MOVIE MUSIC UK

Composer Elmer Bernstein died on August 18, 2004, at his home in Ojai, California, after a lengthy battle with cancer. He was 82.

Bernstein was born in New York City in April 1922, the son of immigrants from Ukraine and Austria-Hungary. He studied piano as a child and showed early promise as a performer; during his childhood, he performed professionally as a dancer and an actor, but then switched to music and trained at the Juilliard School where he was encouraged by prominent figures such as Aaron Copland. During World War II, he served in the Army Air Forces, where he composed and arranged music for military radio programs.

Bernstein moved to California in in the early 1950s, when he was hired to score the thriller Sudden Fear in 1952. However, along with many other artists in Hollywood, Bernstein faced censure during the McCarthy era of the early 1950s, and was called by the House Un-American Activities Committee. After he refused to name names, pointing out that he had never attended a Communist Party meeting, he found himself composing music for Z-grade sci-fi movies such as Robot Monster and Cat-Women of the Moon.

His work on The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), one of the first major studio films to feature a jazz score, brought him back into the mainstream, earned him his first Oscar nomination and marked him as a daring and contemporary voice in film music. His score for The Ten Commandments (1956), an epic of biblical scale, demonstrated his facility with grand orchestration and established him as a composer of serious dramatic substance. He followed it with the heroic and unforgettable theme to The Magnificent Seven (1960), whose galloping rhythms and bold brass fanfares became one of the most enduring musical signatures in film history.

Among his most critically acclaimed works was his delicate, haunting score for To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), which reflected the story’s childlike perspective and moral gravity with remarkable restraint and emotional depth. He received Oscar nominations for his work on Summer and Smoke in 1961, Walk on the Wild Side in 1963, Hawaii in 1967, Thoroughly Modern Millie in 1968, True Grit in 1970, and Gold in 1975, and enjoyed commercial success and popularity with his scores for The Comancheros in 1961, Birdman of Alcatraz in 1962, The Great Escape in 1963, and The Hallelujah Trail in 1965. In later years, Bernstein brought his talents to comedies such as Animal House (1978), Airplane! (1980), An American Werewolf in London (1981), and Ghostbusters (1984), often parodying the very musical tropes he had helped pioneer. He then enjoyed a late-career renaissance, picking up additional Oscar nominations for The Age of Innocence in 1994, and Far from Heaven in 2003, and working with acclaimed directors including Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola.

In addition to his film and television work, Bernstein was a passionate advocate for film music as an art form. He founded the Film Music Collection in the 1970s to re-record neglected scores and conducted performances around the world, and also wrote the scores for two Broadway musicals, How Now Dow Jones with lyricist Carolyn Leigh in 1967, and Merlin with lyricist Don Black in 1983. He also taught and mentored younger composers, including protégés such as Bear McCreary. Bernstein is survived by his wife, Eve, and their children, including film composer Peter and violinist Emilie.