Revue Studios In 1953, Wilson became the music supervisor of
Revue Studios production unit. Wilson stayed on when it became Universal Studios. Quick turnarounds were a constant concern and a constant challenge. Goldsmith said “On
Thriller, you’d get the show on Friday and have to record it Monday morning".
Universal Studios The composer
John Williams remembered working for Wilson, saying "In 1960, at Universal Studios, (music supervisor) Stanley Wilson had a music department. In the hallway there, there were five or six rooms, little rooms with no windows. And each room had a little piano and on any given day I would be in one room, Jerry Goldsmith in the next one, Lalo Schifrin in the next one, Quincy Jones in the next one, Morty Stevens, also Conrad Salinger and the late Bernard Hermann, who made it his home for a couple of years and wrote some great music and drove everyone crazy. It was a situation where we taught each other and learned from each other and it was a group effort that produced the results that each one of us was able to accomplish.” In 1964, MCA formed Universal City Studios, Inc., merging the motion pictures and television arms of Universal Pictures Company and Revue Productions. Toward the end of his career with Universal, as head of creative activities of the Motion Picture and Television Music Department of Universal City Studios, he began to dedicate more of his own time to specific shows, composing themes and much of the background music for
It Takes A Thief, The Bold Ones, Ironsides, Columbo, Marcus Welby MD, among others. In 1955, Wilson wrote an arrangement of Gounod's "Funeral March of a Marionette" as the theme music for
Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Wilson also was the music director for
M Squad, the police series starring
Lee Marvin, working in collaboration with
Count Basie,
Sonny Burke,
Pete Carpenter,
Benny Carter and
John Williams. Wilson composed the theme music for the first season, winning the
1959 Grammy Award for the Best Soundtrack Album and Background Score from Motion Picture or Television. Wilson said at the time, "There is nothing new about jazz. But there is plenty new about using it to underscore exciting action on the TV screen. A show like M Squad is supposed to move; jazz moves. I feel we have the best marriage of drama and jazz music in show business". For the second and third seasons, he entrusted Basie to compose a new theme. Wilson, along with Esquivel, composed the now famous
Revue Studios/
Universal Television fanfare, which lasted for nearly three decades. Wilson traveled to
France in 1963 to record the soundtrack to the television special, ''Princess Grace's Monaco
. After the shooting was finished, he arranged and conducted The World of Sights and Sounds, Stop One: Paris
, an album of French standards. This time Wilson was accompanied by a small jazz combo fronted by M Squad'' colleague and jazz legend, Benny Carter, and included a string section orchestra and a wordless vocal choir led by
Michel Legrand's sister,
Christiane. In 1967 Wilson co-produced, with Robert Wagner, a documentary film of the International Music Festival in Rio de Janeiro, entitled
The World Goes On. It was to be a pilot for the documentation of music festivals worldwide. In 1969, Wilson collaborated with composer, arranger Oliver Nelson on the album,
Black, Brown and Beautiful, described as, '''A stirring tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King that is as searching and angry as it is contemplative and compassionate'.'' ==Death and legacy==