Biography
John Barry Prendergast OBE (3 November 1933 – 30 January 2011) was an English composer and conductor of film music. He composed the scores for eleven of the James Bond films between 1963 and 1987, as well as arranging and performing the "James Bond Theme" for the first film in the series, 1962's Dr. No. He wrote the Grammy- and Academy Award-winning scores to the films Dances with Wolves and Out of Africa, as well as the scores of The Scarlet Letter; Chaplin; The Cotton Club; The Tamarind Seed;...
Known For
Complete Filmography

The Final Game of Death
2023
Original Music Composer
A brand new three-hour video essay by Arrow Films that incorporates a new 2K restoration of all two hours of Bruce Lee’s original dailies for Game of ...

The Sound of 007
2022
as Self (archive footage)
Pull back the curtain on the remarkable history of six decades of James Bond music, from Sean Connery’s Dr No through to Daniel Craig’s final outing ...

Game of Death Redux
2019
Original Music Composer
An edit of Game of Death using unreleased footage. Hai Tien, a retired martial artist, is confronted by a underground Korean gang to retrieve an item ...

Down to Earth
2016
Music
Two legendary assassins, Hamlet and Macbeth, receive an invitation from a mysterious man named Thundering. He does not show up which sends them on a d...

Everything or Nothing
2012
as Self (archive footage)
The story of three men with a shared dream: James Bond franchise producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, and Bond creator and author Ian Flem...

Lights, Action, Music
2007
as Self
A wonderful journey through the meaning and relevance of film music composition. Featuring great, albeit brief, insights from some of the modern grea...
After Midnight: Reflecting on a Classic 35 Years Later
2004
Documents the casting process and development of characters for the movie Midnight Cowboy.

Dances with Wolves: The Creation of an Epic
2003
as Self
A documentary of the making of Dances with Wolves told through interviews with cast and crew. It describes the financial and production details, scout...

Dances with Wolves: The Creation of an Epic
2003
Music
A documentary of the making of Dances with Wolves told through interviews with cast and crew. It describes the financial and production details, scout...
Best Ever Bond
2002
as Self
Roger Moore presents the ten best sequences ever to have appeared in the James Bond series, and cast members recall their favourite moments.

Enigma
2001
Original Music Composer
The story of the WWII project to crack the code behind the Enigma machine, used by the Germans to encrypt messages sent to their submarines.

Back To "Somewhere In Time"
2000
as Self
The cast and crew of Somewhere in Time (1980) looks back at the making of the movie in this documentary produced for the special features on the DVD C...

Back To "Somewhere In Time"
2000
Music
The cast and crew of Somewhere in Time (1980) looks back at the making of the movie in this documentary produced for the special features on the DVD C...

Inside 'Diamonds Are Forever'
2000
as Self
A behind the scenes look at the James Bond film "Diamonds are Forever"

Inside 'From Russia with Love'
2000
as Self
A behind the scenes look at the James Bond film "From Russia with Love".

Elizabeth Taylor: A Musical Celebration
2000
as Self
A celebration of the life and work of Dame Elizabeth Taylor interspersed with clips from some of her finest films. Highlights from the musical gala he...

Inside 'Dr. No'
2000
as Self
A behind the scenes look at the James Bond film Dr. No.

A Song of Africa
2000
as Self
An impressively done new documentary taking a look back at the making of this picture. Interviews with everyone from director Pollack to composer John...

Harry Saltzman: Showman
2000
as Self
The story of Harry Saltzman, producer of the first James Bond movies.

The Bond Sound: The Music of 007
2000
as Self
Documentary discussing the many songs featured in the James Bond films

The Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong
1999
as Self
Louis Armstrong is one of the most recognizable figures in jazz, with his incomparable trumpet playing and beaming smile. This video profiles Armstron...

