‘James Bond, as Free as the Wind Blows …’

By Nicholas Stix

The other night, early in the 1966 movie, Born Free, a hungry lion (is there any other kind?) approaches an African tribe girl doing laundry at the river’s edge. Suddenly, you hear that combination of flutes, drums, and xylophones that is the trademark of a danger scene in … a classic, 1960s' James Bond movie. And then you realize that the composer for Born Free is the same guy who scored the James Bond pictures, John Barry. Some composers are known for cannibalizing their own work. Aaron Copland was notorious for that, at least once he started running out of ideas in the late 1940s. (E.g., working Fanfare for the Common Man into his Third Symphony.) Rosa Klebb … the Lioness?