Film Composers (Star System)
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- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
The man behind the low woodwinds that open Citizen Kane (1941), the shrieking violins of Psycho (1960), and the plaintive saxophone of Taxi Driver (1976) was one of the most original and distinctive composers ever to work in film. He started early, winning a composition prize at the age of 13 and founding his own orchestra at the age of 20. After writing scores for Orson Welles's radio shows in the 1930s (including the notorious 1938 "The War of the Worlds" broadcast), he was the obvious choice to score Welles's film debut, Citizen Kane (1941), and, subsequently, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), although he removed his name from the latter after additional music was added without his (or Welles's) consent when the film was mutilated by a panic-stricken studio. Herrmann was a prolific film composer, producing some of his most memorable work for Alfred Hitchcock, for whom he wrote nine scores. A notorious perfectionist and demanding (he once said that most directors didn't have a clue about music, and he blithely ignored their instructions--like Hitchcock's suggestion that Psycho (1960) have a jazz score and no music in the shower scene). He ended his partnership with Hitchcock after the latter rejected his score for Torn Curtain (1966) on studio advice. He was also an early experimenter in the sounds used in film scores, most famously The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), scored for two theremins, pianos, and a horn section; and was a consultant on the electronic sounds created by Oskar Sala on the mixtrautonium for The Birds (1963). His last score was for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) and died just hours after recording it. He also wrote an opera, "Wuthering Heights", and a cantata, "Moby Dick".22 stars
**Vertigo
**Psycho
**The Man Who Knew Too Much
**Citizen Kane
**Taxi Driver
**North by Northwest
**Marnie
**La Mariée était en noir
*The Day the Earth Stood Still
*The Trouble with Harry
*The Wrong Man
*Fahrenheit 451
*Cape Fear
*Sisters- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Born in Milan in 1911 into a family of musicians, Nino Rota was first a student of Orefice and Pizzetti. Then, still a child, he moved to Rome where he completed his studies at the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia in 1929 with Alfredo Casella. In the meantime, he had become an 'enfant prodige', famous both as a composer and as an orchestra conductor. His first oratorio, "L'infanzia di San Giovanni Battista," was performed in Milan and Paris as early as 1923 and his lyrical comedy, "Il Principe Porcaro," was composed in 1926. From 1930 to 1932, Nino Rota lived in the USA. He won a scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Philadelphia where he attended classes in composition taught by Rosario Scalero and classes in orchestra taught by Fritz Reiner. He returned to Italy and earned a degree in literature from the University of Milan. In 1937, he began a teaching career that led to the directorship of the Bari Conservatory, a title he held from 1950 until his death in 1979. After his "childhood" compositions, Nino Rota wrote the following operas: Ariodante (Parma 1942), Torquemada (1943), Il cappello di paglia di Firenze (Palermo 1955), I due timidi (RAI 1950, London 1953), La notte di un neurastenico (Premio Italia 1959, La Scala 1960), Lo scoiattolo in gamba (Venezia 1959), Aladino e la lampada magica (Naples 1968), La visita meravigliosa (Palermo 1970), Napoli milionaria (Spoleto Festival 1977). He also wrote the following ballets: La rappresentazione di Adamo ed Eva (Perugia 1957), La Strada (La Scala 1965), Aci e Galatea (Rome 1971), Le Molière imaginaire (Paris and Brussels 1976) and Amor di poeta (Brussels 1978) for Maurice Béjart. In addition, there are countless works for orchestra that have been performed since before World War II and are still performed by orchestras in every part of the world. His work in film dates back to the early forties. His filmography includes the names of virtually all of the noted directors of his time. First among these is Federico Fellini. He wrote all of the movie scores for Fellini's films from The White Sheik (1952) in 1952 to Orchestra Rehearsal (1978) in 1978. Other directors include Renato Castellani, Luchino Visconti, Franco Zeffirelli, Mario Monicelli, Francis Ford Coppola (Oscar for best original score for The Godfather Part II (1974)), King Vidor, René Clément, Edward Dmytryk, and 'Eduardo de Filippo'. He also composed the music for many theatre productions by Visconti, Zefirelli, and de Filippo. In February of 1995, the Nino Rota Foundation was established at Fondazione Cini of Venice, Italy. Cini specializes in the works of 20th century Italian composers and includes the estate of Casella.21 stars
**The Godfather
**8 1/2
**Giulietta degli Spiriti
**La Dolce Vita
**Death on the Nile
**Romeo & Juliet
*Le Notti di Cabiria
*Il Bidone
*Amarcord
*War and Peace
*Boccaccio 70
*The Taming of the Shrew
*The Godfather: Part II
*Roma
*Le Boulanger de Valorgue- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Austrian composer Max Steiner achieved legendary status as the creator of hundreds of classic American film scores. He was born Maximilian Raoul Walter Steiner in Vienna, Austria, the son of Marie Mizzi (Hasiba) and Gabor Steiner, an impresario, and the grandson of actor and theater director and manager Maximilian Steiner. His family was Jewish. As a child, he was astonishingly musically gifted, composing complex works as a teenager and completing the course of study at Vienna's Hochschule fuer Musik und Darstellende Kunst in only one year, at the age of sixteen. He studied under Gustav Mahler and, before the age of twenty, made his living as a conductor and as composer of works for the theater, the concert hall, and vaudeville. After a brief sojourn in Britian, Steiner moved to the USA in the same wave as fellow film composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold and quickly became a sought-after orchestrator and conductor on Broadway, bringing the Western classical tradition in which he had been raised to mainstream audiences.
He was soon snatched up by the film studios with the advent of sound and helped the fledgling talkies become musically sophisticated within a brief few years. He was one of the first to fully integrate the musical score with the images on-screen and to score individual scenes for their content and create leitmotifs for individual characters, as opposed to simply providing vaguely appropriate mood music, as evidenced in King Kong (1933), which set the standard for American film music for years to come.
From the 1930s to the 1960s, he was one of the most respected, innovative, and brilliant composers of American film music, creating a truly staggering number of exceptional scores for films of all types. He was nominated for Academy Awards for his scores eighteen times and won three times. Years after his death in 1971, he remains one of the giants of motion picture history, and his music still thrives.21 stars
**Gone with the Wind
**Casablanca
**King Kong
**The Big Sleep
**The Letter
**The Searchers
*Angels with Dirty Faces
*Of Human Bondage
*They Died with Their Boots On
*Arsenic and Old Lace
*Key Largo
*The Fountainhead
*White Heat
*Jezebel
*Follow the Fleet
*The Gay Divorcee- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
As one of the best known, awarded, and financially successful composers in US history, John Williams is as easy to recall as John Philip Sousa, Aaron Copland or Leonard Bernstein, illustrating why he is "America's composer" time and again. With a massive list of awards that includes over 52 Oscar nominations (five wins), twenty-odd Gold and Platinum Records, and a slew of Emmy (two wins), Golden Globe (three wins), Grammy (25 wins), National Board of Review (including a Career Achievement Award), Saturn (six wins), American Film Institute (including a Lifetime Achievement Award) and BAFTA (seven wins) citations, along with honorary doctorate degrees numbering in the teens, Williams is undoubtedly one of the most respected composers for Cinema. He's led countless national and international orchestras, most notably as the nineteenth conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra from 1980-1993, helming three Pops tours of the US and Japan during his tenure. He currently serves as the Pop's Conductor Laureate. Also to his credit is a parallel career as an author of serious, and some not-so-serious, concert works - performed by the likes of Mstislav Rostropovich, André Previn, Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Gil Shaham, Leonard Slatkin, James Ingram, Dale Clevenger, and Joshua Bell. Of particular interests are his Essay for Strings, a jazzy Prelude & Fugue, the multimedia presentation American Journey (aka The Unfinished Journey (1999)), a Sinfonietta for Winds, a song cycle featuring poems by Rita Dove, concerti for flute, violin, clarinet, trumpet, tuba, cello, bassoon and horn, fanfares for the 1984, 1988 and 1996 Summer Olympics, the 2002 Winter Olympics, and a song co-written with Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman for the Special Olympics! But such a list probably warrants a more detailed background...
Born in Flushing, New York on February 8, 1932, John Towner Williams discovered music almost immediately, due in no small measure to being the son of a percussionist for CBS Radio and the Raymond Scott Quintet. After moving to Los Angeles in 1948, the young pianist and leader of his own jazz band started experimenting with arranging tunes; at age 15, he determined he was going to become a concert pianist; at 19, he premiered his first original composition, a piano sonata.
