Grammy winning composer Lalo Schifrin died on Thursday, June 26, 2025, from complications from pneumonia. He was 93 years old.

Schifrin composed the Mission: Impossible theme with a meter that translated into Morse code as dash, dash, dot, dot, which spells the letters M and I. He also scored movies like Cool Hand Luke, Bullitt, and Dirty Harry.

He was born Boris Claudio Schifrin on June 21, 1932, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He started playing piano when he was 6 years old and became interested in jazz when he was a child. He studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, then formed a 16-piece jazz orchestra when he returned to Argentina.

Some of Schifrin’s early TV work was on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Kraft Suspense Theatre, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and the TV movie See How They Run. He wrote songs for shows like Mannix, Medical Center, Starsky & Hutch, Most Wanted, and Petrocelli.

Schifrin was a six-time Oscar nominee for the scores of Cool Hand Luke, The Fox, Voyage of the Damned, The Amityville Horror, and The Sting II, and the song “People Alone” from The Competition. His other film work included The Cincinnati Kid, Coogan’s Bluff, The Beguiled, and the Dirty Harry sequels Magnum Force, Sudden Impact, and The Dead Pool.

In 2018 he was awarded an honorary Oscar, becoming only the third composer to be given the honor.