Biography
Earle Hagen was an American composer who wrote music for films and numerous television series. Born in Chicago in 1919, he played trombone in big bands including those of Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and Ray Noble before working as an orchestrator and arranger at 20th Century Fox in the 1940s and early 1950s on films such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and Let's Make Love (1960).
He moved into television in 1953, scoring shows including Make Room for Daddy and later composing themes for The Andy Griffith Show (1960), which he whistled himself, The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961), I Spy (1965) and The Mod Squad (1968). He provided music for MASH (1972) and won an Emmy Award in 1968 for his work on I Spy*. Hagen died in Rancho Mirage, California, in 2008.