He attended both UCLA and the Los Angeles City College, studying orchestration under MGM musical associate Robert Van Eps and being privately tutored by composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, until conducting for the first time during three years with the U.S. Air Force. His return to the states brought him to Julliard, where renowned piano pedagogue Madame Rosina Lhevinne helped Williams hone his performance skills. He played in jazz clubs to pay his way; still, she encouraged him to focus on composing. So it was back to L.A., with the future maestro ready to break into the Hollywood scene.
Williams found work with the Hollywood studios as a piano player, eventually accompanying such fare such as the TV series Peter Gunn (1958), South Pacific (1958), Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960), and To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), as well as forming a surprising friendship with Bernard Herrmann. At age 24, "Johnny Williams" became a staff arranger at Columbia and then at 20th Century-Fox, orchestrating for Alfred Newman and Lionel Newman, Dimitri Tiomkin, Franz Waxman, and other Golden Age notables. In the field of popular music, he performed and arranged for the likes of Vic Damone, Doris Day, and Mahalia Jackson... all while courting actress/singer Barbara Ruick, who became his wife until her death in 1974. John & Barbara had three children; their daughter is now a doctor, and their two sons, Joseph Williams and Mark Towner Williams, are rock musicians.
The orchestrating gigs led to serious composing jobs for television, notably Alcoa Premiere (1961), Checkmate (1960), Gilligan's Island (1964), Lost in Space (1965), Land of the Giants (1968), and his Emmy-winning scores for Heidi (1968) and Jane Eyre (1970). Daddy-O (1958) and Because They're Young (1960) brought his original music to the big theatres, but he was soon typecast doing comedies. His efforts in the genre helped guarantee his work on William Wyler's How to Steal a Million (1966), however, a major picture that immediately led to larger projects. Of course, his arrangements continued to garner attention, and he won his first Oscar for adapting Fiddler on the Roof (1971).
During the '70s, he was King of Disaster Scores with The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Earthquake (1974) and The Towering Inferno (1974). His psychological score for Images (1972) remains one of the most innovative works in soundtrack history. But his Americana - particularly The Reivers (1969) - is what caught the ear of director Steven Spielberg, then preparing for his first feature, The Sugarland Express (1974). When Spielberg reunited with Williams on Jaws (1975), they established themselves as a blockbuster team, the composer gained his first Academy Award for Original Score, and Spielberg promptly recommended Williams to a friend, George Lucas. In 1977, John Williams re-popularized the epic cinema sound of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Waxman and other composers from the Hollywood Golden Age: Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) became the best selling score-only soundtrack of all time, and spawned countless musical imitators. For the next five years, though the music in Hollywood changed, John Williams wrote big, brassy scores for big, brassy films - The Fury (1978), Superman (1978), 1941 (1979), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) ... An experiment during this period, Heartbeeps (1981), flopped. There was a long-term change of pace, nonetheless, as Williams fell in love with an interior designer and married once more.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) brought about his third Oscar, and The River (1984), Empire of the Sun (1987), The Accidental Tourist (1988) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989) added variety to the 1980s, as he returned to television with work on Amazing Stories (1985) and themes for NBC, including NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (1970). The '80s also brought the only exceptions to the composer's collaboration with Steven Spielberg - others scored both Spielberg's segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) and The Color Purple (1985).
Intending to retire, the composer's output became sporadic during the 1990s, particularly after the exciting Jurassic Park (1993) and the masterful, Oscar-winning Schindler's List (1993). This lighter workload, coupled with a number of hilarious references on The Simpsons (1989) actually seemed to renew interest in his music. Two Home Alone films (1990, 1992), JFK (1991), Nixon (1995), Sleepers (1996), Seven Years in Tibet (1997), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Angela's Ashes (1999), and a return to familiar territory with Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) recalled his creative diversity of the '70s.
In this millennium, the artist shows no interest in slowing down. His relationships with Spielberg and Lucas continue in A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), the remaining Star Wars prequels (2002, 2005), Minority Report (2002), Catch Me If You Can (2002), and a promised fourth Indiana Jones film. There is a more focused effort on concert works, as well, including a theme for the new Walt Disney Concert Hall and a rumored light opera. But one certain highlight is his musical magic for the world of Harry Potter (2001, 2002, 2004, etc.), which he also arranged into a concert suite geared toward teaching children about the symphony orchestra. His music remains on the whistling lips of people around the globe, in the concert halls, on the promenades, in album collections, sports arenas, and parades, and, this writer hopes, touching some place in ourselves. So keep those ears ready wherever you go, 'cause you will likely hear a bit of John Williams on your way.19 stars
**Jaws
**Jurassic Park
**Family Plot
**The Towering Inferno
*The Sugarland Express
*How to Steal a Million
*Schindler's List
*E.T.
*Superman
*Close Encounters of the Third Kind
*Raiders of the Lost Ark
*Far and Away
*The Witches of Eastwick
*Memoirs of a Geisha
*Penelope- Music Department
- Composer
- Producer
Dimitri Tiomkin was a Russian Jewish composer who emigrated to America and became one of the most distinguished and best-loved music writers of Hollywood. He won a hallowed place in the pantheon of the most successful and productive composers in American film history, earning himself four Oscars and sixteen Academy Awards nominations. He was born Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin on May 10, 1894, in Kremenchug, Russia. His mother, Marie (nee Tartakovsky), was a Russian pianist and teacher. His father, Zinovi Tiomkin, was a renowned medical doctor. His uncle, rabbi Vladimir Tiomkin, was the first President of the World Zionist Union. Young Dimitri began his music studies under the tutelage of his mother. Then, at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, he studied piano under Felix Blumenfeld and Isabelle Vengerova. He also studied composition under the conservatory's director, Aleksandr Glazunov, who appreciated Tiomkin's talent and hired him as a piano tutor for his niece. Soon Dimitri appeared on Russian stages as a child pianist prodigy and continued to develop into a virtuoso pianist. Like other intellectuals in St. Petersburg, Tiomkin frequented the club near the Opera, called Stray Dog Café, where Russian celebrities, including directors Vsevolod Meyerhold and Nicolas Evreinoff, writers Boris Pasternak, Aleksei Tolstoy, Sergei Esenin, Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Gumilev and Vladimir Mayakovsky, had their bohemian hangout. There Tiomlkin could be seen with his two friends, composer Sergei Prokofiev and choreographer Mikhail Fokin. At that time he also gained exposure and a keen interest in American music, including the works of Irving Berlin, ragtime, blues, and early jazz. Tiomkin started his music career as a piano accompanist for Russian and French silent films in movie houses of St. Petersburg. When the famous comedian Max Linder toured in Russia, he hired Tiomkin to play piano improvisations for the Max Linder Show, and their collaboration was successful. He also provided classical piano accompaniment for the famous ballerina Tamara Karsavina. However, the 1917 Communist Revolution in Russia caused dramatic political and economic changes. From 1917 to 1921 Tiomkin was a Red Army staff composer, writing scores for revolutionary mass spectacles at the Palace Square involving 500 musicians and 8000 extras, such as "The Storming of the Winter Palace" staged by Vsevolod Meyerhold and Nikolai Yevreinov for the third anniversary of the Communist Revolution. In 1921 Tiomkin emigrated from Russia and moved to Berlin to join his father, who was working with the famous German biochemist Paul Ehrlich. In Berlin Tiomkin had several study sessions with Ferruccio Busoni and his circle. By 1922 Dimitri was well known for his concert appearances in Germany, often with the Berlin Philharmonic. Among his repertoire were pieces written for him by other composers. He also concertized in France. There, in Paris, Feodor Chaliapin Sr. convinced Tiomkin to emigrate to the United States. In 1925 Tiomkin got his first gig in New York: he became the main pianist for a Broadway dance studio. There he met and soon married the principal dancer/choreographer, Albertina Rasch. He also met composers George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers and Jerome Kern. In 1928 Tiomkin made a concert tour of Europe, introducing the works of Gershwin to audiences there. He gave the French premiere of Gershwin's "Piano Concerto in F" at the famed "L'Opera de Paris." His Hollywood debut came in 1929, when MGM offered him a contract to score music for five films. His wife got a position as an assistant choreographer for some musical films. He also scored a Universal Pictures film, performed concerts in New York City and continued composing ballet music for his wife's dance work. He also continued writing American popular music and songs. He received further Broadway exposure with the Shuberts and Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.. He produced his own play "Keeping Expenses Down," but it was a flop amidst the gloom of the Big Depression, and he once again returned to Hollywood in 1933. When he came back he was on his own. By that time Tiomkin was disillusioned with the intrigue and politics inside the Hollywood studio system. He already knew the true value of his