Composer Herman Stein died of congestive heart failure on 15 March 2007. Born on 19 August 1915 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he contributed to the scores of almost 200 films, and was a staff composer for Universal Studios.
He was a child prodigy, learning the piano at age 3 and playing his first concert at age 6, and was mostly self-taught as a composer.
Some of his best-known genre composing work, frequently uncredited, appears in It Came from Outer Space (1953), Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), This Island Earth (1955), Tarantula (1955), and The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957). He also did work for television series including Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Lost in Space. His best-known musical passage may be the jittery, ascending three-note “creature theme” from Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Stein’s complete filmography is available at IMDB.com.