Outro for a Maestro

Let us now praise Lalo Schifrin, the Argentina-born jazz musician and composer who gave us the soundtracks to films such as Cool Hand Luke, Bullitt, and Dirty Harry, and the themes for TV series including The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Mission: Impossible, and Mannix. He passed away yesterday at age 93 of “complications from pneumonia.”

Deadline recalls in its obituary that

Schifrin won four Grammys on 19 career nominations spanning 40 years and was a six-time Academy Award nominee for The Sting II, The Competition, The Amityville Horror, Voyage of the Damned, The Fox and Cool Hand Luke. He received an Honorary Oscar at the 2019 Governor Awards, one of only three composers ever so honored along with Ennio Morricone in 2006 and Quincy Jones in 2024.

He earned three consecutive Grammy noms for the stirring, dramatic, 5/4-time Mission: Impossible theme from 1967-69, and variations of his composition have appeared in all of Tom Cruise’s M:I movies. Among those who worked on versions of the theme for those films are Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman, U2’s Larry Mullin Jr & Adam Clayton and Limp Bizkit.

In all, Schifrin penned more than 100 scores for film and television including Mannix, Bullitt, THX 1138, Enter the Dragon, The Four Musketeers, The Eagle Has Landed, Tango, Bringing Down the House, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, After the Sunset and Abominable.

To honor Schifrin’s memory, The Killing Times has posted several of his compositions, featured in the main titles sequences from U.N.C.L.E., the original M:I, and Starsky and Hutch. But let me add two more gems to that bunch: the openings from T.H.E. Cat, Robert Loggia’s 1966-1967 NBC-TV series about a reformed cat burglar, and from Petrocelli, the 1974-1976 NBC legal drama starring Barry Newman as a hard-charging Manhattan lawyer who relocates to the American Southwest.





I hope to be reminded of more of his work as this day goes on.

LISTEN UP: “Mission: Impossible Composer Lalo Schifrin Dies at 93,” by Bob Mondello (National Public Radio).