THE boy sat entranced in front of the flickering images on the giant screen in his father's York cinema.

But it wasn't so much the pictures as the music that accompanied them that fascinated him as he watched films from the Hollywood heyday. The effect on young John Barry Prendergast was profound - he made up his mind to compose music for the movies.

No one, not even this Yorkshire cinema owner's son, could have predicted just how successful he would be. As John Barry, he's won five Oscars and four Grammys for memorable music for films including Born Free, Midnight Cowboy, Out of Africa and Dances With Wolves.

He's probably most famous for turning the James Bond theme, written for Dr No, into a commercial success and composing the soundtracks for a dozen 007 movies.

"I always remember watching movies in my old man's theatre. Like The Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn and a wonderful score by Korngold. Then, later, Treasure Of The Sierra Madre with a Max Steiner score," he recalls on a trip to this country from his New York home. These viewings fostered his love of film music. He played trumpet and studied music during his teen years. After three years in the army, he formed his own band, the John Barry Seven. Backing up-and-coming rock star Adam Faith in the late 1950s provided his entry into the movies. When Faith made his screen debut in Beat Girl, Barry supplied its hip jazz-and-rock score. The 1960 film became the first British movie to issue a soundtrack on long-playing records.

"The whole music business changed radically in London in the Sixties. Before that, film music was a dead business," explains Barry, 67. "The Beat Girl soundtrack was only issued because Adam had a couple of pop songs in it and they thought a record would be commercial. I did the score for the film he made after that, Never Let Go. I thought it was very good but it never saw the light of day on record."

The first James Bond film, Dr No, in 1962 brought him to the attention of the producers through his arrangement of the theme tune. When the second Bond movie, From Russia With Love, was made, he was asked to write the score. Lionel Bart wrote the title track but, by the time the next 007 film, Goldfinger, was made, Barry wanted to do it all. Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse wrote the lyrics to his music - and Goldfinger, as sung by Shirley Bassey, was a Number One and remains one of the best Bond theme songs. Surprisingly, he reveals that Bond producer Harry Saltzman hated it.

Barry composed for 12 Bonds over three decades and four 007 actors. But there's much, much more to his contribution to movie music with such varied pictures as Zulu, The Lion In Winter, Midnight Cowboy, King Rat, Somewhere In Time, The Knack and The Cotton Club on his long list of credits.

"I'm essentially a musical dramatist," he says. "It's what I loved and responded to from the time watching movies in my dad's theatre. That was something from an early age that I wanted to do.

"To be given this dramatic canvas of a movie, be asked to write the music for it and get the best orchestra in the world to record, seemed very uncomplicated when you look back. But at the time there was a series of logical steps to achieving that.

"When I reflect, I can't see I would have wanted to do anything else. Everybody had told me, before I went into it, that film music was the most difficult thing to do. There was a huge U-turn in the Sixties. The old thing about movie composing was people said if you noticed the music it was bad film music. That was absolutely ridiculous. Music came forward and all the young directors were using it in a very positive way, especially in the 1960s and 1970s."

These days he tends to limit himself to composing for one movie a year, the latest being wartime drama Enigma starring Kate Winslet. That enables him to do other work, such as Eternal Echoes, a collection of original compositions and the reason for his visit home.

The title comes from a best-selling book by a friend, Irish poet and philosopher John O'Donohue. The songs are mainly autobiographical which makes it difficult for him to talk about them. "It's like a memory thing - dramatic moments and reflections. Some good, some sad, some happy. It's kind of a mixed bag. I'm drawing on my own memories. The details really matter when you do music for movies but on this record it's more a sense of a feeling of the time rather than the actual moment. You put it into the music, not verbalise it."

He likes coming home to Yorkshire, where he still has relatives, including his sister. Last year he returned to accept a honorary doctorate from the University of York. "I adore Yorkshire. I get to walk around a bit and see a few things, go out into the country," he says.

Once back in the US, he'll continue working on his next project - a musical based on Graham Greene's story Brighton Rock. The project has been around for 30 years since he first got together with Greene, writer Joseph Mankiewicz and the Boulting Brothers, who made the film version. "It became a total mess. Everybody hated each other. Maybe the idea was a little before its time," he says.

A few months ago top producer Bill Kenwright, who was in the original production of Barry's Passion Flower Hotel musical, rang to say he could acquire the rights to Brighton Rock if Barry was interested in turning it into a musical. "I've written it three times in my sleep, so I said, 'okay, let's go'. I've written about six songs and have another six in the works. Hopefully, we'll go into the West End sometime next spring."

Don Black is writing the lyrics, as he did for Barry's musical Billy, based on Billy Liar and starring Michael Crawford in the London West End production.

"I love doing movies but there's something about putting on a show in the theatre which is its own thing. It's quite spectacular, there's something about going to Drury Lane Theatre and seeing it packed every night."

Eternal Echoes is released by Decca Records