Playing by Heart
1998
Original Music Composer, Conductor, Orchestrator
In a vibrant tapestry of love and longing, nine interconnected souls navigate romance and heartbreak in L.A., where passions collide and truths unfold...

Mercury Rising
1998
Original Music Composer, Conductor
Renegade FBI agent Art Jeffries protects a nine-year-old autistic boy who has cracked the government's new "unbreakable" code.

Swept from the Sea
1998
Original Music Composer
The film tells the story of Russian emigree and the only survivor from ship crash Yanko Goorall and servant Amy Foster in the end of 19th century. Whe...
Nobody Does It Better: The Music of James Bond
1997
as Self
TV documentary exploring the musical world of James Bond through interviews with key figures and discussion of work of David Arnold.

Cry, the Beloved Country
1995
Original Music Composer
A South-African preacher goes to search for his wayward son who has committed a crime in the big city.

The World of James Bond
1995
Elizabeth Hurley hosts a one hour documentary on the history of the James Bond film series to tie in with the seventeenth Bond film, GoldenEye.

Across the Sea of Time
1995
Music
A young Russian boy, Thomas Minton, travels to New York as a passenger on a Russian freighter. Close to Ellis Island he gets off and thus starts his j...

The Scarlet Letter
1995
Original Music Composer
Set in puritanical Boston in the mid 1600s, the story of seamstress Hester Prynne, who is outcast after she becomes pregnant by a respected reverend. ...

Behind the Scenes with 'Thunderball'
1995
as Self
A behind the scenes look at the James Bond film "Thunderball".

The Specialist
1994
Original Music Composer
May Munro is a woman obsessed with getting revenge on the people who murdered her parents when she was still a girl. She hires Ray Quick, a retired ex...

My Life
1993
Original Music Composer
It seems that Bob Jones has everything a man could want, namely a fulfilling job and a beautiful, pregnant wife, Gail. But Bob's life is turned upside...

Indecent Proposal
1993
Original Music Composer
John Gage offers a down-on-his-luck yuppie husband $1 million for the opportunity to spend the night with the man's wife.

Chaplin
1992
Original Music Composer
An aged Charlie Chaplin narrates his life to his autobiography's editor, including his rise to wealth and comedic fame from poverty, his turbulent per...

Ruby Cairo
1992
Original Music Composer
Baseball cards and a food-aid worker help a woman follow her shady husband's money trail around the world.

The Making of 'Dances with Wolves'
1990
Music
A documentary about the making of director Kevin Costner's Academy Award-winning directorial debut, Dances With Wolves.

Dances with Wolves
1990
Original Music Composer
Wounded Civil War soldier John Dunbar tries to commit suicide—and becomes a hero instead. As a reward, he's assigned to his dream post, a remote junct...

Masquerade
1988
Original Music Composer
A recently orphaned heiress meets a young racing yacht captain on Long Island. He shows interest in her and, being heiress to $200,000,000, love may n...

Hearts of Fire
1987
Original Music Composer
A reclusive musician, once a huge rock star, takes a young female protegee. While on a tour she meets a younger, more popular rocker and switches her ...

The Living Daylights
1987
Original Music Composer
After a defecting Russian general reveals a plot to assassinate foreign spies, James Bond is assigned a secret mission to dispatch the new head of the...

Peggy Sue Got Married
1986
Original Music Composer
Peggy Sue faints at a high school reunion. When she wakes up she finds herself in her own past, just before she finished school.

Howard the Duck
1986
Original Music Composer
A scientific experiment unknowingly brings extraterrestrial life forms to the Earth through a laser beam. First is the cigar-smoking drake, Howard, fr...

Out of Africa
1985
Original Music Composer, Conductor
Tells the life story of Danish author Karen Blixen, who at the beginning of the 20th century moved to Africa to build a new life for herself. The film...

A Killing Affair
1985
Original Music Composer
Peter Weller stars as Baton Morris, a drifter suspected of murder, in this crime drama. A widow (Kathy Baker) living in West Virginia takes in the man...

