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Atherton, Queensland
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1 MaleOrigin
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Born
1922
Active
1950 to 
1981
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Ronald Erle Grainer (11 August 1922 – 21 February 1981) was an Australian composer who worked for most of his professional career in the United Kingdom. He is mostly remembered for his television and film score music, especially the theme music for Doctor Who, The Prisoner, Steptoe and Son and Tales of the Unexpected.
In 1952 Grainer left Australia for London with his wife Margot and 10-year-old stepdaughter Rel. He managed to find a three-month engagement playing piano in a nightclub along with other occasional jobs, the worst of which became a twelve-month stint with a touring Australian comedy act called "The Allen Brothers and June." This required the classically trained Grainer to be hit on the head nightly by a falling grand piano lid and then to topple over into the orchestra pit, an experience he later said was even harder to do than a day's fencing in the Australian outback.
At one stage, to pay the rent on their room, Grainer and his wife had to work as caretakers of a large block of London flats where he stoked two large boilers, morning and night, whilst Margot washed stairs and cleaned rooms.
To increase his public profile Grainer had two attempts at song contests: "England's Made of Us" (1956), an entry with lyricist David Dearlove for the First British Festival of Popular Song, which received the score of no points from the judges and, the following year, "Don't Cry Little Doll" (1957) (also written with David Dearlove), which reached fourth place in the British Eurovision entry decider heats.
Grainer's most dramatic pre-success music involvement was with Before The Sun Goes Down, a TV play which caused audience panic and questions to be raised in the British Parliament when it was shown on 20 February 1959. Taking inspiration from Orson Welles' 1938 radio drama of The War of the Worlds, the production used a similar format in which a regular programme broadcast was interrupted by a fake public service announcement. In this instance it was about a mysterious and "terrifying" satellite seen hovering over the city of London.
In 1960 Grainer achieved public recognition with his theme and incidental music for the TV series Maigret. When Maigret was given the Ivor Novello "Outstanding Composition for Film, TV or Radio" award in 1961, commissions from a wide range of genres poured in: Goon Show silliness (It's a Square World, 1961), one-off pilots (Comedy Playhouse), documentaries (Terminus, 1961), kitchen sink drama (A Kind of Loving), quirky domestic sitcoms (Steptoe and Son 1962), teen films (Some People 1962), late night satire (That Was The Week That Was, 1962), outpost angst (Station Six Sahara, 1962), ballet (The King's Breakfast, 1963), science fiction (Doctor Who, 1963), psycho killers (Night Must Fall, 1964), children's adventure stories (The Moon Spinners, 1964), patriotic biography (The Finest Hours, 1964), big-budget musicals (Robert and Elizabeth, 1964), unusual love stories (Boy Meets Girl, 1967), acclaimed dramas To Sir, with Love (1967), allegorical social commentary (The Prisoner, 1967) and crime-caper movies (Only When I Larf, 1968). Grainer also worked with the instrumental group The Eagles, who recorded a number of his themes.
Most of these projects required considerable research, group discussion, and creative team effort. They are only a small sample of work completed by Grainer from 1960 to 1968. He once indicated he felt a "trifle wistful" that so many people just associated him with the Doctor Who theme, the only tune in his extensive portfolio that had its sound dynamics realised by someone else – Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
The time-consuming work commitments eventually contributed to the breakdown of Grainer's relationship with his wife; he and Margot divorced in 1966. Later that year, he married Jennifer Dodds, a member of the cast of Robert and Elizabeth. Their son Damian was born shortly afterwards.
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