In Composer's Past: `Twilight Zone' Theme

FORT WORTH, Texas - Imagine, if you will, that you are a gifted composer of ballets, concertos, even an opera. You are on the road to fame. But no matter where you go in the United States, everyone knows you for only one piece - one weird, wild, wacky piece.

Go as far as you like on your journey, and still, all you hear is people singing this one piece of music - over and over and over and over. Ladies and gentlemen, you are entering the wondrous dimension of imagination - next stop, the Twilight Zone.

Doo-do-do-do, doo-do-do-do, doo-do-do-do . . .

That about sums it up: life at the moment for Marius Constant, the composer of one of television's most recognizable themes - if, of course, his life were an episode of the show itself.

"I am the most popular unknown composer in America," declares Constant, and it's probably not much of an exaggeration.

Yet Constant, in Fort Worth as a juror for the recent Van Cliburn piano competition, didn't discover how much his work had become part of the American vernacular until the mid-1980s.

He wrote the 30-second piece for electric guitars, woodwinds and bongos, he explained, back when he was a young, struggling musician-composer living in Paris.

"I received a phone call from a producer," recalled Constant, who is 72, "and he said: `We're doing this TV show, and I'll give you $200 to write a theme by tomorrow. If your work is accepted, you'll make another $500."'

He happily accepted. At the time, such a sum of money, he said, made him feel "I was as good as Stravinsky."

Three months later, the check came. Four years later, in 1963, the show was canceled.

Fast-forward two decades: Constant is still making his home in Paris. His career has blossomed. He's on a U.S. tour with several musicians when he hears one of them singing the unmistakable "doo-do-do-do's."

"Do you know who wrote that?" Constant asks the musician.

The musician is astounded to learn he is talking to the composer. The composer, in turn, is astounded to learn just how famous his work had become. In fact, it had been used in a "Twilight Zone" feature film and in a Steven Spielberg-produced revamp of the original series. The Manhattan Transfer vocal quartet had incorporated the music into one of its albums. It's even played at pro basketball games.

The suggestion is made that perhaps he has not earned all that the music is worth at the moment.

And so begins the legal action, which eventually culminates in Constant's gaining future rights to the music - an arrangement that precludes him from earning anything more from previous usage.

All is not lost, however. Since then, Nike sporting goods offered him $3,000 to use the music in a commercial.

"I was stupid for 20 years," Constant said. "I don't want to be stupid again."

He asks for $100,000.

Nike counters. Submitted for his approval: $80,000.

He takes the money.

But strangely, eerily, the music has never, ever been featured in a Nike ad.

Doo-do-do-do, doo-do-do-do, doo-do-do-do . . .