's first feature film and Williams' first collaboration with Spielberg. See Associated Composer below. His other Spielberg scores include:
- Jaws (duh-dum, duh-dum...) (1975): Academy Award win.
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
- 1941 (1979)
- Indiana Jones
- E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982): Academy Award win.
- Empire of the Sun (1987)
- Always (1989)
- Hook (1991)
- Jurassic Park (1993)
- Schindler's List (1993): Academy Award win.
- The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
- Amistad (1997)
- Saving Private Ryan (1998)
- A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001)
- Minority Report (2002)
- Catch Me If You Can (2002)
- The Terminal (2004)
- War of the Worlds (2005)
- Munich (2005)
- The Adventures of Tintin (2011)
- War Horse (2011)
- Lincoln (2012)
- The BFG (2016)
- The Post (2017)
- The Fabelmans (2022): his Academy Award nomination for it made him the oldest person ever nominated for a competitive Oscar (at age 90)
- Earthquake (1974)
- The Towering Inferno (1974)
- The Eiger Sanction (1975)
- Family Plot (1976)
- Midway (1976)
- Black Sunday (1977)
- Star Wars: Starting in 1977 he scored the all of the Original Trilogy and the Prequel Trilogy, with well-known pieces like "Main Title" (the opening fanfare), "Luke's Theme", "The Imperial March (Darth Vader's Theme)" and "Duel of The Fates". He won an Academy Award for A New Hope. He returned to score The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker. The latter has been confirmed to be his very last for the franchise. He also composed the theme "The Adventures of Han" for Solo (the rest of the movie was scored by John Powell), the Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge Symphonic Suite and the main theme of Obi-Wan Kenobi.
- The Fury (1978)
- Jaws 2 (1978)
- Superman Film Series
- Superman: The Movie (1978)
- Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) (film actually scored by Alexander Courage, with Williams providing new thematic material.)
- Dracula (1979)
- Heartbeeps (1981)
- The River (1984)
- SpaceCamp (1986)
- The Witches of Eastwick (1987)
- The Accidental Tourist (1988)
- Born on the Fourth of July (1989)
- Presumed Innocent (1990)
- Home Alone:
- Home Alone (1990)
- Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)
- JFK (1991)
- Far and Away (1992)
- Sabrina (1995), for which he also earned a Best Song nomination.
- Nixon (1995)
- Sleepers (1995)
- Rosewood (1997)
- Seven Years in Tibet (1997)
- Stepmom (1998)
- Angela's Ashes (1999)
- The Patriot (2000)
- Harry Potter
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001): Introduced "Hedwig's Theme," which subsequently became the Bootstrapped Theme of the entire franchise.
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002): Technically, William Ross adapted the score from Williams's music, as he was busy scoring two Spielberg movies that year.
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
- Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)
- The Book Thief (2013)
- Dear Basketball (2017—animated short)
TV series that John Williams did the theme songs for with TV Tropes pages:
- Kraft Suspense Theatre (1963-65)
- Lost in Space (1965-68)
- The Time Tunnel (1966-67)
- Land of the Giants (1968-70)
- Amazing Stories (1985-87) He also scored the episodes "Ghost Train" and "The Mission"
His work provides examples of:
- Associated Composer: Famously, Williams has scored almost all the films of Steven Spielberg. The only exceptions are Bridge of Spies, due to a health issue, The Color Purple (1985), which they mutually agreed would be better served with music by Quincy Jones, Ready Player One, due to a scheduling conflict, and West Side Story, on which he worked a music consultant after suggesting composer David Newman and conductor Gustavo Dudamel. He's also worked on multiple projects with George Lucas, Chris Columbus, Irwin Allen, Oliver Stone, Robert Altman and Mark Rydell.
- Bootstrapped Theme:
- Star Wars's main theme was originally intended to be purely "Luke's Theme", though it became so synonymous with the franchise as a whole, Williams forewent creating a new main theme for the prequels, and even included the theme in several places in the prequel scores. A rearranged but still recognizable version of the theme was later used for the animated Clone Wars.
