Darrell Wallace Calker was a composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 and arranger

Arranger

In investment banking, an arranger is a provider of funds in the syndication of a debt. They are entitled to syndicate the loan or bond issue, and may be referred to as the "lead underwriter". This is because this entity bears the risk of being able to sell the underlying securities/debt or the...

 who worked on films and animated cartoons.

Biography

Calker was born to Morris H. and Lugenia E. (Lily) Wallace of Philadelphia. He grew up with his younger sister Rena in the District of Columbia, where he attended Episcopal Cathedral School and sang with a church choir in his teens. He graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music

Curtis Institute of Music

The Curtis Institute of Music is a conservatory in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that offers courses of study leading to a performance Diploma, Bachelor of Music, Master of Music in Opera, and Professional Studies Certificate in Opera. According to statistics compiled by U.S...

 in Philadelphia. His early work in Hollywood included orchestration for Victor Young

Victor Young

Victor Young was an American composer, arranger, violinist and conductor. He was born in Chicago.-Biography:...

. He was also active as the composer of scores for the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo

Ballets Russes

The Ballets Russes was an itinerant ballet company from Russia which performed between 1909 and 1929 in many countries. Directed by Sergei Diaghilev, it is regarded as the greatest ballet company of the 20th century. Many of its dancers originated from the Imperial Ballet of Saint Petersburg...

 and Sadlers Wells Royal Ballet. Among his compositions was the suite for orchestra Penguin Island.

Arriving in Los Angeles by the mid-1930s, Calker worked as a session musician, and composed songs including Strings Full of Swing and Dixieland Strut. He formed his own band which appeared on radio in the early 1940s.

It was at this time Walter Lantz

Walter Lantz

Walter Benjamin Lantz was an American cartoonist, animator, film producer, and director, best known for founding Walter Lantz Productions and creating Woody Woodpecker.-Early years and start in animation:...

 hired Calker to be his musical director, replacing former Disney composer Frank Marsales

Frank Marsales

Frank Alfred Marsales was a Canadian-born musician and composer best known for his work scoring many classic Warner Brothers cartoons in the 1930s...

. His first cartoon was the Andy Panda

Andy Panda

Andy Panda is a cartoon character who starred in his own series of animated cartoon short subjects produced by Walter Lantz. These "cartunes" were released by Universal Pictures from 1939 to 1947 and United Artists from 1948 to 1949. The titular character is an anthropomorphic cartoon character, a...

 short Mouse Trappers (1941) and Calker composed the scores for all Lantz cartoons until Drooler's Delight (1949) when the studio temporarily closed. Included were the Swing Symphonies featuring musicians like Nat King Cole

Nat King Cole

Nathaniel Adams Coles , known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American musician who first came to prominence as a leading jazz pianist. Although an accomplished pianist, he owes most of his popular musical fame to his soft baritone voice, which he used to perform in big band and jazz genres...

, Meade Lux Lewis

Meade Lux Lewis

Meade Lux Lewis was a American pianist and composer, noted for his work in the boogie-woogie style. His best known work, "Honky Tonk Train Blues", has been recorded in various contexts, often in a big band arrangement...

, Jack Teagarden

Jack Teagarden

Weldon Leo "Jack" Teagarden , known as "Big T" and "The Swingin' Gate", was an influential jazz trombonist, bandleader, composer, and vocalist, regarded as the "Father of Jazz Trombone".-Early life:...

 and Bob Zurke

Bob Zurke

Bob Zurke was a significant American jazz pianist, arranger, composer and briefly a bandleader during the Swing Era.-Biography:...

, who Calker knew and convinced to work on the cartoons. His classical music scores for The Poet and Peasant (1946) and Musical Moments From Chopin (1947) earned the studio Academy Award nominations for Best Musical Short and a Musical Courier

Musical Courier

The Musical Courier was a 19th and 20th century American music trade publication which began publication in 1880 and became noted as preeminent in its field....

 Citation in 1947 for best cartoon score. Calker also scored animated shorts for Columbia Pictures

Columbia Pictures

Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...

 from 1947 until the cartoon division closed in 1949.

Feature films

Calker's first feature film was the independently-made Dangerous Millions (1946). The musical supervisor was David Chudnow, who later took music that had been composed for films he worked on and released it as television stock music in the Mutel Library. He also composed, with Del Porter, the Reddy Polka in 1945, used in industrial films about Reddy Kilowatt

Reddy Kilowatt

Reddy Kilowatt is a cartoon character that acted as corporate spokesman for electricity generation in the United States for some six decades.-Description:...

, the cartoon spokesman for electrical power.

Calker spent the 1950s working on B movies for Eagle-Lion Studios, such as Forbidden Jungle (1950), Allied Artists, such as From Hell It Came

From Hell It Came

From Hell It Came is a 1957 horror film and science fiction film directed by and written by Jack Milner.-Plot:A South Seas island prince is wrongly convicted of murder and executed by having a knife driven into his heart. The prince is buried in a hollow tree trunk and forgotten about until...

 (1957) and American International Pictures

American International Pictures

American International Pictures was a film production company formed in April 1956 from American Releasing Corporation by James H. Nicholson, former Sales Manager of Realart Pictures, and Samuel Z. Arkoff, an entertainment lawyer...

, including Voodoo Woman (1957) and Beyond the Time Barrier

Beyond the Time Barrier

Beyond the Time Barrier is a 1959 Cold War era black and white time travel science fiction film filmed in ten days in Texas. It was produced by and starred Robert Clarke and was directed by Edgar G. Ulmer. Ulmer's wife Shirley acted as a script editor whilst their daughter Arianne Arden...

(1960). He also composed the score for Superman and the Mole Men

Superman and the Mole Men

Superman and the Mole Men is a 1951 superhero film starring George Reeves as Superman and Phyllis Coates as Lois Lane. It is the first theatrical feature film based on the DC Comics character Superman, although two live-action Superman films had already been shown in cinemas, they appeared in a...

(1951), which functioned as a pilot for the 1950s television series

Adventures of Superman (TV series)

Adventures of Superman is an American television series based on comic book characters and concepts created in 1938 by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. The show is the first television series to feature Superman and began filming in 1951 in California...

.

He returned to the Lantz studio in 1961 and scored twelve cartoons before his death. He composed the themes to the Beary Family, Willoughby (both with Judy Zahler) and Homer Pigeon (with Porter) cartoons. His last picture was Rah Rah Ruckus (1964).