musical talent, and chose to freelance with the studios rather than accepting a multi-picture contract. He became something of a crusader, pushing for better pay and residuals. His independent personality was reflected in his music and business life: he was never under a long-term studio contract. Though MGM was the first to be acquainted with his services, Tiomkin next turned to Paramount for Alice in Wonderland (1933), another fine example of making music that he liked. Hollywood's most prominent independent composer, Tiomkin, thanks to his free-agent status, negotiated contractual terms to his benefit, which in turn benefited other musicians. He aggressively sought music publishing rights and formed his own ASCAP music publishing company, Volta Music Corporation, while remaining faithful to France-based performing rights organization SACEM. In Tiomkin's own words: "My fight is for dignity. Not only for composer, but for all artists responsible for picture." He also fought for employing qualified musicians regardless of their race. As a composer classically trained at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Tiomkin was highly skilled in orchestral arrangements with complex brass and strings, but he was also thoroughly versed in the musical subtleties of America and integrated it into traditional European forms. His interest in the musical form resulted in his next score, for the operetta Naughty Marietta (1935), a popular musical that teamed Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. He also did his fair share of stock music arranging. Among his most successful partnerships was that with director Frank Capra, starting with Lost Horizon (1937), where Tiomkin used many innovative ideas, and received his first Academy Award nomination. The association with Capra lasted through four more famous films, culminating with It's a Wonderful Life (1946). In 1937 Tiomkin became a naturalized American citizen. The next year he made his public conducting debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. During the WWII years he wrote music for 12 military documentaries, earning himself a special decoration from the US Department of Defense. After the war he ventured into all styles of music for movies, ranging from mystery and horror to adventure and drama, such as his enchanting score, intricately worked around Claude Debussy's "Girl with the Flaxen Hair," for the haunting Portrait of Jennie (1948) and the energetic martial themes for Cyrano de Bergerac (1950). He scored three films for Alfred Hitchcock, perhaps the most inventive being for the tension-building Strangers on a Train (1951) with its out-of-control carousel finale. He also worked with top directors in that exclusively American genre: the western. His loudest success was the original music for Duel in the Sun (1946) by King Vidor. For that film, Tiomkin wrote a lush orchestral score, trying to fulfill writer/producer David O. Selznick's request to "Make a theme for orgasm!" Tiomkin worked for several weeks, and composed a powerful theme culminating with 40 drummers. Selsnick was impressed, but commented: "This is not orgasm!" Tiomkin worked for one more month and delivered an even more powerful theme culminating with 100 voices. Selznick was impressed again, but commented: "This is not orgasm! This is not the way I f..k!" Tiomkin replied brilliantly, "Mister Selznick, you may f..k the way you want, but this is the way I f..k!" Selznick was convinced, and after that Tiomkin's music was fully accepted. In 1948 he wrote the score for one of the westerns with John Wayne, Red River (1948) by Howard Hawks. Wayne had Tiomkin's touch on five more movies into the 1960s. Tiomkin was adding a song to all of his scores, starting with the obscure Trail to Mexico (1946). The result was successful, and the western score with songs became Tiomkin's signature. Horns and lush string orchestral sound are most associated with Tiomkin's style, which culminated in The Unforgiven (1960) by John Huston, although he used the same approach in High Noon (1952) with the famous song "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin'" and Howard Hawks' The Big Sky (1952). Most of his big-screen songs were written for westerns and totaled some 25 themes. The most songs he composed for one movie was six for Friendly Persuasion (1956). Tiomkin achieved dramatic effects by using his signature orchestral arrangements in such famous films as Giant (1956), The Old Man and the Sea (1958) and The Guns of Navarone (1961). He also wrote music and theme songs for several TV series, most notably for Clint Eastwood's Rawhide (1959). In 1967 his beloved wife, Albertina Rasch, passed away, and Tiomkin was emotionally devastated. Going back from his wife's funeral to his Hancock Park home in Los Angeles, he was attacked and beaten by a street gang. The crime caused him more pain, so upon recommendation of his doctor, Tiomkin moved to Europe for the rest of his life. In the 1960s Tiomkin produced Mackenna's Gold (1969) starring Gregory Peck and Omar Sharif. He also executive-produced and orchestrated the US/Russian co-production Tchaikovsky (1970), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for best music, and the movie was also nominated in the foreign language film category. Filming on locations in Russia allowed him to return to his homeland for the first time since 1921, which also was the last visit to his mother country. In 1972 Tiomkin married Olivia Cynthia Patch, a British aristocrat, and the couple settled in London. They also maintained a second home in Paris. For the rest of his life Tiomkin indulged himself in playing piano, a joy also shared by his wife. He died on November 11, 1979, in London, England, and was laid to rest in Forest Lawn Memorial Cemetery in Glendale, California. In 1999 Dimitri Tiomkin was pictured on one of six 33¢ USA commemorative postage stamps in the Legends of American Music series, honoring Hollywood Composers. His music remains popular, and is continuously used in many new films, such as Inglourious Basterds (2009) by director Quentin Tarantino.18 stars
**Strangers on a Train
**Shadow of a Doubt
**Dial M for Murder
**It's a Wonderful Life
**Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
**High Noon
*You Can't Take It with You
*Duel in the Sun
*The Thing from Another World
* Lost Horizon
*The Fall of the Roman Empire
*I Confess- Writer
- Actor
- Director
Considered to be one of the most pivotal stars of the early days of Hollywood, Charlie Chaplin lived an interesting life both in his films and behind the camera. He is most recognized as an icon of the silent film era, often associated with his popular character, the Little Tramp; the man with the toothbrush mustache, bowler hat, bamboo cane, and a funny walk.
Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in Walworth, London, England on April 16, 1889, to Hannah Harriet Pedlingham (Hill) and Charles Chaplin, both music hall performers, who were married on June 22, 1885. After Charles Sr. separated from Hannah to perform in New York City, Hannah then tried to resurrect her stage career. Unfortunately, her singing voice had a tendency to break at unexpected moments. When this happened, the stage manager spotted young Charlie standing in the wings and led him on stage, where five-year-old Charlie began to sing a popular tune. Charlie and his half-brother, Syd Chaplin spent their lives in and out of charity homes and workhouses between their mother's bouts of insanity. Hannah was committed to Cane Hill Asylum in May 1903 and lived there until 1921, when Chaplin moved her to California.
Chaplin began his official acting career at the age of eight, touring with the Eight Lancashire Lads. At age 18, he began touring with Fred Karno's vaudeville troupe, joining them on the troupe's 1910 United States tour. He traveled west to California in December 1913 and signed on with Keystone Studios' popular comedy director Mack Sennett, who had seen Chaplin perform on stage in New York. Charlie soon wrote his brother Syd, asking him to become his manager. While at Keystone, Chaplin appeared in and directed 35 films, starring as the Little Tramp in nearly all.
In November 1914, he left Keystone and signed on at Essanay, where he made 15 films. In 1916, he signed on at Mutual and made 12 films. In June 1917, Chaplin signed up with First National Studios, after which he built Chaplin Studios. In 1919, he and Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith formed United Artists (UA).
Chaplin's life and career was full of scandal and controversy. His first big scandal was during World War I, at which time his loyalty to England, his home country, was questioned. He had never applied for American citizenship, but claimed that he was a "paying visitor" to the United States. Many British citizens called Chaplin a coward and a slacker. This and other career eccentricities sparked suspicion with FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), who believed that he was injecting Communist propaganda into his films. Chaplin's later film The Great Dictator (1940), which was his first "talkie", also created a stir. In the film, Chaplin plays a humorous caricature of Adolf Hitler. Some thought the film was poorly done and in bad taste. However, the film grossed over $5 million and earned five Academy Award Nominations.
Another scandal occurred when Chaplin briefly dated 22 year-old Joan Barry. However, Chaplin's relationship with Barry came to an end in 1942, after a series of harassing actions from her. In May 1943, Barry returned to inform Chaplin that she was pregnant and filed a paternity suit, claiming that the unborn child was his. During the 1944 trial, blood tests proved that Chaplin was not the father, but at the time, blood tests were inadmissible evidence, and he was ordered to pay $75 a week until the child turned 21.
Chaplin also was scrutinized for his support in aiding the Russian struggle against the invading Nazis during World War II, and the United States government questioned his moral and political views, suspecting him of having Communist ties. For this reason, HUAC subpoenaed him in 1947. However, HUAC finally decided that it was no longer necessary for him to appear for testimony. Conversely, when Chaplin and his family traveled to London for the premier of Limelight (1952), he was denied re-entry to the United States. In reality, the government had almost no evidence to prove that he was a threat to national security. Instead, he and his wife decided to settle in Switzerland.
