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Alexander 'Sandy' Courage Composer of Star Trek Theme Dies

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Alexander “Sandy" Courage, who composed the soaring theme for the Star Trek TV series in the 1960s and was an Emmy Award-winning, Oscar-nominated arranger, has died. He was 88.

Sandy Courage, who had been in declining health since 2005, died May 15 at an assisted-living facility in Pacific Palisades, said his step-daughter, Renata Pompelli.

After launching his 54-year career as a composer for CBS Radio in 1946, Courage became an orchestrator and arranger at MGM in 1948.

Over the next dozen years, he worked on a string of classic musicals, including Annie Get Your Gun, Show Boat, The Band Wagon, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Gigi. He later was an orchestrator for musicals including My Fair Lady, Hello, Dolly!, Doctor Dolittle and Fiddler on the Roof -- as well as for films including The Poseidon Adventure, Jurassic Park, Basic Instinct, Hook and The Mummy.

“He made a very big contribution to the musical life of Hollywood from the end of the second World War to recent years," Oscar-winning composer John Williams told The Times on Thursday.

“He was known to most musicians in the community as having been one of the architects of what we used to refer to as the MGM sound, which meant that most of the musical films from MGM had a particular style of orchestration, which was an extension and development of what was done in the theater in the 1920s," Williams said. “They actually took that to a very high art form, particularly in the musicals produced by Arthur Freed."

Composer Ian Fraser, who met Courage after he had moved to 20th Century Fox in the '60s, said Thursday that Courage's “knowledge of all the genres of music was really monumental."

“He was part of the wonderful music department at 20th Century Fox," Fraser said. “With the passing of [composer] Earle Hagen this week, the last of that group are gone, never to be replaced."

Then there was Star Trek, the legendary science-fiction series that ran on NBC from 1966 to 1969.

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