Film Music Reporter

Songwriter/composer Al Kasha has passed away today at age 83. He is best known for co-writing (with Joel Hirschhorn) numerous songs for stage and screen, including The Morning After from 1972’s The Poseidon Adventure and We May Never Love Like This Again from 1974’s The Towering Inferno, for which he received two Academy Awards. He was also Oscar-nominated for the song Candle on the Water from the 1977 original Pete’s Dragon movie and received a second nomination (shared with Hirschhorn and Irwin Kostal) for the Disney production in the Original Song Score and Its Adaptation or Best Adaptation Score category. Kasha also received four Golden Globe nominations for the films mentioned above, as well as the song I’d Like to Be You for a Day from Disney’s original Freaky Friday movie. His credits as a film score composer include Bill Kowalchuk’s 1998 animated feature Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Arthur Allan Seidelman’s 1992 comedy Rescue Me James F. Collier’s 1990 drama China Cry: A True Story, the 1993 animated TV adaptation of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield and Joseph Cates’ 1966 comedy The Fat Spy.