Just weeks after losing gifted film composer Jerry Goldsmith, another Hollywood legend, Elmer Bernstein, has passed away. While not as strongly tied to the animation world as Goldsmith, Bernstein’s long-spanning career saw him write music for many special effects blockbusters, such as The Ten Commandments, GhostBusters and Wild Wild West. Perhaps his biggest contributions to animated films were scores for several early computer animation documentaries and his still officially unavailable, and much requested, music for Disney’s 1985 fantasy epic The Black Cauldron. More about Elmer Berstein’s credits and achievements can be read about here:
LEGENDARY FILM COMPOSER ELMER BERNSTEIN DIES AT 82
LOS ANGELES – Legendary and amazingly prolific film composer Elmer Bernstein, who wrote the memorable theme for The Magnificent Seven among other scores, died sleep at his home in Ojai, California on Wednesday afternoon at 2pm, at the age of 82.
Recognized with countless awards for his work in film, television, stage and audio recording, Bernstein was nominated fourteen times for Academy Awards, winning the Award in 1967 for his score for Thoroughly Modern Millie. Bernstein wrote music for a number of classic movies that shaped the landscape of film in the last half of the 20th century. His scores ranged from the epic to the intimate, from classically austere to energetically jazzy, and were the accompaniment to a number of immortal films of the 50s and 60s. A protégé of Aaron Copland, Bernstein worked on B-films like Robot Monster before gaining fame with his jazz-influenced score (a Hollywood first) to 1955’s The Man With The Golden Arm, for which he received his first Oscar nomination.
Other nominated scores include The Magnificent Seven, Summer And Smoke, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Return Of The Seven, Hawaii, True Grit, Trading Places, The Age Of Innocence and Far From Heaven. His Oscar-nominated songs include Walk On The Wild Side, My Wishing Doll from Hawaii and Wherever Love Takes Me from Gold.
Bernstein’s score for Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments also established his presence in Hollywood, and was quickly followed by scores for Sweet Smell Of Success, Some Came Running, The Buccanner, and the TV series Gunsmoke, among others. His most famous score came with the 1960 western The Magnificent Seven; its boisterous, rousing theme became one of the most memorable pieces of movie music, and was endlessly featured (and imitated) in a number of movies to come; it was also utilized in a series of Marlboro commercials. Another career defining moment came with his music for The Great Escape, which perfectly summed up the nature of the World War II adventure-drama and remains one of the most whistled of movie themes.
Bernstein worked tirelessly through the 60s and 70s, composing four to five scores a year, and was recognized by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association with Golden Globes for his scores for the Southern coming-of-age drama To Kill A Mockingbird and the sweeping epic Hawaii. Others at this time included the western The Hallelujah Trail, the jailhouse drama Birdman Of Alcatraz and the 20s flapper musical Thoroughly Modern Millie. The 70s and 80s saw Bernstein compose more for television as well as more for comedy films, scoring Animal House, Airplane!, The Blues Brothers and GhostBusters.
In 1963 he was awarded the Emmy for excellence in television for his score of The Making Of The President. He was the recipient of Western Heritage Awards for The Magnificent Seven and The Hallelujah Trail, and received five Grammy nominations from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and garnered two of Broadway’s coveted Tony Award nominations for How Now Dow Jones and Merlin. Additional honors include Lifetime Achievement honors from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), The Society for the Preservation of Film Music, the USA, Woodstock, Santa Barbara, Newport Beach and Flanders International Film festivals and the Foundation for a Creative America.
In 1991, he worked with Martin Scorsese on Cape Fear, adapting and arranging Bernard Herrmann’s score from the original 1961 film, and also composed scores for Scorsese’s The Age Of Innocence and Bringing Out the Dead. Later films included The Rainmaker, Twilight, My Left Foot, The Grifters and Devil In A Blue Dress. In 1996, Bernstein was honored with a star on Hollywood Boulevard. In 1999, he received an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Five Towns College in New York State and was honored by the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. Bernstein again was honored by ASCAP with its marquee Founders Award in 2001. In 2002, Bernstein received his fourteenth Oscar nomination for the soaring, melancholy score for Far From Heaven.
In 2003 and 2004, Bernstein worked with young composers as he served as mentor and spokesperson for the Turner Classic Movies Young Film Composers Competition.
He is survived by his wife Eve, two daughters, two sons, and five grandchildren. A public memorial service is planned.
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Sources: Film Music Newsletter, and the IMDB.
