Los Angeles – George Greeley, a pianist, conductor, composer and arranger who composed the theme music for television’s “My Favorite Martian,” has died. He was 89.
Greeley, who had emphysema, died Saturday at West Hills Hospital and Medical Center, said Teri York, Greeley’s longtime companion.
As pianist at Columbia Pictures in the 1950s, Greeley performed on hundreds of motion pictures. He also worked as a composer and orchestrator at the studio.
“He was an extraordinary pianist,” said Jon Burlingame, who teaches a class on the history of film scoring at the University of Southern California. While at Columbia, Greeley played the piano for the Leonard Bernstein score for the classic 1954 drama “On the Waterfront.”
“He also was very proud of his work on ‘The Eddie Duchin Story’ because he coached Tyrone Power on the proper way to play the piano,” Burlingame said.
As a recording artist for Warner Bros. Records, Greeley produced and performed on 15 albums for piano and full orchestra. Moving into television in the 1960s, Greeley wrote the musical themes and underscores for “My Favorite Martian,” starring Ray Walston and Bill Bixby, and “My Living Doll,” starring Robert Cummings and Julie Newmar.
For “My Favorite Martian,” the 1963-66 sitcom in which Bixby’s newspaper reporter character befriends the stranded martian played by Walston, Greeley used an instrument called an electro-theremin to make the science-fictionlike sound every time the martian’s antennae went up or he used his powers of levitation.
