Sawtell, Paul, 1906-1971

Biography

Born February 3, 1906 in Poland, Paul Sawtell started his career at RKO studios, then moved to Universal, where his first assignment was The Pearl of Death, part of the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes series. He returned to RKO during the second half of the 1940s and also worked for various independent producers, such as Aubrey Schenk at Eagle Lion, and Harry Sherman at United Artists. In 1951 he began a relationship with producer/director Irwin Allen when he scored the Oscar-winning documentary The Sea Around Us. Begining in the late '50s, Sawtell became extremely busy scoring science fiction films such Kronos, It! The Terror From Beyond Space, The Black Scorpion, and The Fly, amid his usual spread of Westerns and dramas. He joined Irwin Allen's production team, scoring films such as The Story of Mankind, The Big Circus, The Lost World, Five Weeks in a Balloon, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. During the 1960s, he remained busy in features, co-writing the music for such familiar science fiction titles as the Italian-made The Last Man on Earth starring Vincent Price, but by the middle of the decade he had largely moved to television, working on Allen's series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, for which he wrote the well-known title theme. He died on August 1, 1971.

From the guide to the Paul Sawtell Collection, 1939-1964, (University of California, Los Angeles. Library. Performing Arts Special Collections)