- Williams originally scored the scene where Luke looks out to the double sunset with his theme but George Lucas suggested he use the theme he wrote for Obi-Wan instead. Williams complied and now it is known as "Binary Sunset" and used for any scene involving the Force. (It's also one of the best examples of the power of music in film, as it turns a simple shot of a young man staring into the sunset into a powerful scene of desolation and longing.)
- "Hedwig's Theme" has ended up being the theme of the whole Harry Potter series.
- Call-Back: If you listen to the Star Wars soundtracks in particular, there are so many cues in pieces that appear in ANH and TESB that get brought back in ROTJ and the Prequels to nod back to those moments.
- Creator Cameo: During The Rise of Skywalker, Williams can be briefly seen surrounded by objects referencing all 51 (at the time of filming the scene) movie scores he had composed that were nominated for an Academy Award. His character, Oma Tres dies as Kijimi blows up.
- Deathly Dies Irae: Very common in his work. Multiple Star Wars films, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman: The Movie, Jaws, Jurassic Park (1993), Home Alone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and War of the Worlds (2005) all feature the famous four notes of dies irae during suspenseful or dramatic sequences.
- Fanfare: He's so good, he's gotten raves from the directors just from watching him conduct. Richard Donner even admitted he screwed up a recording take for Superman: The Movie by running into the room shouting how great it was.
- Leitmotif: A technique favored heavily by Williams. Some of his more well known motifs include several character themes from Star Wars, the Jaws theme's menacing cello notes, and the mysterious 5 note melody from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
- Never Trust a Title: A lot of his score for War of the Worlds (2005) was moved to different scenes than it was originally composed for. As a result, many of the track titles don't make sense. A standout example is "The Separation of the Family", which plays in the film when the family is reunited at the end.
- Outgrowing the Childish Name: In his early career as a jazz pianist, he was credited as "Little Johnny Love" Williams. In his early work as a TV composer, this was reduced to "Johnny Williams," and he dropped the diminutives altogether once his career as a film composer started taking off. He was also more formally credited as John T. Williams and John Towner in his jazz days.
- Shout-Out:
- The soundtrack of Star Wars strongly references Gustav Holst's The Planets. Does this remind you of anything?
- Furthermore, give some of Dvořák's 9th Symphony a listen, and then this.
- The ET flight theme bears striking similarities to this segment to another Dvorak piece.
- As sort of a self Shout-Out, Williams uses a few notes of the music he composed for the first Harry Potter film in one of the final scenes of Revenge of the Sith. Fitting, since both scenes involve an infant with great potential being left with relatives after the death of their mother.
- Compare this segment from Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring to the desert music from the original Star Wars.
- Another self Shout-Out that is easy to miss but very difficult to forget is in the Jurassic Park theme - when it really kicks in, it heavily references five other famous notes.
- Yet another: Pay attention to the trombone-notes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, after the mother ship lands...and you will recognize a brief, but unmistakable, "duh-DUH, duh-DUH"!
- Yet another one from Revenge Of The Sith — When Obi-Wan rides the giant lizard the music sounds very similar to the music from Jurassic Park when Nedry is stealing the dinosaur embryos.
- The soundtrack of Star Wars strongly references Gustav Holst's The Planets. Does this
- Spoiler Title: Even his fans admit he's incredibly guilty of this with his track titles:
- Arguably his greatest crime in this regard is Presumed Innocent. Seriously, if you don't have this soundtrack album do not get it before seeing the movie, as the penultimate track is called "Barbara's Confession." That's right, the title gives away the killer!
- Star Wars fans probably believe that honour goes to track 15 of the original 1 disc soundtrack for The Phantom Menace, which is entitled "Qui-Gon's Noble End". Followed by the track "The High Council Meeting and Qui-Gon's Funeral", in case that wasn't clear enough. For reference, the soundtrack album was released several weeks before the film came out in theaters.
- His soundtrack for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban contains a whopping four — Lupin's Transformation, The Werewolf Scene, Saving Buckbeak and Forward to Time Past — that basically spell out what happens during the film's climax. One wonders if the reason Pettigrew's theme wasn't included on the soundtrack was to preserve the only major twist the movie had left.
