Arthur Morton (8 August 1908–15 April 2000; age 91) was an orchestrator who worked on Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and Star Trek: First Contact and on the Star Trek: The Next Generation first season episode "Encounter at Farpoint".
Born as Arthur Goldberg in Duluth, Minnesota, he was the younger brother of the late orchestrator Lawrence Morton. He attended the West High School in Minneapolis and the University of Minnesota where he graduated in 1929. Morton performed in jazz bands and soon moved to Los Angeles where he met and married his wife of 61 years, Emmy Lou Hellman. Morton was a long time friend of Jerry Goldsmith and orchestrated for over thirty years Goldsmith's scores. [1]
His work is featured on the following Star Trek soundtracks:
- Star Trek: The Motion Picture (soundtrack), 1979
- Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (soundtrack), 1989
- Star Trek: First Contact (soundtrack), 1996
- Star Trek: The Motion Picture - 20th Anniversary Collector's Edition, 1999
Morton started to compose for film and television in the 1930s. He contributed stock music to films such as Night Life of the Gods (1935), Princess O'Hara (1935), Turnabout (1940), the romance It Had to Be You (1947), Rogues of Sherwood Forest (1950), Pushover (1954), and television productions including Shirley Temple's Storybook (1958-1961), Laramie (1959-1963), Black Saddle (1959-1960), Bus Stop (1961-1962), Gene Roddenberry's The Lieutenant (1963), Peyton Place (1964-1969), Medical Center (1969-1973), and The Waltons (1972-1974).
Working as orchestrator on more than five hundred film and television productions in a career which spanned over sixty years, Morton's latest orchestrations include Coma (1978, starring Genevieve Bujold), Superman (1978), Alien (1979), Poltergeist (1982), Gremlins (1984) Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), Innerspace (1987), The 'Burbs (1989), Total Recall (1990), Not Without My Daughter (1991), The Shadow (1994), Congo (1995), Chain Reaction (1996), and the crime drama L.A. Confidential (1997).
Morton passed away at his home in Santa Monica on 15 April 2000, at the age of 91, following a stroke three years earlier. [2]