Jagged Edge
1985
Original Music Composer
After a wealthy heiress is murdered in her beach house, her devastated husband becomes the prime suspect. He hires a lawyer who hasn’t taken a crimina...

A View to a Kill
1985
Original Music Composer
A newly-developed microchip designed by Zorin Industries for the British Government that can survive the electromagnetic radiation caused by a nuclear...

The Cotton Club
1984
Original Music Composer
Harlem's legendary Cotton Club becomes a hotbed of passion and violence as the lives and loves of entertainers and gangsters collide.

Until September
1984
Original Music Composer
American tour guide Mo Alexander misses her tour group, and then her flight out of Paris. Stuck in the city of romance, Mo runs into the very suave --...

Mike's Murder
1984
Original Music Composer
Betty has a crush on her tennis instructor Mike. He promises to call her for a date, but never does – she doesn’t know he sells drugs on the side. Aft...

The Golden Seal
1983
Music
A lonely 10-year-old boy living with his parents in a remote coastal part of Alaksa, spontaneously finds a legendary golden seal and her newborn pup. ...

Octopussy
1983
Original Music Composer
James Bond is sent to investigate after a fellow “00” agent is found dead with a priceless Indian Fabergé egg. Bond follows the mystery and uncovers a...

High Road to China
1983
Original Music Composer
A biplane pilot is saddled with a spoiled industrialist's daughter on a search for her missing father through Asia that eventually involves them in a ...

Svengali
1983
Original Music Composer
An old singer coaches a young woman whom he believes will be the next singing sensation. As she starts off with her career, their bond gets stronger. ...

Frances
1982
Original Music Composer, Conductor
The true story of Frances Farmer's meteoric rise to fame in Hollywood and the tragic turn her life took when she was blacklisted.

Murder by Phone
1982
Original Music Composer
A disgruntled phone company employee develops a device whereby those answering a phone can be murdered, and it's up to Nat Bridger to stop the killer.

Hammett
1982
Original Music Composer
Chinatown, San Francisco, 1928. Former private detective Dashiell Hammett, a compulsive drinker with tuberculosis who writes pulp fiction for a living...

Body Heat
1981
Original Music Composer
In the midst of a searing Florida heat wave, a woman convinces her lover, a small-town lawyer, to murder her rich husband.

The Legend of the Lone Ranger
1981
Original Music Composer
When the young Texas Ranger, John Reid, is the sole survivor of an ambush arranged by the militaristic outlaw leader, Butch Cavendich, he is rescued b...

Inside Moves
1980
Original Music Composer
After a failed suicide attempt leaves him partially crippled, Rory begins spending a lot of time at a neighborhood bar full of interesting misfits. Wh...

Touched by Love
1980
Original Music Composer
A teenager with cerebral palsy attempts to become pen pals with her idol, Elvis Presley.

Somewhere in Time
1980
Original Music Composer
Young writer Richard Collier is met on the opening night of his first play by an old lady who begs him to "Come back to me". Mystified, he tries to fi...

Raise the Titanic
1980
Original Music Composer
To obtain a supply of a rare mineral, a ship raising operation is conducted for the only known source, the Titanic.

Night Games
1980
Original Music Composer
A Californian housewife is terrified of having sex because of a past assault. When this phobia threatens to destroy her marriage, she takes refuge in ...

The Black Hole
1979
Original Music Composer
The explorer craft USS Palomino is returning to Earth after a fruitless 18-month search for extra-terrestrial life when the crew comes upon a supposed...

Moonraker
1979
Original Music Composer
After Drax Industries' Moonraker space shuttle is hijacked, secret agent James Bond is assigned to investigate, traveling to California to meet the co...

Hanover Street
1979
Original Music Composer
Margaret is a nurse in England during WW2, and married to a secret agent. Things get complicated when she falls for David, an American pilot.

