Hoyt Curtin

Hoyt Curtin
Born	Hoyt Stoddard Curtin September 9, 1922 Downey, California, U.S.
Died	December 3, 2000(2000-12-03) (aged 78) Thousand Oaks, California, U.S.
Alma mater	University of Southern California
Occupations	Composer Producer Inventor
Years active	1957–1989
Employer	Hanna-Barbera

Hoyt Stoddard Curtin (September 9, 1922 – December 3, 2000) was an American composer, music producer and the primary musical director for the Hanna-Barbera animation studio from its beginnings with The Ruff & Reddy Show in 1957 until his retirement in 1989, except from 1965 to 1972, when the primary music director was Ted Nichols.

Curtin was also an inventor who was granted six US patents for his novel designs of pipe couplings from 1974 through 1981.

Early life and education

Curtin was born in Downey, California, the third of Mary "Louise" (née Draper) and Frank Montgomery Curtin's three sons.

Career

Able to play the piano at the age of 5, Curtin won a local movie theatre's singing contest while in the sixth grade. By high school, Curtin had formed his own orchestra and played in jazz bands.

Commercial jingle writer

Curtin had planned to become a film composer but instead wound up pitching jingles for commercials. In 2002, Jean MacCurdy, then president of Warner Bros. Animation said "Hoyt was the king of jingle-making. His strong suit was coming up with the themes that almost anyone on the street could sing at the drop of a hat. He was really quite remarkable".

Hanna-Barbera

In the 1950s Curtin was an in-demand composer for TV commercials. He first met William Hanna and Joseph Barbera when he wrote the musical score for a Schlitz beer commercial they were producing for MGM in 1957.

"About two weeks later they called and had a lyric they read over the phone. Could I write a tune for it? I called back in 5 minutes and sang it to them ... silence ... uh oh, I bombed out ... the next thing I heard was a deal to record it! Ruff & Reddy. At that moment they had quit at MGM and started their own company. All of our first main titles were done in that fashion. Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, etc.".

Curtin was the composer of many of Hanna-Barbera cartoon theme songs, including The Flintstones until 1981, Top Cat, The Jetsons, Jonny Quest, Super Friends, Josie and the Pussycats, The Smurfs, and The New Scooby-Doo Movies and all its spinoffs until 1989. Beginning in 1960, Curtin also composed many of the stock tunes used as incidental music in the various Hanna-Barbera series, along with the jingle heard underneath Hanna-Barbera's closing logo in 1979. He also composed two of the tunes heard in the background in 1959's Plan 9 from Outer Space, although he was embarrassed by the film's poor quality. The following year, Curtin was the composer for the animated series Q.T. Hush, one of the first cartoons to appear in color.

His other credits include the score for the science-fiction film Mesa of Lost Women (1953), Ed Wood's Jail Bait (1954, as Hoyt Kurtain), Timber Tramps (1975), C.H.O.M.P.S. (1979), and the music for the 1978 Sandy Frank cartoon Battle of the Planets for which a soundtrack was released in 2000. He also composed and conducted the music for Thrillerama Adventure, a two-projector attempt at replicating Cinerama, in 1955 with a 38-piece orchestra.

The Flintstones

Curtin said of his Flintstones theme "It’s a catchy little tune, just a simple thing arranged for jazz and singers. I like it, not because it’s popular, but it’s jammed on in clubs in every country because the chord changes are fun to play".

Jonny Quest

Curtin composed the music for the 1964 Jonny Quest television series. In a 1999 interview Curtin said, "My pianist, Jack Cookerly, invented the synthesizer as we know it for Jonny Quest. It was made of orange crates with a keyboard and thousands of vacuum tubes!"

Curtin recalled the Jonny Quest recording sessions took place at the Hollywood RCA studios using "...a regular jazz band of 4 trumpets, 6 trombones, 5 woodwind doublers, 5-man rhythm section including percussion. Alvin Stoller or Frankie Capp usually played drums. I always tried to get the same guys where possible. They were the ones who could swing and read like demons".

Inventor

Curtin was granted six US utility patents for his inventions of water-tight pipe couplings for irrigation and sprinkler system plumbing. The couplings were designed for use in in-ground sprinkler systems and included coupling designs for both primary installation and system repair. Among them: US-3857588 "Pipe Coupling", December 31, 1974, US-4035002 "Pipe Coupling", July 12, 1977 and US-4260181 "Pipe Coupling", April 7, 1981.

Accolades

• 1955: Academy Award – Best Animated Short Film (Cartoon) – When Magoo Flew

Death

Curtin died on December 3, 2000, in Thousand Oaks, California, at age 78. He had been playing a tennis match when he fell to the ground and was pronounced dead by paramedics.

External links

• Hoyt Curtin at IMDb
• Hoyt Curtin at Find a Grave