Louis Barron on AllMovie

Louis Barron and his wife Bebe Barron were pioneering figures in electronic music. They wrote the music for not quite a dozen films, of which the most prominent and successful was the 1956 science fiction feature Forbidden Planet, released by MGM. They are also credited with writing the first electronic music for magnetic tape. Born in 1920, in Minneapolis, Louis was fascinated by electronics as a teenager, and later studied music at the University of Chicago. He married Charlotte May Wind, better known as Bebe Barron, in 1947, and it was around this time -- soon after they moved to New York -- that they began working with a newly available device, a tape-recorder. That machine became the medium through which they began experimenting with electronically generated sound and music; at first, what they were doing was so new they weren't sure it could be defined as music, and they were genuinely unsure what to call the sounds with which they were experimenting. The Barrons opened their own recording studio at 9 West 8th Street in Greenwich Village, and in 1950 created the first electronic music for magnetic tape, entitled "Heavenly Menagerie." Louis built and manipulated electronic circuits to create sounds, often the results were surprising and unpredictable because the process usually involved burning out the circuits as he used them. They were a true team, Louis devising and constructing circuits, while Bebe -- who had the more thorough musical training -- composed what they ultimately did define as music (with some encouragement from John Cage).

They quickly found themselves at the center of the New York avant-garde art scene, among those they recorded in their studio were Henry Miller, Tennessee Williams, Aldous Huxley, and Anaïs Nin. By the first half of the 1950s, the Barrons were working with composers such as John Cage and Morton Feldman and becoming known on the art scene. But there wasn't much money to be made in such circles, and they turned to Hollywood. The film mecca had dipped its creative toe into the field of electronic music in the early/middle 1940s; but at first, the reception they received was muted. Their work was just a little too advanced for most producers, or the music departments of the major studios to embrace; most of the Barrons' movie work was limited to films by Maya Deren and other experimental filmmakers.

In 1956, they finally broke through to the major studios -- and, indeed, the most exalted of the majors -- when MGM came knocking on their door to ask if they could work on a film still in post-production, called Forbidden Planet. A science fiction movie with a far-future setting, in deep space and on a distant alien planet, the movie was one of the most advanced cinematic efforts in the genre attempted since the advent of sound film. Initially the Barrons were only supposed to provide 20 minutes of sound effects, but when they heard a sample of the duo's work, they were handed the entire project, and a massive project it was, with over 100 minutes of screentime to fill. They insisted upon doing this entirely out of their New York studio. And the results were astounding in 1956 and are still startling more than five decades later. Everyone was delighted with what the Barrons had done, except for the Musicians Union, of which they were not members. As a result of union objections, they were credited with "electronic tonalities," rather than music, which prevented their work from being considered for an Oscar nomination. Even more frustating, the denial of a music credit prevented them from being allowed to join the union. The Barrons gave up on the idea of participating in Hollywood production again. Over the next three decades, until Louis' death in 1989, they continued to work together, eventually moving to Los Angeles and collaborating long after their divorce in 1970.