Chaplin was married four times and had a total of 11 children. In 1918, he married Mildred Harris and they had a son together, Norman Spencer Chaplin, who lived only three days. Chaplin and Harris divorced in 1920. He married Lita Grey in 1924, who had two sons, Charles Chaplin Jr. and Sydney Chaplin. They were divorced in 1927. In 1936, Chaplin married Paulette Goddard, and his final marriage was to Oona O'Neill (Oona Chaplin), daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill in 1943. Oona gave birth to eight children: Geraldine Chaplin, Michael Chaplin, Josephine Chaplin, Victoria Chaplin, Eugene Chaplin, Jane Chaplin, Annette-Emilie Chaplin, and Christopher Chaplin.
In contrast to many of his boisterous characters, Chaplin was a quiet man who kept to himself a great deal. He also had an "un-millionaire" way of living. Even after he had accumulated millions, he continued to live in shabby accommodations. In 1921, Chaplin was decorated by the French government for his outstanding work as a filmmaker and was elevated to the rank of Officer of the Legion of Honor in 1952. In 1972, he was honored with an Academy Award for his "incalculable effect in making motion pictures the art form of the century". He was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1975 New Year's Honours List. No formal reason for the honour was listed. The citation simply reads "Charles Spencer Chaplin, Film Actor and Producer".
Chaplin's other works included musical scores that he composed for many of his films. He also authored two autobiographical books, "My Autobiography" (1964) and its companion volume, "My Life in Pictures" (1974).
Chaplin died at age 88 of natural causes on December 25, 1977 at his home in Vevey, Switzerland. His funeral was a small and private Anglican ceremony according to his wishes. In 1978, Chaplin's corpse was stolen from its grave and was not recovered for three months; he was re-buried in a vault surrounded by cement.
Six of Chaplin's films have been selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress: The Immigrant (1917), The Kid (1921), The Gold Rush (1925), City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936), and The Great Dictator (1940).
Charlie Chaplin is considered one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of American cinema, whose movies were and still are popular throughout the world and have even gained notoriety as time progresses. His films show, through the Little Tramp's positive outlook on life in a world full of chaos, that the human spirit has and always will remain the same.17 stars
**Modern Times
**The Great Dictator
**The Gold Rush
**Limelight
**Monsieur Verdoux
**City Lights
**The Kid
*A King in New York
*A Dog's Life
*The Circus- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
John Barry was born in York, England in 1933, and was the youngest of three children. His father, Jack, owned several local cinemas and by the age of fourteen, Barry was capable of running the projection box on his own - in particular, The Rialto in York. As he was brought up in a cinematic environment, he soon began to assimilate the music which accompanied the films he saw nightly to a point when, even before he'd left St. Peters school, he had decided to become a film music composer. Helped by lessons provided locally on piano and trumpet, followed by the more exacting theory taught by tutors as diverse as Dr Francis Jackson of York Minster and William Russo, formerly arranger to Stan Kenton and His Orchestra, he soon became equipped to embark upon his chosen career, but had no knowledge of how one actually got a start in the business. A three year sojourn in the army as a bandsman combined with his evening stints with local jazz bands gave him the idea to ease this passage by forming a small band of his own. This was how The John Barry Seven came into existence, and Barry successfully launched them during 1957 via a succession of tours and TV appearances. A recording contract with EMI soon followed, and although initial releases made by them failed to chart, Barry's undoubted talent showed enough promise to influence the studio management at Abbey Road in allowing him to make his debut as an arranger and conductor for other artists on the EMI roster.
A chance meeting with a young singer named Adam Faith, whilst both were appearing on astage show version of the innovative BBC TV programme, Six-Five Special (1957), led Barry to recommend Faith for a later BBC TV series, Drumbeat (1959), which was broadcast in 1959. Faith had made two or three commercially unsuccessful records before singer/songwriter Johnny Worth, also appearing on Drumbeat, offered him a song he'd just finished entitled What Do You Want? With the assistance of the JB7 pianist, Les Reed, Barry contrived an arrangement considered suited to Faith's soft vocal delivery, and within weeks, the record was number one. Barry (and Faith) then went from strength to strength; Faith achieving a swift succession of chart hits, with Barry joining him soon afterwards when the Seven, riding high on the wave of the early sixties instrumental boom, scored with Hit & Miss, Walk Don't Run and Black Stockings.
Faith had long harboured ambitions to act even before his first hit record and was offered a part in the up and coming British movie, Wild for Kicks (1960), at that time. As Barry was by then arranging not only his recordings but also his live Drumbeat material, it came as no surprise when the film company asked him to write the score to accompany Faith's big screen debut. It should be emphasised that the film was hardly a cinematic masterpiece. However, it did give Faith a chance to demonstrate his acting potential, and Barry the chance to show just how quickly he'd mastered the technique of film music writing. Although the film and soundtrack album were both commercial successes, further film score offers failed to flood in. On those that did, such as Never Let Go (1960) and The Amorous Mr. Prawn (1962), Barry proved highly inventive, diverse and adaptable and, as a result, built up a reputation as an emerging talent. It was with this in mind that Noel Rogers, of United Artists Music, approached him in the summer of '62, with a view to involving him in the music for the forthcoming James Bond film, Dr. No (1962).
He was also assisted onto the cinematic ladder as a result of a burgeoning relationship with actor/writer turned director Bryan Forbes, who asked him to write a couple of jazz numbers for use in a club scene in Forbes' then latest film, The L-Shaped Room (1962). From this very modest beginning, the couple went on to collaborate on five subsequent films, including the highly acclaimed Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), King Rat (1965) and The Whisperers (1967). Other highlights from the sixties included five more Bond films, Zulu (1964), Born Free (1966) (a double Oscar), The Lion in Winter (1968) (another Oscar) and Midnight Cowboy (1969).
In the seventies he scored the cult film Walkabout (1971), The Last Valley (1971), Mary, Queen of Scots (1971) (Oscar nomination), wrote the theme for The Persuaders! (1971), a musical version of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland and the hit musical Billy. Then, in 1974, he made the decision to leave his Thameside penthouse apartment for the peace of a remote villa he was having built in Majorca. He had been living there for about a year, during which time he turned down all film scoring opportunities, until he received an invitation to write the score for the American TV movie, Eleanor and Franklin (1976). In order to accomplish the task, he booked into the Beverly Hills Hotel for six weeks in October 1975. However, during this period, he was also offered Robin and Marian (1976) and King Kong (1976), which caused his stay to be extended. He was eventually to live and work in the hotel for almost a year, as more assignments were offered and accepted. His stay on America's West Coast eventually lasted almost five years, during which time he met and married his wife, Laurie, who lived with him at his Beverly Hills residence. They moved to Oyster Bay, New York and have since split their time between there and a house in Cadogan Square, London.
After adopting a seemingly lower profile towards the end of the seventies, largely due to the relatively obscure nature of the commissions he accepted, the eighties saw John Barry re-emerge once more into the cinematic limelight. This was achieved, not only by continuing to experiment and diversify, but also by mixing larger budget commissions of the calibre of Body Heat (1981), Jagged Edge (1985), Out of Africa (1985) (another Oscar) and The Cotton Club (1984) with smaller ones such as the TV movies, Touched by Love (1980) and Svengali (1983). Other successes included: Somewhere in Time (1980), Frances (1982), three more Bond films, and Peggy Sue Got Married (1986).
After serious illness in the late eighties, Barry returned with yet another Oscar success with Dances with Wolves (1990) and was also nominated for Chaplin (1992). Since then he scored the controversial Indecent Proposal (1993), My Life (1993), Deception (1992), Cry, the Beloved Country (1995) and has made compilation albums for Sony (Moviola and Moviola II) and non-soundtrack albums for Decca ('The Beyondness Of Things' & 'Eternal Echoes').
In the late nineties he made a staggeringly successful return to the concert arena, playing to sell-out audiences at the Royal Albert Hall. Since then he has appeared as a guest conductor at a RAH concert celebrating the life and career of Elizabeth Taylor and made brief appearances at a couple of London concerts dedicated to his music. In 2004 he re-united with Don Black to write his fifth stage musical, Brighton Rock, which enjoyed a limited run at The Almeida Theatre in London.
He continued to appear at concerts of his own music, often making brief appearances at the podium. In November 2007, Christine Albanel, the French Minister for Culture, appointed him Commander in the National Order of Arts and Letters. The award was made at the eighth International Festival Music and Cinema, in Auxerre, France, when, in his honour, a concert of his music also took place.
In August 2008 he was working on a new album, provisionally entitled Seasons, which he has described as "a soundtrack of his life." A new biography, "John Barry: The Man with The Midas Touch", by Geoff Leonard, Pete Walker, and Gareth Bramley, was published in November 2008.
