Albert Elms

Albert Elms (28 February 1920 – 14 October 2009) was an English composer and arranger who worked mainly for television and film. Albert Elms was born in Newington, Kent, England, and died in Southampton. His love of music drove him to join the Royal Marine Band Service in Deal at the age of 14 in 1934. His wartime service included participation in the Vaagso raid in 1940 and serving on the Malta Convoys from 1941 to 1942. After Albert left the Royal Marines he joined Francis, Day and Hunter, a music publishing company as an arranger. His break into television came with the launch of commercial television in Britain during 1955. He was amongst a number of young British composers who made significant contributions to the early days of commercial television in series like ITV's The Adventures of Robin Hood (1955–59) with Richard Greene in the lead, in which he wrote then musical scores for at least the last two series. He also wrote musical scores for The Buccaneers (1956–57), starring Robert Shaw, The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (1956–57), starring William Russell, and Ivanhoe (1958–59) with Roger Moore. However, he is best known for providing the incidental music for the later ITC series A Man in a Suitcase (1967–68), The Champions (1968–69) and for 14 of the 17 episodes of The Prisoner (1967–68) starring Patrick McGoohan. Although the series on which Albert did most of his important work had memorable main title scores by others like Ron Grainer and Tony Hatch, he provided cues which represent hundreds of hours of music.