Willa
1979
Original Music Composer
A truck-stop waitress, determined to make a better life for her young children after being abandoned by her husband, leaves hash-slinging behind her t...

The Corn Is Green
1979
Original Music Composer
A strong-willed teacher, determined to educate the poor and illiterate youth of an impoverished Welsh village, discovers one student whom she believes...

Starcrash
1978
Conductor, Original Music Composer
A pair of smugglers manage to pick up a castaway while running from the authorities, who turns out to be the only survivor from a secret mission to de...

Game of Death
1978
Original Music Composer
A martial arts movie star must fake his death to find the people who are trying to kill him.

The Betsy
1978
Original Music Composer
Ruthless patriarch Loren hires racecar driver Angelo to build a more efficient vehicle against the wishes of his grandson. But things get even messier...

The Gathering
1977
Music
When Adam Thornton learns that he only has a little time left, he decides that he wants to make peace with his family. Only problem is that most of hi...

Young Joe, the Forgotten Kennedy
1977
Original Music Composer
The story of U.S. President John F. Kennedy's older brother Joseph, who undertakes a dangerous mission during World War II.

First Love
1977
Original Music Composer
A college soccer player falls hard for a campus beauty, who is the mistress of an older married attorney.

The Deep
1977
Original Music Composer
A pair of young vacationers are involved in a dangerous conflict with treasure hunters when they discover a way into a deadly wreck in Bermuda waters.

The White Buffalo
1977
Original Music Composer
In this strange western version of Moby Dick, Wild Bill Hickok hunts a white buffalo he has seen in a dream. Hickok moves through a variety of uniquel...
Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years
1977
Music
The story of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt during their 12-year stay at the White House.

King Kong
1976
Original Music Composer
An oil company expedition disturbs the peace of a giant ape and brings him back to New York to exploit him.

Robin and Marian
1976
Original Music Composer
Robin Hood, aging none too gracefully, returns exhausted from the Crusades to woo and win Maid Marian one last time.

The Day of the Locust
1975
Original Music Composer
Hollywood, 1930s. Tod Hackett, a young painter who tries to make his way as an art director in the lurid world of film industry, gets infatuated with ...

Love Among the Ruins
1975
Original Music Composer, Conductor
An aging actress and socialite, Jessica Medlicott has ended her engagement with a younger man and is now being sued by her former fiancé. Esteemed bar...

The Man with the Golden Gun
1974
Original Music Composer
Cool government operative James Bond searches for a stolen invention that can turn the sun's heat into a destructive weapon. He soon crosses paths wit...

The Tamarind Seed
1974
Original Music Composer
During a Caribbean holiday, a British civil servant finds herself falling in love with a Russian agent.

The Dove
1974
Original Music Composer
16-year-old Robin Lee Graham aims to become the youngest person to sail around the world in a 23-foot sloop named "The Dove". On his journey, he meets...

Mission: Monte Carlo
1974
Theme Song Performance
Two episodes of the TV series "The Persuaders" joined into a movie. Two playboys investigate crimes along the French Riviera.

The Glass Menagerie
1973
Original Music Composer
Amanda Wingfield dominates her children with her faded gentility and exaggerated tales of her Southern belle past. Her son plans escape; her daughter ...

A Doll's House
1973
Original Music Composer
Nora Helmer has years earlier committed a forgery in order to save the life of her authoritarian husband Torvald. Now she is being blackmailed, and li...

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
1972
Songs, Original Music Composer
An all-star cast highlights this vibrant musical adaptation of Lewis Carroll's immortal tale. One day, plucky young Alice follows a white rabbit down ...

Follow Me!
1972
Original Music Composer
A strait-laced British banker hires an eccentric private detective to follow his free-spirited American wife, whom he suspects is cheating on him.

Mary, Queen of Scots
1971
Original Music Composer
Mary Stuart, who was named Queen of Scotland when she was only six days old, is the last Roman Catholic ruler of Scotland. She is imprisoned at the ag...