He died following a heart-attack on 30th January 2011, at his home in Oyster Bay, New York.17 stars
**Body Heat
**The Man with the Golden Gun
**Goldfinger
**Dr. No
**Dances with Wolves
*Peggy Sue Got Married
*Out of Africa
*Thunderball
*You Only Live Twice
*From Russia with Love
*Diamonds Are Forever
*Octopussy- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
A classmate of director Sergio Leone with whom he would form one of the great director/composer partnerships (right up there with Eisenstein & Prokofiev, Hitchcock & Herrmann, Fellini & Rota), Ennio Morricone studied at Rome's Santa Cecilia Conservatory, where he specialized in trumpet. His first film scores were relatively undistinguished, but he was hired by Leone for A Fistful of Dollars (1964) on the strength of some of his song arrangements. His score for that film, with its sparse arrangements, unorthodox instrumentation (bells, electric guitars, harmonicas, the distinctive twang of the jew's harp) and memorable tunes, revolutionized the way music would be used in Westerns, and it is hard to think of a post-Morricone Western score that doesn't in some way reflect his influence. Although his name will always be synonymous with the spaghetti Western, Morricone has also contributed to a huge range of other film genres: comedies, dramas, thrillers, horror films, romances, art movies, exploitation movies - making him one of the film world's most versatile artists. He has written nearly 400 film scores, so a brief summary is impossible, but his most memorable work includes the Leone films, Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers (1966) , Roland Joffé's The Mission (1986), Brian De Palma's The Untouchables (1987) and Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso (1988), plus a rare example of sung opening credits for Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Hawks and the Sparrows (1966).14 stars
**!Átame!
**Cinema Paradiso
**The Untouchables
*Lolita (1997)
*The Mission
*Once upon a Time in America
*C'era una volta il West
*Il buono, il bruto, il cattivo
*Disclosure
*Wolf
*Le Secret- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Franz Waxman (Wachsmann) pursued his dream of a career in music despite his family's misgivings. He worked for several years as a bank teller and paid for piano, harmony and composition lessons with his salary. He later moved to Berlin, where he continued his study and progress as a musician. He was able to support himself by playing and arranging for a popular German jazz band, Weintraub Syncopaters, in the late 1920s. Friedrich Hollaender, who had written some music for the Weintraubs, gave Waxman his first chance to move into movie scoring by hiring him to orchestrate and conduct Hollander's score (an arrangement of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) for the film that launched Marlene Dietrich, The Blue Angel (1930), directed by Josef von Sternberg. During 1932 Waxman, a Jew, joined many other Jews leaving Germany as the Nazi vise closed irrevocably on free society. He continued working with Germanfilm makers in France. Waxman did musical arranging and co-scoring, usually with Allan Gray, for approximately 15 European movies (his first independent score was in 1932). "The Blue Angel" producer Erich Pommer liked Waxman's work and offered him the composing job for Liliom (1934), directed by Fritz Lang in France.
Pommer decided to do Music in the Air (1934), a Jerome Kern musical, which meant going to Hollywood. Waxman was asked to come along to do the arranging. Needing no further reason to remain in Europe as the Nazi clouds darkened over it, Waxman began a new chapter in Hollywood film music history. He fortunately had some spare time to study with 'Arnold Schoenberg' after coming to Los Angeles, but he was soon talking to another new arrival, English director James Whale, about scoring Bride of Frankenstein (1935) for Universal. Waxman gave Whale what he wanted--an unusual score to fit the quirky, somewhat over-the-top content of the film (in fact, some of this score was later used in other films). As Waxman worked for Universal through the 1930s, he found himself in assembly-line mode, sometimes sharing scoring credit, and doing a lot of arranging stock music, which was usually used for the studio's many serials. This cranked up Waxman's yearly film output to around 20 or so through 1940.
By 1940, however, he was composing original music scores for other studios, beginning with the romantic music for Selznick Studios' Rebecca (1940)--the first Hollywood film for Alfred Hitchcock--and whimsical fare for MGM's The Philadelphia Story (1940). In 1941 he was doing more work for MGM with Honky Tonk (1941) and his second Hitchcock score, Suspicion (1941) from RKO. By 1943 and for the rest of the decade Waxman was usually scoring for Warner Bros., starting with Destination Tokyo (1943) and including music for some of that studio's classics of the period, such as To Have and Have Not (1944) with Humphrey Bogart. Through the decade he was nominated for an Oscar seven times for Best Film Score.
Waxman moved on to Paramount through the first half of the 1950s and garnered his two Oscars in back--to-back wins for Sunset Blvd. (1950) and A Place in the Sun (1951). This recognition finally underscored what was at the heart of all of Waxman's music: seriously focused attention on relaying a film's story through the content of the music. He would continue his scoring work for several studios into the 1960s, with three more nominations. Some of his music in the 1950s was recycled from his previous scores, as in the case of his third assignment for Hitchcock, Rear Window (1954) which contained used music. Waxman was also active in contemporary classical music. In 1947 he founded the Los Angeles International Music Festival and, as Music Director and Conductor, brought the premieres of works by world renowned contemporary composers to the Los Angeles cultural scene. Among his own output of such music was his popular "Carmen Fantasy" for violin and orchestra. Waxman also composed for TV's Gunsmoke (1955), The Fugitive (1963), Peyton Place (1964) (he had composed the music for the film the series was based on, Peyton Place (1957)) and others. Waxman died relatively young, but because of his steady output, only fellow emigrant Max Steiner (who was nearly 20 years older and whose output entailed more than 200 arrangements of stock music, rather than original scores) was a more prolific early Hollywood composer.14 stars
**Rear Window
**Sunset Blvd.
**Rebecca
**A Place in the Sun
**The Nun's Story
*Suspicion
*Stalag 17
*The Two Mrs. Carrolls
*The Paradine Case- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Alex North studied music at the Curtis Institute of Philadelphia, then won a scholarship to Juilliard in New York (1929) and the Moscow Conservatoire (1933), making him the first-ever American to become a member of the Union of Soviet Composers. In Europe, he worked as music director for the Latvian State Theatre, before returning to the U.S. in 1935 to perfect his craft under the auspices of Aaron Copland. At the same time, he produced his first compositions, including two symphonies, chamber music and dance scores for Martha Graham and Agnes de Mille. After a spell in Mexico as conductor/composer, he served as a captain with the U.S. Army, in charge of 'self-entertainment programs' for hospitalised psychiatric patients. He also did his first film work, scoring documentaries for the Office of War Information.
Profoundly influenced by, above all, Duke Ellington, North began to write several innovative compositions in jazz. His 'Revue for Clarinet and Orchestra' was originally commissioned by Benny Goodman and first performed in 1946 under the direction of Goodman and Leonard Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Joining ASCAP in 1947, North went on to compose theatrical scores, including 'Death of a Salesman' for Elia Kazan and this opened the door to Hollywood. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) was the first all-jazz score ever written for a motion picture. His next assignment was the film version of Death of a Salesman (1951), followed by Viva Zapata! (1952), for which he used traditional instruments, including marimbas and timbales.
Much of his subsequent work was characterised by sparse instrumentation (as, for example, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and the Oscar-nominated Under the Volcano (1984)). He used jazz again, evocatively, to score The Long, Hot Summer (1958) and The Sound and the Fury (1959), but was rather less successful on more conventional themes, such as The Misfits (1961). One of his most beautiful and lyrical works was the love theme from Spartacus (1960). For the small screen, he composed the music for the two instalments of the popular miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man (1976). Alex North was Oscar-nominated fifteen times but only received the coveted statuette as a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1986.14 stars
**Spartacus
**The Misfits
**Cleopatra
**The Children's Hour
**A Streetcar Named Desire
**Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
*Good Morning, Vietnam
*Ghost- Music Department
- Composer
- Art Director
Trained in classical music at Columbia University, Webb worked on Broadway by the time he was in his mid-20's, not only composing incidental music, but co-writing original plays with his older brother, the director Kenneth S. Webb. By 1923, he worked as conductor/arranger on hit shows like "Music Box Revue" and "Stepping Stones". Two years later, a collaboration with his illustrious peer Max Steiner led to a lasting friendship, as well as (by his own admission) profoundly influencing his own future career as a composer. At the end of the decade, Steiner, then head of the music department at RKO, persuaded Webb to accept an assignment in Hollywood, scoring the musical Rio Rita (1929).
Steiner remained in charge until his departure in 1935, when Webb effectively took his place, remaining a fixture at RKO until 1955. He often worked in conjunction with Bernard Herrmann and C. Bakaleinikoff, supervising, conducting and composing scores for literally hundreds of films. As a composer, his style was somewhat akin to that of Herbert Stothart, in that it was more subtle, less overtly dramatic, yet still perfectly integrated with the action, or imperceptibly underscoring the dialogue. A good example is the romantic violin-laden score for the sentimental drama The Enchanted Cottage (1945). The piano concerto from this film was performed later that year at the Hollywood Bowl.
