December 10 - Leigh Harline

On this day, in 1969, Leigh Adrian Harline passed away in Long Beach, California from complications due to lung cancer. Born in Salt Lake City, Utah on March 26, 1907, Leigh was the youngest of 13. His parents, both from Sweden, had joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and moved to Utah in 1891. After graduating from the University of Utah as a music major, Leigh studied piano playing with J. Spencer Cornwall, the conductor of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

By 1928, Leigh had moved to California. He found work at several radio stations in both the San Francisco and Los Angeles markets. He did everything from announcing and singing to playing instrumentals to composing original works and conducting them for on air concerts. His work on the radio culminated in participating in the first coast-to-coast broadcast that originated on the West Coast in 1931. One of the people to hear that broadcast and be impressed by it was Walt Disney.

Image copyright Disney

Leigh became part of the Disney Studio in 1932. Over the next few years, he would score over 50 shorts. His music for several Silly Symphonies, including The Old Mill and The Pied Piper, has been described as some of the finest music ever created in Hollywood. In recognition of all he'd achieved so far, Walt had Leigh co-create the score for the studio's first animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Working closely with Frank Churchill, the pair managed to earn an Oscar nomination for Best Score. Leigh would then work on Pinocchio with Paul J. Smith. This time around they would win the Academy Award for Best Score. Additionally, Leigh's song When You Wish Upon a Star would not only win for Best Original Song but become the de facto theme song for the studio, used in everything from training videos to the signature horn blows of cruise ships.

Image copyright United Artists

In 1941, Leigh left the studio to become a freelance composer. He scored dozens of films over the next two and a half decades for several different studios. The Pride of the Yankees, Johnny Come Lately and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm all earned him additional Oscar nominations. Over the course of his career, Leigh would be nominated for Academy Awards a total of eight times. In the last several years of his life, he also made the leap to the small screen and composed for the television series Ben Casey and Daniel Boone.

Leigh was 62 when he died and was made an official Disney Legend for all his marvelous contributions to the Disney songbook in 2001.