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Elmer Bernstein ( ; April 4, 1922August 18, 2004) was an American composer and conductor. In a career that spanned over five decades, he composed "some of the most recognizable and memorable themes in Hollywood history", including over 150 original , as well as scores for nearly 80 television productions. ":BIOGRAPHY", Official Site of Elmer Bernstein, The Bernstein Family Trust. Retrieved August 2, 2018. For his work, he received an Academy Award for Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) and a Primetime Emmy Award. He also received seven Golden Globe Awards, five , and two Tony Award nominations.
He composed and arranged scores for over 100 film scores, including Sudden Fear (1952), The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), The Ten Commandments (1956), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), The Magnificent Seven (1960), To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), The World of Henry Orient (1964), The Great Escape (1963), Hud (1963), Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967), True Grit (1969), My Left Foot (1989), The Grifters (1990), Cape Fear (1991), Twilight (1998), and Far from Heaven (2002). He is known for his work on the comedic films Animal House (1978), Meatballs (1979), Airplane! (1980), The Blues Brothers (1980), Stripes (1981), Trading Places (1983), Ghostbusters (1984), Spies Like Us (1985), and Three Amigos (1986).
He also worked on frequent collaborations with directors Martin Scorsese, Robert Mulligan, John Landis, Ivan Reitman, John Sturges, Bill Duke, George Roy Hill, Richard Fleischer, John Frankenheimer, and Henry Hathaway.
He was not related to fellow composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, though they were friends. Within the world of professional music, they were distinguished from each other by the use of the nicknames Bernstein West (Elmer) and Bernstein East (Leonard), based on their bases of operation: East for New York City, West for Hollywood and Los Angeles. They also pronounced their surnames differently; Elmer pronounced his name "BERN-steen", and Leonard used "BERN-styne".
During his childhood, Bernstein performed professionally as a dancer and an actor, in the latter case playing the part of Caliban in The Tempest on Broadway theatre, and he also won several prizes for his painting. He attended Manhattan's progressive Walden School and gravitated toward music. At the age of 12 he was awarded a piano scholarship by Henriette Michelson, a Juilliard School teacher who guided him throughout his entire career as a pianist. She took him to play some of his improvisations for composer Aaron Copland, who was encouraging and selected Israel Citkowitz as a teacher for the young boy. Biography songwritershalloffame.org, retrieved December 21, 2009
Bernstein was drafted into the United States Army Air Forces during the World War II era where he wrote music for the Armed Forces Radio.
Elmer Bernstein's music has some stylistic similarities to Copland's music, most notably in his western scores, particularly sections of Big Jake, in the Gregory Peck film Amazing Grace and Chuck, and in his spirited score for the 1958 film adaptation of Erskine Caldwell's novel God's Little Acre.
He had a lifelong enthusiasm for an even wider spectrum of the arts than his childhood interests would imply and, in 1959, when he was scoring The Story on Page One, he considered becoming a novelist and asked the film's screenwriter, Clifford Odets, to give him lessons in writing fiction.
After he refused to name names, pointing out that he had never attended a Communist Party meeting, Bernstein was "greylisted". He found work scoring low-budget B movies like Robot Monster and Cat-Women of the Moon (both 1953), both of which were produced independently by Al Zimbalist. His score for Robot Monster, which gained a cult following as one of the worst films ever made,Hall, Roger, ed. "80th Birthday Tribute to Elmer Bernstein." Elmer Bernstein.com, 2012. Retrieved: November 7, 2014.Gubernick, Lisa. "New York hosts Golden Turkeys." Los Angeles Times, April 18, 1980, p. h8. gained some notoriety among cult movie fans. During this period, he also worked as a session musician in studio music departments, notably as the rehearsal pianist for Oklahoma! (1955).
His most high-profile score during his greylist period was for the addiction-themed drama The Man with the Golden Arm (premiered 1955, but not released widely until 1956), directed by Otto Preminger and starring Frank Sinatra. The jazz-inflected score earned him the first of 14 Academy Awards nominations.
Bernstein wrote the theme songs or other music for more than 200 films and TV shows, including The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, The Ten Commandments (1956), Johnny Staccato (1959 TV theme and Capitol Records album) received little attention in the US but the single went to number four in Britain, True Grit, The Man with the Golden Arm, To Kill a Mockingbird, Robot Monster, Ghostbusters, Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965), and the fanfare used in the National Geographic television specials.
His theme for The Magnificent Seven is also familiar to television viewers, as it was used in commercials for Marlboro cigarettes. Bernstein also provided the score to many of the short films of Ray and Charles Eames.
In 1961 Bernstein co-founded Äva Records, an American record label based in Los Angeles together with Fred Astaire, Jackie Mills and Tommy Wolf.
One of Bernstein's tunes has since gained a lasting place in U.S. college sports culture. In 1968, University of South Carolina football head coach Paul Dietzel wrote new lyrics to "Step to the Rear", from How Now, Dow Jones. The South Carolina version of the tune, "The Fighting Gamecocks Lead the Way", has been the school's fight song ever since.
The opening theme of the film is based upon a slight inversion of a secondary theme from Johannes Brahms's Academic Festival Overture. Bernstein accepted the job, and it sparked a second wave in his career, where he continued to compose music for high-profile comedies such as Ghostbusters, Stripes, Airplane! and The Blues Brothers, as well as most of Landis's films for the next 15 years, including An American Werewolf in London, Trading Places, and the music video to the Michael Jackson song "Thriller".