Better still, were his understated, eerily effective horror themes, setting the mood for the films of Val Lewton, of which Cat People (1942) and The Body Snatcher (1945) are absolute standouts. Webb's other noteworthy contribution was in the field of thrillers and films noir, notably The Spiral Staircase (1946), Notorious (1946) and Out of the Past (1947). After RKO wound down, Webb free-lanced for several years, working variously at Warners, Paramount and for John Wayne's Batjac Productions. Though his entire collection of manuscripts was sadly lost in a house fire, copies of his scores from the RKO vaults have been preserved at UCLA.14 stars
**Notorious
**The Spiral Staircase
**Bringing Up Baby
**The Body Snatcher
*Kitty Foyle
*Journey into Fear
*Cat People
*Marty
*Teacher's Pet
*The Falcon Out West- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Alfred Newman is an American composer, arranger, and conductor of film music.
From his start as a music prodigy, he came to be regarded as a respected figure in the history of film music. He won nine Academy Awards and was nominated 45 times, contributing to the Newmans being the most nominated Academy Award extended family, with a collective 92 nominations in various music categories.
In a career spanning more than four decades, Newman composed the scores for over 200 motion pictures. Some of his most famous scores include All About Eve (1950), Anastasia (1956), Wuthering Heights (1939), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), The Mark of Zorro (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Song of Bernadette (1943), Captain from Castile (1947), Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), How the West Was Won (1962), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), and his final score, Airport (1970), all of which were nominated for or won Academy Awards. He is perhaps best known for composing the fanfare which accompanies the studio logo at the beginning of 20th Century Fox's productions.
Newman was highly regarded as a conductor, and arranged and conducted many scores by other composers, including George Gershwin, Charles Chaplin, and Irving Berlin. He also conducted the music for many film adaptations of Broadway musicals (having worked on Broadway for ten years before coming to Hollywood), as well as many original Hollywood musicals.
He was among the first musicians to compose and conduct original music during Hollywood's Golden Age of movies, later becoming a respected and powerful music director in the history of Hollywood.13 stars
**The Seven Year Itch
**All about Eve
*Gentlemen's Agreement
*Foreign Correspondent
*Airport
*How the West Was Won
*How Green Was My Valley
*The Prisoner of Zenda
*Wuthering Heights
*Heaven Can Wait
*The Song of Bernadette- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Thomas Newman is an American film score composer. He was born in Los Angeles. His father was notable film score composer Alfred Newman (1900-1970). The Newman family is of Russian-Jewish descent, and includes several other well-known musicians. Thomas' mother Martha Louis Montgomery (1920-2005) wanted her sons to have a musical education. Thomas attended regular lessons in violin as a child. An older Thomas received his musical education while attending the University of Southern California and Yale University. Thomas Newman graduated as Bachelor of Arts in 1977, and a Master of Music in 1978.
Thomas originally composed music for theatrical productions in Broadway, working with his mentor Stephen Sondheim. His uncle Lionel Newman asked him to compose music for the television series "The Paper Chase" (1978-1979, 1986), which was Thomas' first credit in a television production.
In the 1980s, Thomas first worked in film. Composer John Williams, a close family friend, hired Thomas to work in the music department for space opera film "Return of the Jedi" (1983). Thomas' main work in the film was orchestrating the music in a scene where character Darth Vader dies. Afterwards, Thomas was approached by film producer Scott Rudin and hired to work as a film score composer in his own right. His first work in the field was the film score of romantic drama "Reckless" (1984).
While he worked regularly as a film score composer during the 1980s, Thomas reportedly felt he had to retrain himself for a hard and demanding job. It reportedly took him 8 years to not feel fraudulent in his efforts. In 1994, Thomas received his first Academy Award nominations, for the film scores of "The Shawshank Redemption" (1994) and "Little Women" (1994). He lost the Award to rival composer Hans Zimmer, who had been nominated for the film score of the animated film "The Lion King" (1994).
Newman was an established and increasingly famous composer in the 1990s. He received further Academy Award nominations, although he never actually won. Among his more notable works was the film score of the drama film "American Beauty" (1999), which earned Thomas both a Grammy and a BAFTA award. Newman had a good working relationship with the film's director Sam Mendes. Mendes has kept hiring Thomas as the composer for most of his films. The main exception being the comedy-drama film "Away We Go" (2009), which did not have a film score.
In the 2000s, Thomas continued working in high-profile films, such as "Road to Perdition" (2002), "Finding Nemo" (2003), and "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events". By 2006, he had been nominated eight times for an Academy Award, while never winning it. He started joking about his lack of victories in public.
In 2008, Thomas was nominated for two Academy Awards, for both the film score and an original song for the animated film "WALL-E" (2008). He won neither, though the hit song "Down to Earth" earned him a Grammy Award. He continues to work regularly in the 2010s. Among his more acclaimed works were the film scores for spy film "Skyfall" (2012) and period drama "Saving Mr. Banks" (2013). He has continued being nominated for Academy Awards. As of 2020, he has been nominated 15 times for the Academy Award. He is the most nominated living composer to have never actually won an Academy Award, tied with Alex North. He has won a total of 5 Grammy awards.13 stars
**The Shawshank Redemption
**Little Children
**The Horse Whisperer
**American Beauty
**White Oleander
*The People vs. Larry Flint
*Desperately Seeking Susan
*Deceived- Music Department
- Composer
- Additional Crew
Elmer Bernstein was educated at the Walden School and New York University. He served in the US Army Air Corps in World War II, writing scores for the service radio unit. He also wrote and arranged musical numbers for Glenn Miller's Army Air Force Band. A prolific and respected film music composer, he was a protégé of Aaron Copland, who studied music with Roger Sessions and Stefan Wolpe. Bernstein worked in various artistic endeavors, including painting and the theatre and also performed as an actor and dancer. Among his early composition work were scores for United Nations radio programs and television and industrial documentaries. His original scores for films range over an enormous variety of styles, with his groundbreaking jazz score for The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), light musical comedies such as his Oscar-winning Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) score, and perhaps his most familiar score, for the western The Magnificent Seven (1960). Between 1963 and 1969, Bernstein served as vice president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.
A few years before before his death, he acquired something of a cult status among fans of English football when his familiar main theme for The Great Escape (1963) was adopted by them and hummed and played, lustily, during matches.13 stars
**To Kill a Mockingbird
**Birdman of Alcatraz
**The Age of Innocence
*The Ten Commandments
*Twilight
*Desire under the Elms
*The Great Escape
*Sweet Smell of Success
*Hud
*Three Amigos!- Music Department
- Composer
- Additional Crew
Born on February 10, 1929, Jerry Goldsmith studied piano with Jakob Gimpel and composition, theory, and counterpoint with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. He also attended classes in film composition given by Miklós Rózsa at the Univeristy of Southern California. In 1950, he was employed as a clerk typist in the music department at CBS. There, he was given his first embryonic assignments as a composer for radio shows such as "Romance" and "CBS Radio Workshop". He wrote one score a week for these shows, which were performed live on transmission. He stayed with CBS until 1960, having already scored The Twilight Zone (1959). He was hired by Revue Studios to score their series Thriller (1960). It was here that he met the influential film composer Alfred Newman who hired Goldsmith to score the film Lonely Are the Brave (1962), his first major feature film score. An experimentalist, Goldsmith constantly pushed forward the bounds of film music: Planet of the Apes (1968) included horns blown without mouthpieces and a bass clarinetist fingering the notes but not blowing. He was unafraid to use the wide variety of electronic sounds and instruments which had become available, although he did not use them for their own sake.
He rose rapidly to the top of his profession in the early to mid-1960s, with scores such as Freud (1962), A Patch of Blue (1965) and The Sand Pebbles (1966). In fact, he received Oscar nominations for all three and another in the 1960s for Planet of the Apes (1968). From then onwards, his career and reputation was secure and he scored an astonishing variety of films during the next 30 years or so, from Patton (1970) to Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and from Chinatown (1974) to The Boys from Brazil (1978). He received 17 Oscar nominations but won only once, for The Omen (1976) in 1977 (Goldsmith himself dismissed the thought of even getting a nomination for work on a "horror show"). He enjoyed giving concerts of his music and performed all over the world, notably in London, where he built up a strong relationship with London Symphony Orchestra.
