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Ernest Gold, 1921-1999
Composer and conductor Ernest Gold died in Santa Monica, California, on March 17, 1999, at the age of 77, following a stroke.
An Austrian-born composer who became one of Hollywood’s leading musical voices during the 1950s and 1960s, Gold wrote scores for more than 100 film and television productions. He received four Academy Award nominations, winning for Otto Preminger’s Exodus, and enjoyed an especially fruitful collaboration with director Stanley Kramer.
Gold was born Ernst Sigmund Goldner in Vienna on July 13, 1921, into a musical family and began composing while still a child. Following the Nazi annexation of Austria, his family emigrated to the United States in 1938, settling in New York. Gold initially wrote popular songs while continuing his musical studies, and eventually moved to Hollywood, where he began working on low-budget features while also orchestrating and conducting for other composers.
After a decade of smaller assignments, Gold’s career accelerated in the late 1950s. He worked with Stanley Kramer on The Defiant Ones (1958) and then composed On the Beach (1959), Kramer’s bleak drama about the aftermath of nuclear war. Gold ingeniously incorporated the Australian song “Waltzing Matilda” throughout the score, transforming the familiar melody from something nostalgic and comforting into an increasingly tragic reminder of a world facing extinction. The score earned him his first Academy Award nomination and won the Golden Globe for Best Original Score.
Gold’s greatest success came the following year with Otto Preminger’s epic Exodus (1960), starring Paul Newman. Its expansive main theme, combining sweeping romanticism with musical gestures intended to evoke the film’s Israeli setting, became one of the most popular film themes of its era. The soundtrack was an enormous commercial success, the theme was recorded by numerous artists, and Gold won the Academy Award for Best Dramatic or Comedy Score as well as two Grammy Awards. Exodus remains by far his best-known work and established him internationally as a major film composer. Read more…
BAFTA Nominations 1998
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) has announced the nominations for the 52nd British Academy Film Awards, honoring the best in film in 1998.
In the Best Original Music category, which is named in memory of the film director Anthony Asquith, the nominees are:
- DAVID HIRSCHFELDER for Elizabeth
- BARRINGTON PHELOUNG for Hilary and Jackie
- STEPHEN WARBECK for Shakespeare In Love
- JOHN WILLIAMS for Saving Private Ryan
These are the first nominations for Pheloung and Warbeck. It is the third nomination for Hirschfelder, and the ninth nomination for Williams. Hirschfelder previously won for Strictly Ballroom in 1992. Williams previously won for Jaws and The Towering Inferno in 1975, Star Wars in 1978, The Empire Strikes Back in 1980, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in 1982, Empire of the Sun in 1988, and Schindler’s List in 1993.
The winners of the 52nd BAFTA Awards will be announced on April 11, 1999.
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