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LOS ANGELES, June 10 (UPI) -- Legendary film composer John Williams was honored Thursday at the American Film Institutes' 44th Life Achievement Award gala. The event held at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, featured some of the biggest names in Hollywood who have worked with or were influenced by Williams including frequent collaborator Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Drew Barrymore, Tom Hanks, Kobe Bryant, J.J. Abrams, Bryce Dallas Howard and Seth MacFarlane among others.
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Spielberg, who has had Williams score 27 of his films over 43 years including Indiana Jones, Jaws and Schindler's List, explained how Williams elevates his work, presenting a signature scene from E.T. where main character Elliot rides his bicycle into the sky.
"Without John Williams, bikes don't really fly," Spielberg said. "John, you breathe belief into every film."
Lucas meanwhile credited the composer with all the success he enjoyed after the release of Star Wars noting, "You made my life so easy. I had so many ideas for other movies, but I never had to get around to them thanks to Star Wars.
As Ford took the stage to honor Williams, he was greeted by the main, iconic theme of Raiders of the Lost Ark. "They play it every time I walk on the stage. Every time I walk off the stage. It was playing in the operating room when I went in for a colonoscopy," the actor joked.
Williams now 84 and the first composer to be honored by the AFI, paid tribute himself to his predecessors such as Alfred Newman and Bernard Hermann "I am enormously grateful to film for giving [composers] the broadest possible audience worldwide that any composer has ever enjoyed," he said before imagining how classical composers would fare in Hollywood.
"Certainly Beethoven would have shunned [Hollywood], but Wagner would have had his own studio out there in Burbank with a water tower with a big W on it."
The AFI Achievement Award Gala will premiere Wednesday on TNT followed by an encore presentation on TCM Sept. 12.