Jerry Goldsmith died at age 75 on July 21, 2004 after a long battle with cancer.12 stars
**Basic Instinct
**Chinatown
**Logan's Run
*The Omen
*The Great Train Robbery
*Patton
*Psycho 2
*L.A. Confidential
*Malice- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
A child prodigy, Miklos Rózsa learned to play the violin at the age of five and read music before he was able to read words. In 1926, he began studying at the Leipzig Conservatory where he was considered a brilliant student. He obtained his doctorate in music in 1930. Moving to Paris the following year, Rózsa had much of his own chamber music performed, as well as his 'Variations on a Hungarian Peasant Song' and his 'Symphony and Serenade for Small Orchestra'. However, he soon became disenchanted with meagre wages for playing classical music in concert. Attempting to change his financial situation, Rózsa managed to secure a contract with Pathe records to compose music for use in intermissions between movies. This was to be his first step in entering the more lucrative field of film composition. In 1935, Rózsa went to London after being invited by the Hungarian Legation to write the music for a ballet. The resulting work, 'Hungaria', so impressed the director Jacques Feyder that he set up a meeting with fellow Hungarian Alexander Korda, who then commissioned him to write an opulent score for the romantic drama Knight Without Armor (1937). Rózsa later recalled having to learn to write music for films 'the hard way': "I bought one German and one Russian book on the technique of film music and everything I learned from these books was absolutely wrong! But then I had long conferences with Muir Mathieson, who was the music director and conductor for Korda, and somehow I learned."
While writing the score for The Thief of Bagdad (1940), Rózsa relocated to Hollywood where he remained gainfully employed over the next four decades. An expert at orchestration and counterpoint with a great flair for the dramatic, he often concentrated on the psychological aspects of a film. One of his innovations was the use of a theremin for the famous dream sequence in Spellbound (1945) which accompanies Salvador Dalí's transcendental nightmare images. Few composers have managed to convey suspense and tension as powerfully as Rózsa with his eerily haunting scores for some of the Golden Era's best films noir (Double Indemnity (1944), The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), The Killers (1946), The Naked City (1948)) or his lush, stirring music for spectacular epics (Quo Vadis (1951), Ivanhoe (1952), El Cid (1961)). In addition to winning three Oscars for his film work, Rózsa also continued as a prolific composer of classical music, including Violin and Piano Concertos, a Concerto for String Orchestra, a Sinfonia Concertante and Notturno Ungherese (influenced, respectively, by Stravinsky and Bartók). In 1945, he was appointed Professor of Composition at the University of Southern California where also lectured on the subject for many years.12 stars
**Quo Vadis
**Spellbound
**Double Indemnity
**Ben-Hur
*Ivanhoe
*El Cid
*The Lost Weekend
*Adam's Rib- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
As Danny Elfman was growing up in the Los Angeles area, he was largely unaware of his talent for composing. It wasn't until the early 1970s that Danny and his older brother Richard Elfman started a musical troupe while in Paris; the group "Mystic Knights of Oingo-Boingo" was created for Richard's directorial debut, Forbidden Zone (1980) (now considered a cult classic by Elfman fans). The group's name went through many incarnations over the years, beginning with "The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo" and eventually just Oingo Boingo. While continuing to compose eclectic, intelligent rock music for his L.A.-based band (some of which had been used in various film soundtracks, e.g. Weird Science (1985)), Danny formed a friendship with young director Tim Burton, who was then a fan of Oingo Boingo. Danny went on to score the soundtrack of Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985), Danny's first orchestral film score. The Elfman-Burton partnership continued (most notably through the hugely-successful "Batman" flicks) and opened doors of opportunity for Danny, who has been referred to as "Hollywood's hottest film composer".11 stars
**Silver Linings Playbook
**To Die For
*Big Eyes
*Hitchcock
*Freeway
*A Simple Plan
*Anywhere But Here
*Notorious
*Batman- Composer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
In his ongoing, decades-long career as a composer, Alan Silvestri has blazed an innovative trail with his exciting and melodic scores, winning the applause of Hollywood and movie audiences the world over. With a credit list of over 100 films Silvestri has composed some of the most recognizable and beloved themes in movie history. His efforts have been recognized with two Oscar nominations, two Golden Globe nominations, three Grammy awards, two Emmy awards, and numerous International Film Music Critics Awards, Saturn Awards, and Hollywood Music In Media Awards.
Born in New York City and raised in Teaneck, New Jersey, Silvestri first dreamed of becoming a jazz guitar player. After spending two years at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, he hit the road as a performer and arranger. Landing in Hollywood at the age of 22, he found himself successfully composing the music for 1972's "The Doberman Gang" which established his place in the world of film composing.
The 1970s witnessed the rise of energetic synth-pop scores, establishing Silvestri as the action rhythmatist for TV's highway patrol hit "CHiPs." This action driven score caught the ear of a young filmmaker named Robert Zemeckis, whose hit film, 1984's "Romancing the Stone," was the perfect first date for the composer and director. It's success became the basis of a decades long collaboration that continues to this day. Their numerous collaborations have taken them through fascinating landscapes and stylistic variations, from the "Back to the Future" trilogy to the jazzy world of Toontown in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" the tension filled rooms of "What Lies Beneath" and "Death Becomes Her", to the cosmic wonder of "Contact;" the emotional isolation of "Castaway", to the magic of the "Polar Express". But perhaps no film collaboration defines their creative relationship better than Zemeckis' 1994 Best Picture winner, "Forrest Gump", for which Silvestri's gift for melodically beautiful themes earned him an Oscar and Golden Globe nomination and the affection of film music lovers everywhere. This 35 year, 21 film collaboration includes such recent films as "Flight", "Allied" and most recently "Welcome To Marwen". Zemeckis and Silvestri are currently working on "The Witches" based on Roald Dahl's 1973 classic book scheduled for release in October of 2020.
Though the Zemeckis/Silvestri collaboration is legendary, Silvestri has scored films of every imaginable style and genre. His energy has brought excitement and emotion to the hard-hitting orchestral scores for Steven Spielberg's "Ready Player One", James Cameron's "The Abyss" as well as "Predator" and "The Mummy Returns." Alan's diversity is on full display in family entertainment films such as "The Father of the Bride 1 and 2", "Parent Trap", "Stuart Little 1 and 2", Disney's "Lilo and Stitch", "The Croods" as well as "Night at the Museum 1, 2 and 3" while his passion for melody fuels the romantic emotion of films like "The Bodyguard" and "What Women Want".
Most recently, Alan has composed the music for Marvel's "Avengers: Endgame." The film is the culmination of a partnership with Marvel that began in 2011 with Alan's dynamically heroic score for "Captain America: The First Avenger" followed by "Avengers". Since 2011 Alan's collaboration with Marvel helped propel "The Avengers" and "Avengers: Infinity War" to spectacular world-wide success.
Silvestri's success has also crossed into the world of songwriting. His partnership with Six-Time Grammy Award winner Glen Ballard has produced hits such as the Grammy-winning and Oscar-nominated song "Believe" (Josh Groban) for "The Polar Express", "Butterfly Fly Away" (Miley Cyrus) for "Hannah Montana The Movie", "God Bless Us Everyone" (Andrea Bocelli) for "A Christmas Carol" and "A Hero Comes Home" (Idina Menzel) for "Beowulf".
Alan and his wife Sandra are long time residents of California's central coast. In 1998 the Silvestri family embarked on a new venture as the founders of Silvestri Vineyards. Their wines show that lovingly cultivated fruit has a music all its own. "There's something about the elemental side of winemaking that appeals to me," he says. "Both music making and wine making involve a magical blending of art and science. Just as each note brings it own voice to the melody, each vine brings it's own unique personality to the wine."