Diamonds Are Forever
1971
Original Music Composer
Diamonds are stolen only to be sold again in the international market. James Bond infiltrates a smuggling mission to find out who's guilty. The missio...

Walkabout
1971
Music, Conductor, Original Music Composer
Under the pretense of having a picnic, a geologist takes his teenage daughter and 6-year-old son into the Australian outback and attempts to shoot the...

They Might Be Giants
1971
Original Music Composer
After the death of his wife, wealthy retiree Justin Playfair creates a fantasy world for himself in which he is the legendary detective Sherlock Holme...

The Last Valley
1971
Original Music Composer
People in a small German village in the last valley to remain untouched by the devastating Thirty Years' War try to exist in peace with a group of sol...

Monte Walsh
1970
Original Music Composer
Monte Walsh is an aging cowboy facing the ending days of the Wild West era. As barbed wire and railways steadily eliminate the need for the cowboy, Mo...

On Her Majesty's Secret Service
1969
Original Music Composer
James Bond tracks his archnemesis, Ernst Blofeld, to a mountaintop retreat in the Swiss alps where he is training an army of beautiful, lethal women. ...

Midnight Cowboy
1969
Original Music Composer, Music Supervisor
Joe Buck is a wide-eyed hustler from Texas hoping to score big with wealthy New York City women; he finds a companion in Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo, an aili...

The Appointment
1969
Original Music Composer
Lawyer Federico Fendi has reasons to suspect that his fashion model wife Carla is secretly one of Rome's highest paid call-girls.

Deadfall
1968
as Orchestra Conductor
Cat burglar Henry Clarke and his accomplices the Moreaus attempt to steal diamonds from the chateau of millionaire Salinas.

Deadfall
1968
Original Music Composer
Cat burglar Henry Clarke and his accomplices the Moreaus attempt to steal diamonds from the chateau of millionaire Salinas.

The Lion in Winter
1968
Original Music Composer
Henry II and his estranged queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, battle over the choice of an heir.

Petulia
1968
Original Music Composer
Dr. Archie Bollen is having a midlife crisis. He's just divorced his wife and is establishing a new life for himself. One night, he catches the eye of...

Boom!
1968
Original Music Composer
Explores the confrontation between the woman who has everything, including emptiness, and a penniless poet who has nothing but the ability to fill a w...

The Whisperers
1967
Original Music Composer
Margaret Ross is an impoverished old woman who lives alone in a seedy apartment and enjoys a rich fantasy life as an heiress. One day she discovers st...

You Only Live Twice
1967
Original Music Composer
A mysterious spacecraft captures Russian and American space capsules and brings the two superpowers to the brink of war. James Bond investigates the c...

Dutchman
1966
Original Music Composer
A young conservative black man, minding his own business, rides a nearly empty subway car. The only other passenger, a blonde vixen looking for troubl...

The Quiller Memorandum
1966
Songs, Original Music Composer
After two British Secret Intelligence Service agents are murdered at the hands of a cryptic neo-Nazi group known as Phoenix, the suave agent Quiller i...

The Wrong Box
1966
Music Arranger, Conductor, Original Music Composer
In Victorian England, a fortune now depends on which of two brothers outlives the other—or can be made to have seemed to do so.

Born Free
1966
Songs, Original Music Composer
At a national park in Kenya, English game warden George Adamson and his wife, Joy, care for three orphaned lion cubs. After the two larger lions are s...

The Chase
1966
Original Music Composer
The escape of Bubber Reeves from prison affects the inhabitants of a small Southern town.

Four in the Morning
1965
Original Music Composer, Conductor
The parallel stories of two couples in crises and their connections to a drowned woman found in a river.

Thunderball
1965
Original Music Composer, Conductor
A criminal organization has obtained two nuclear bombs and are asking for a 100 million pound ransom in the form of diamonds in seven days or they wil...

