Career
Lava was educated at Von Humboldt Grammar School and Lane Tech. High School in Chicago, then attended Northwestern University where his major was journalism. He studied conducting with Dr. Albert Coates in Los Angeles. Lava also wrote short stories for various magazines and was the editor of Northwestern Commerce Magazine and associate editor of Purple Parrot..
Arriving in Hollywood in 1936, Lava arranged for musical radio programs, then scored a number of motion pictures, such as The Painted Stallion; A Boy and His Dog; Embraceable You; Dangerously They Live; The Hidden Hand; I Won't Play; Star in the Night and Hitler Lives. He was also responsible for scores for the Warner Bros.' Joe McDoakes short subjects and Republic serials. Among his compositions during this era were The Moonrise Song (It Just Dawned On Me).
Walt Disney Productions hired Lava in the mid-1950s, where he wrote or co-wrote the incidental music for Zorro and the Spin and Marty and Hardy Boys segments of The Mickey Mouse Club. While he was later known for cartoon music, Lava did not write any of it for Disney, though he is credited with the score for 1955's TV segment The Story of the Silly Symphony.
On his arrival at the Warner Bros.'s cartoon studio, Lava's first assignment was the Tweety Looney Tune The Jet Cage. Franklyn scored the first two minutes (and received credit for the score) while Lava completed the cartoon. Franklyn used strings and flutes in his portion, arranged similarly to his other cartoons, while Lava's sounds more mechanical and less orchestrated, with a xylophone at one point. His first credited cartoon is Good Noose, also released in 1962. Lava's previous work also sounded mechanical, but were greatly enhanced by the studio orchestra; however at the time of his arrival the studio reduced and later dismantled its full-time orchestra. Without a music budget that he was used to, Lava was forced to work with a much smaller orchestra to record his scores.
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