William B. Lava (March 18, 1911 St. Paul, Minnesota - February 20, 1971 Los Angeles, California) was a musical composer and arranger who worked on the Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies animated cartoons from 1962 onwards, replacing the deceased Milt Franklyn. Lava's music was very different from that of Franklyn and previous composer Carl Stalling. It has a tendency towards atonality. A sense of tension is often created in Lava's scores using sequences based on the notes of the diminished seventh chord. Lava also sang the theme to the popular T.V. western series, Cheyenne.

Lava was educated at Von Humboldt Grammar School and Lane Tech. High School in Chicago, then attended Northwestern University where his major was journalism. He studied conducting with Dr. Albert Coates in Los Angeles. Lava also wrote short stories for various magazines and was the editor of Northwestern Commerce Magazine and associate editor of Purple Parrot.^[1].

Arriving in Hollywood in 1936, Lava arranged for musical radio programs, then scored a number of motion pictures, such as The Painted Stallion; A Boy and His Dog; Embraceable You; Dangerously They Live; The Hidden Hand; I Won't Play; Star in the Night and Hitler Lives. He was also responsible for scores for the Warner Bros.' Joe McDoakes short subjects and Republic serials. Among his compositions during this era were The Moonrise Song (It Just Dawned On Me).

Walt Disney Productions hired Lava in the mid-1950s, where he wrote or co-wrote the incidental music for Zorro and the Spin and Marty and Hardy Boys segments of The Mickey Mouse Club. While he was later known for cartoon music, Lava did not write any of it for Disney, though he is credited with the score for 1955's TV segment The Story of the Silly Symphony.^[2]

On his arrival at the Warner Bros.'s cartoon studio, Lava's first assignment was the Tweety Looney Tune The Jet Cage. Franklyn scored the first two minutes (and received credit for the score) while Lava completed the cartoon. Franklyn used strings and flutes in his portion, arranged similarily to his other cartoons, while Lava's sounds more mechanical and less orchestrated, with a xylophone at one point. His first credited cartoon is Good Noose, also released in 1962.

Lava was responsible for scores in eleven Road Runner cartoons subcontracted by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises to Format Films in 1965 and '66^[3]. The budgets for these cartoons were even tighter still, meaning that only the first one (Run, Run, Sweet Road Runner) had real scored music. The other 10 used a set of generic musical cues, which did not follow the action closely as in other Warner Brothers productions.

He also composed the Pink Panther Show music for 124 episodes (USA, 1969, animation), always based on the Henry Mancini's original theme, adapting it to closely follow character action.

Lava co-wrote the theme (with Irving Taylor) and most of the incidental music for the TV series F Troop. Lava also composed the silent-film music for the "bookend" sequences at the beginning and end of the 1961 Twilight Zone episode "Once Upon a Time".

A rabid anti-communist, Lava became known as an outspoken critic of the Cuban Revolution. He spoke in favor of direct military action against the Castro regime, continuing to protest in this manner from 1959 until his death.

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