King Rat
1965
Original Music Composer, Conductor
When Singapore surrendered to the Japanese in 1942, the Allied POWs, mostly British but including a few Americans, were incarcerated in Changi prison....

The Knack... and How to Get It
1965
Original Music Composer
A nebbish schoolteacher begs his smooth (and misogynistic) pal to teach him 'the knack' – how to score with women. Serendipitously, the men meet up wi...

Mister Moses
1965
Original Music Composer
A con man on the run in Africa aids a minister's daughter by helping lead a local tribe to their new homeland.

The Party's Over
1965
Original Music Composer
A group of close friends spend their time drinking and partying. When the American fiancé one of them shows up, the clique protects her by hiding her ...

The Ipcress File
1965
Original Music Composer, Conductor
Sly and dry intelligence agent Harry Palmer is tasked with investigating British Intelligence security, and is soon enmeshed in a world of double-deal...

Boy and Bicycle
1965
Original Music Composer
A teenage boy plays truant from school, and spends the day riding around the town and the deserted beach on his bicycle, letting his mind wander as he...
Sophia Loren in Rome
1964
Music
Sophia Loren, who was born in Rome and lived there as a child, returns to the city that will forever be in her blood and gives her impressions of and ...

Goldfinger
1964
Original Music Composer, Conductor
Special agent 007 comes face to face with one of the most notorious villains of all time, and now he must outwit and outgun the powerful tycoon to pre...

Seance on a Wet Afternoon
1964
Original Music Composer, Conductor
Working-class British housewife Myra Savage reinvents herself as a medium, holding seances in the sitting room of her home with the hidden assistance ...

A Jolly Bad Fellow
1964
Music
An English professor decides that there are too many useless people in the world and invents a gas that will kill them off. But first they'll at least...

Man in the Middle
1964
Original Music Composer
In a remote jungle outpost in the Far Eastern theater of World War II, a hotheaded American soldier murders an allied British sergeant in cold blood. ...

Zulu
1964
Original Music Composer
In 1879, during the Anglo-Zulu War, man-of-the-people Lt. Chard and snooty Lt. Bromhead are in charge of defending the isolated and vastly outnumbered...

From Russia with Love
1963
Original Music Composer, Conductor
Agent 007 is back in the second installment of the James Bond series, this time battling a secret crime organization known as SPECTRE. Russians Rosa K...

Elizabeth Taylor in London
1963
Music
TV-documentary about the actress.

The Cool Mikado
1963
Music Arranger
In this musical, the Gilbert and Sullivan classic is updated and set in post-war Japan. This time, the trouble begins when a soldier, the son of a Yan...

The Amorous Prawn
1962
Original Music Composer
While her husband, the General is abroad, Lady Fitzadam decides to convert their army residence into a fishing resort for rich American tourists in or...

The L-Shaped Room
1962
Original Music Composer
Jane is young, French, pregnant and unmarried. Bucking convention, she is uninterested in settling with her baby's father or getting an abortion. Afte...

Dr. No
1962
Music Arranger
Agent 007 battles mysterious Dr. No, a scientific genius bent on destroying the U.S. space program. As the countdown to disaster begins, Bond must go ...

Mix Me a Person
1962
Original Music Composer
Eighteen-year-old Harry Jukes is literally holding a smoking gun in his hand. His lawyer thinks he did it, but his psychiatrist disagrees -- and sets...

Beat Girl
1960
Music
When her architect father brings home a much younger new wife, rebellious and resentful teen Jenny goes to extreme lengths to sabotage their relations...

Never Let Go
1960
Original Music Composer
John Cummings, an unsuccessful cosmetics salesman, has his unpaid-for car stolen by one of the hoods in the employ of Lionel Meadows, the sadistic org...

6.5 Special
1958
as Himself
A spin-off from the BBC television show. At the suggestion of her girlfriend, a young singer decides to try and make her name in London. Catching the ...