As president of the Young Musicians Foundation, Bernstein became acquainted with classical guitarist Christopher Parkening and wrote a Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra, which Parkening recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra under Bernstein's baton for the Angel label in 1999. In addition, Bernstein was a professor at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music and conductor of the San Fernando Valley Symphony in the early 1970s.Patrick Russ, liner notes for Christopher Parkening • Elmer Bernstein • Concerto for Guitar & Orchestra for Two Christophers (Angel CD 7243 5 56859 2 6), New York, Angel Records, 2000.
In the 1960s, Bernstein was an owner in the Triad Stable Thoroughbred racing partnership, named for a music term. His partners included his assistant, Robert Helfer, and the wife of the Triad Stable's trainer Morton Lipton.
The Bernsteins in the 1990s resided in Hope Ranch, a suburb of Santa Barbara, California. Later, they moved to a home in Ojai, California, where Bernstein died of cancer on August 18, 2004. "Great Escape composer dies at 82", BBC News, August 19, 2004. His publicist Cathy Mouton simply stated at the time that Bernstein had died following a lengthy illness. He was survived by his wife Eve and their two daughters, Emilie and Elizabeth; by his two sons, Peter and Gregory Bernstein, from his earlier marriage to Pearl Glusman; and by five grandchildren.
Composers who have acknowledged the influence of Bernstein's work on their own include James Newton Howard, Alan Silvestri, Georges Delerue, Howard Shore, John Barry, Lalo Schifrin, Dick Hyman, Hans Zimmer, James Horner, Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, Trevor Jones, Mark Isham, Bear McCreary (who was mentored by Bernstein), Ennio Morricone, Danny Elfman, Alan Menken, Randy Newman, and Randy Edelman.
Additional honors included lifetime achievement awards 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 US, Woodstock, Santa Barbara, Newport Beach and Flanders International Film Festivals and the Foundation for a Creative America. In 1996, Bernstein was honored with a star on Hollywood Boulevard. Biography filmreference.com, retrieved December 21, 2009 Hollywood Star Walk - Elmer Bernstein, Composer Star on the 7000 block of Hollywood Boulevard In 1999, he received an honorary Doctorate of Music from Five Towns College in New York and was honored by the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. Bernstein again was honored by ASCAP with its marquee Founders Award in 2001 and with the NARAS Governors Award in June 2004. Bernstein was the subject of This Is Your Life in 2003 when he was surprised by Michael Aspel at London's Royal Albert Hall, after conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra as part of his 80th year celebrations.
His scores for The Magnificent Seven and To Kill a Mockingbird were ranked by the American Film Institute as the eighth and seventeenth greatest American film scores of all time, respectively, on the list of AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores. Bernstein, Bernard Herrmann, Max Steiner, and Jerry Goldsmith are the only composers to have two scores listed, and are therefore in second place for the most scores on the list, behind John Williams, who has three. Other Bernstein film scores nominated for the list are as follows: The Age of Innocence (1993), Far from Heaven (2002), The Great Escape (1963), Hawaii (1966), The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), Summer and Smoke (1961), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), The Ten Commandments (1956), and Walk on the Wild Side (1962).
Influences and legacy
Bernstein considered these artists as influences on his work: Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Dimitri Tiomkin, Duke Ellington, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Waxman, Miklós Rózsa, Jimmie Lunceford, Max Steiner, Victor Young, Aaron Copland, Bernard Herrmann, Nino Rota, Roger Sessions, Stefan Wolpe.
Discography
Albums
Compositions
Awards and nominations
Over the course of his career, Bernstein won an Academy Award, an Emmy Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards. Internet Movie Database listing, Awards imdb.com, retrieved December 21, 2009 In addition, he was nominated for the Tony Awards three times and a Grammy Awards five times. He received 14 Academy Award nominations and was nominated at least once per decade from the 1950s until the 2000s, but his only win was for Thoroughly Modern Millie for Best Original Music Score. Bernstein was recognized by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association with Golden Globes for his scores for To Kill a Mockingbird and Hawaii. In 1963, he won the Primetime Emmy Award for his score of The Making of The President 1960. He is the recipient of Western Heritage Awards for The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Hallelujah Trail (1965).
External links
Categories: Official Website, 1922 Births, 2004 Deaths, 20th-century American Conductors, 20th-century American Jews, 20th-century American Male Musicians, 20th-century American Songwriters, 20th-century American Classical Composers, 21st-century American Jews, American Contemporary Classical Composers, American Film Score Composers, American Male Classical Composers, American Male Conductors, American Male Film Score Composers, Animated Film Score Composers, American Male Songwriters, American Musical Theatre Composers, American People Of Austrian-jewish Descent, American People Of Ukrainian-jewish Descent, American Racehorse Owners And Breeders, Best Original Music Score Academy Award Winners, Broadway Composers And Lyricists, Classical Musicians From New York, Composers From New York City, Golden Globe Award–winning Musicians, Imperial Records Artists, Jewish American Classical Composers, Jewish American Film Score Composers, Jewish American Military Personnel, Jewish American Songwriters, Juilliard School Alumni, La-la Land Records Artists, American Male Musical Theatre Composers, Military Personnel From New York, Military Personnel From New York City, Pupils Of Roger Sessions, Songwriters From New York, Usc Thornton School Of Music Faculty, United States Army Air Forces Personnel Of World War Ii, Varèse Sarabande Records Artists, Walden School Alumni
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