Carl Davis (b1936) is an American-English composer

The television years

Carl Davis was born in New York on October 28 1936. He has made England his home and married an English actress, Jean Bebington . He is a conductor with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He has written music for over 100 television programs but is best known for creating music to accompany films that were originally silent. He achieved early prominence with the title music for some of the acclaimed BBC plays called "The Wednesday Play" (1965 - 1966), and later for "Play for Today" (1970). Perhaps his greatest TV score was for the series The World at War (1974). Other programs that are well known include Up Pompeii (1971), The Naked Civil Servant (1975) (cf Quentin Crisp) and (1981) (cf Winston Churchill).

Silent film music

In 1980 he was asked to create music for Thames Television's . In the same year Abel Gance's epic silent film Napoléon (originally 1927) was restored and expanded and given a new cinema release. Davis wrote the music. There was a similar treatment for D. W. Griffith's Intolerance: Love's Struggle Through The Ages (originally 1916). This had orchestral music originally, but Davis's new score was used instead in 1989.

The Hollywood documentary series was followed by (cf Buster Keaton) in 1987 and (cf Harold Lloyd) in 1989. By 1993, his reputation made him the number one choice for new scores to silent films. Many DVD releases of the silent version of Ben-Hur (1925), Safety Last (1923), Chaplin's City Lights (1931) (re-orchestrated by Davis based on Chaplin's original written score) and Erich von Stroheim's Greed (1925), use Davis's music. In many of these recordings he is the conductor as well the composer. On several occasions he has performed these works live in the cinema, as the film is running. He has assisted in the orchestration of the symphonic works of Paul McCartney.