William "Bill" Benjamin Lava was an American composer and arranger, who, for Walt Disney Productions, wrote and/or co-wrote the music for Zorro and the Spin and Marty, Corky and White Shadow, The Hardy Boys, and "Adventure in Dairyland" segments of The Mickey Mouse Club. While Lava did not write any of it for Disney, he was credited with the score for 1955's TV segment, The Story of the Silly Symphony.
Lava was born on in St. Paul, Minnesota to Abraham Lava and Rosa Chernavsky, Yiddish-speaking immigrants from then Russian Poland. His father was a cotton broker. The family moved to Chicago around 1914, where his younger brother, Henry was born. As a young man, he worked as a clerk for the railroad, while taking classes at Northwestern University and edited newspapers and magazines before moving to Los Angeles.
He began arranging and composing music for Warner Bros. and Republic Pictures before working for the War Department making documentaries during World War II. After the war, Lava returned to Hollywood where continued composing for films, such as Glen or Glenda and Dracula vs. Frankenstein. He also composed music for television shows, such as Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Rawhide, Have Gun Will Travel, The Twilight Zone, F Troop, and 19 Pink Panther cartoon shorts.
During the mid-fifties William Lava composed and arranged music for a few films made by long-time Disney associate Larry Lansburgh, such as Mystery Lake, Beauty and the Bull, The Littlest Outlaw, and The Horse with the Flying Tail. This led to several years of work studio on the Mickey Mouse Club, while still continuing outside assignments. from 1962 to 1969, Lava composed and conducted music for many feature films as well as that for the Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies animated cartoons, replacing the deceased Milt Franklyn, making him the last composer and arranger in the classic era of Warner Bros. Cartoons.
Filmography[]
| Year | Film | Position |
|---|---|---|
| 1954 | Stormy, the Thoroughbred (with an Inferiority Complex) | Composer |
| 1955-1963 | The Magical World of Disney | Composer Songs: "The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca" |
| 1955-1956 | Mickey Mouse Club | Composer Songwriter: "What I Want To Be" |
| 1955 | The Littlest Outlaw | Composer Songwriter: "The Littlest Outlaw" |
| 1956 | Cow Dog | Composer |
| 1956 | The Hardy Boys: The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure | Composer |
| 1957–1960 | Zorro | Composer |
| 1957 | The Wetback Hound | Composer |
| 1958 | The Sign of Zorro | Composer |
| 1959 | Zorro, the Avenger | Composer |
| 1960 | The Hound That Thought He Was a Raccoon | Composer |
| 1960 | The Horse with the Flying Tail | Composer |
| 1964 | The Tattooed Police Horse | Composer |
