David Shire - The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

David Lee Shire (born July 3, 1937) is an American songwriter and the composer of stage musicals, film and television scores. Shire began scoring for television in the 1960s and made the leap to scoring feature films in the early 1970s. He was married to actress Talia Shire, for whose brother Francis Ford Coppola he scored The Conversation, perhaps his best known score, in 1974.

Additional screen credits include Two People, All the President's Men, The Hindenburg, Farewell My Lovely, The Taking of Pelham One-Two-Three, 2010, Return to Oz, Max Dugan Returns (a Neil Simon write) and Zodiac. He composed original music for Saturday Night Fever (for which he received two Grammy Award nominations), and also worked on several disco adaptations including "Night on Disco Mountain."

He won the Academy Award for Best Song for his and Norman Gimble's theme song for Norma Rae, "It Goes Like It Goes". He was also nominated the same year in the same category for "The Promise (I'll Never Say Goodbye)" from the motion picture The Promise. In 1981 his song "With You I'm Born Again," recorded by Billy Preston and Syreeta, was a top five international hit and stayed on the pop charts for 26 weeks.
Shire's television scores have earned five Emmy nominations.

His hundreds of scores for television include Sarah, Plain and Tall, Raid on Entebbe, The Kennedys of Massachusetts, Serving in Silence, Christopher Reeve's Rear Window, Oprah Winfrey's The Women of Brewster Place, and The Heidi Chronicles. He also composed themes for the television series Alice and McCloud. Shire's individual songs have been recorded by Barbra Streisand, Melissa Manchester, Maureen McGovern, Johnny Mathis, Billy Preston, Jennifer Warnes, John Pizzarelli and Pearl Bailey, among many others.

He co-wrote with David Pomerantz "In Our Hands", the theme song for the United Nations World Summit for Children. He has also written individual songs with lyricists Sheldon Harnick ("Everlasting Light") and Ed Kleban.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, also known as The Taking of Pelham 123 is a 1974 American thriller film starring Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, Jerry Stiller and Martin Balsam. It was directed by Joseph Sargent, and was based on the novel of the same title by John Godey.

For The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Shire used serial techniques and a funky multicultural rhythm section for the main theme. Ιt is intended to evoke the bustle and diversity of New York City, and is an unofficial theme for the 6 subway line (the local Lexington Avenue Line that is depicted in the film). The soundtrack album was the first ever CD release by Film Score Monthly. The end titles contain a more expansive arrangement of the theme. Shire received two Grammy nominations for his work on the film.

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