Their other great passion is the ongoing search for the cure to Type 1 Juvenile Diabetes. With the diagnosis of their son at two years of age (now 29) they continue to work the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and dream of the day this disease (and all of the suffering it brings to so many) will finally become a thing of the past.11 stars
**The Bodyguard
**Serendipity
*Back to the Future
*Overboard
*Outrageous Fortune
*Contact
*The Parent Trap
*Practical Magic
*What Lies Beneath- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
James Newton Howard attended the University of Southern California's music school, but dropped out to tour with Elton John, and eventually compose music for film and television. He started with Head Office (1985) in 1985. He has been nominated for eight Academy Awards. He currently is a songwriter, record producer, conductor, keyboardist, and film composer.11 stars
**Pretty Woman
**The Devil's Advocate
**Confessions of a Shopaholic
*Romy and Michele's High School Reunion
*Tough Guys
*The Fugitive
*King Kong (2005)
*My Best Friend's Wedding- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Georges Delerue was born on 12 March 1925 in Roubaix, Nord, France. He was a composer and actor, known for Platoon (1986), Twins (1988) and The Day of the Dolphin (1973). He was married to Micheline Gautron. He died on 20 March 1992 in Los Angeles, California, USA.10 stars
**Agnes of God
**Steel Magnolias
**A Man for All Seasons
**L'Été meurtrier
*The High Commissioner
*Jules et Jim- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Musical talent ran in Marvin Hamlisch's family - his father was an accordionist, and at seven Hamlisch was the youngest student ever accepted by Manhattan's Julliard School of Music. Hamlich furthered his education by taking night classes at Queens College and working during the day as a rehearsal pianist for Broadway shows. He eventually began composing songs for stage productions. In 1968 he met film producer Sam Spiegel, resulting in his first film score for The Swimmer (1968) (he had previously written some songs for a low-budget teen epic, Ski Party (1965), but did not do the score for it). Hamlisch became well versed in the very specialized field of film scoring. In addition to scoring films, he ventured into film production as co-producer of The Entertainer (1975). In 1976 he won a Tony award for his scoring of the Broadway show, A Chorus Line (1985).10 stars
**The Way We Were
**The Spy Who Loved Me
*The Prisoner of Second Avenue
*Bananas
*Take the Money and Run
*Three Men and a Baby
*The Sting
*Ordinary People- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
German-born composer Hans Zimmer is recognized as one of Hollywood's most innovative musical talents. He featured in the music video for The Buggles' single "Video Killed the Radio Star", which became a worldwide hit and helped usher in a new era of global entertainment as the first music video to be aired on MTV (August 1, 1981).
Hans Florian Zimmer was born in Frankfurt am Main, then in West Germany, the son of Brigitte (Weil) and Hans Joachim Zimmer. He entered the world of film music in London during a long collaboration with famed composer and mentor Stanley Myers, which included the film My Beautiful Laundrette (1985). He soon began work on several successful solo projects, including the critically acclaimed A World Apart, and during these years Zimmer pioneered the use of combining old and new musical technologies. Today, this work has earned him the reputation of being the father of integrating the electronic musical world with traditional orchestral arrangements.
A turning point in Zimmer's career came in 1988 when he was asked to score Rain Man for director Barry Levinson. The film went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture of the Year and earned Zimmer his first Academy Award Nomination for Best Original Score. The next year, Zimmer composed the score for another Best Picture Oscar recipient, Driving Miss Daisy (1989), starring Jessica Tandy, and Morgan Freeman.
Having already scored two Best Picture winners, in the early 1990s, Zimmer cemented his position as a preeminent talent with the award-winning score for The Lion King (1994). The soundtrack has sold over 15 million copies to date and earned him an Academy Award for Best Original Score, a Golden Globe, an American Music Award, a Tony, and two Grammy Awards. In total, Zimmer's work has been nominated for 7 Golden Globes, 7 Grammys and seven Oscars for Rain Man (1988), Gladiator (2000), The Lion King (1994), As Good as It Gets (1997), The The Preacher's Wife (1996), The Thin Red Line (1998), The Prince of Egypt (1998), and The Last Samurai (2003).
With his career in full swing, Zimmer was anxious to replicate the mentoring experience he had benefited from under Stanley Myers' guidance. With state-of-the-art technology and a supportive creative environment, Zimmer was able to offer film-scoring opportunities to young composers at his Santa Monica-based musical "think tank." This approach helped launch the careers of such notable composers as Mark Mancina, John Powell, Harry Gregson-Williams, Nick Glennie-Smith, and Klaus Badelt.
In 2000, Zimmer scored the music for Gladiator (2000), for which he received an Oscar nomination, in addition to Golden Globe and Broadcast Film Critics Awards for his epic score. It sold more than three million copies worldwide and spawned a second album Gladiator: More Music From The Motion Picture, released on the Universal Classics/Decca label. Zimmer's other scores that year included Mission: Impossible II (2000), The Road to El Dorado (2000), and An Everlasting Piece (2000), directed by Barry Levinson.
Some of his other impressive scores include Pearl Harbor (2001), The Ring (2002), four films directed by Ridley Scott; Matchstick Men (2003), Hannibal (2001), Black Hawk Down (2001), and Thelma & Louise (1991), Penny Marshall's Riding in Cars with Boys (2001), and A League of Their Own (1992), Tony Scott's True Romance (1993), Tears of the Sun (2003), Ron Howard's Backdraft (1991), Days of Thunder (1990), Smilla's Sense of Snow (1997), and the animated Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) for which he also co-wrote four of the songs with Bryan Adams, including the Golden Globe nominated Here I Am.
At the 27th annual Flanders International Film Festival, Zimmer performed live for the first time in concert with a 100-piece orchestra and a 100-voice choir. Choosing selections from his impressive body of work, Zimmer performed newly orchestrated concert versions of Gladiator, Mission: Impossible II (2000), Rain Man (1988), The Lion King (1994), and The Thin Red Line (1998). The concert was recorded by Decca and released as a concert album entitled "The Wings Of A Film: The Music Of Hans Zimmer."
In 2003, Zimmer completed his 100th film score for the film The Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise, for which he received both a Golden Globe and a Broadcast Film Critics nomination. Zimmer then scored Nancy Meyers' comedy Something's Gotta Give (2003), the animated Dreamworks film, Shark Tale (2004) (featuring voices of Will Smith, Renée Zellweger, Robert De Niro, Jack Black, and Martin Scorsese), and Jim Brooks' Spanglish (2004) starring Adam Sandler and Téa Leoni (for which he also received a Golden Globe nomination). His 2005 projects include Paramount's The Weather Man (2005) starring Nicolas Cage, Dreamworks' Madagascar (2005), and the Warner Bros. summer release, Batman Begins (2005).
Zimmer's additional honors and awards include the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award in Film Composition from the National Board of Review, and the Frederick Loewe Award in 2003 at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. He has also received ASCAP's Henry Mancini Award for Lifetime Achievement. Hans and his wife live in Los Angeles and he is the father of four children.10 stars
**Rain Man
*The Lion King
*The Simpsons Movie
*The Prince of Egypt
*Thelma & Louise
*The Preacher's Wife
*The Holiday
*Driving Miss Daisy
*Bird on a Wire- Composer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Unlike many musicians who started to learn music while still in their childhood, Maurice Jarre was already late in his teens when he discovered music and decided to make a career in that field. Against his father's will, he enrolled at Conservatoire de Paris where he studied percussions, composition and harmonies. He also met and studied under Joseph Martenot, inventor of the Martenot Waves, an electronic keyboard that prefigured the modern synthesizer.
After leaving the Conservatoire, Jarre played percussion and Martenot Waves for a while at Jean-Louis Barrault's theater. In 1950, another actor-director, Jean Vilar , asked Jarre to score his production of Kleist's 'The Princess of Homburg', the first score Jarre wrote. Shortly after, Vilar created the 'Théâtre National Populaire' and hired Jarre as permanent composer, an association that lasted 12 years.
In 1951, filmmaker Georges Franju asked him to write the music of his 23 minutes documentary Hôtel des Invalides (1952), Jarre's first composition for the movie screen. His first full-length feature, again directed by Georges Franju, was Head Against the Wall (1959) followed by Franju's best known film, Eyes Without a Face (1960).
Jarre's career took a spectacular turn in 1961 when producer Sam Spiegel asked him to work on David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Initially, three composers were supposed to write the score, but for various reasons, Jarre ended up writing all the music himself and won his first Oscar. His second collaboration with David Lean on Doctor Zhivago (1965) earned him another Oscar and obtained a level of success rarely achieved by a film score. He collaborated with Lean again on Ryan's Daughter (1970) and A Passage to India (1984) for which he received a third Academy Award. He was set to score Lean's next movie, 'Nostromo', but the director became ill and died before the film could ever get made.
He also worked for directors as diverse as William Wyler (The Collector (1965)); John Huston (three films); Franco Zeffirelli (Jesus of Nazareth (1977)); Volker Schlöndorff (The Tin Drum (1979) [The Tin Drum] and Circle of Deceit (1981) [Circle of Deceit]); Peter Weir (four films); Michael Apted (Gorillas in the Mist (1988)) and Alfonso Arau (A Walk in the Clouds (1995)).
Mainly perceived as a symphonist and known for his prominent use of percussions, Jarre often integrated ethnic instruments in his orchestrations like cithara on 'Lawrence of Arabia' or fujara (an old Slovak flute) on 'The Tin Drum'. During the eighties, he incorporated synthetic sounds in his music, writing his first entirely electronic score for The Year of Living Dangerously (1982). His son Jean-Michel Jarre is a well-known popular musician.9 stars
**Ryan's Daughter
**Doctor Zhivago
**Fatal Attraction
*Lawrence of Arabia
*Topaz
*Ghost- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Alberto Iglesias was born in 1955 in Donostia-San Sebastián, Guipúzcoa, País Vasco, Spain. He is a composer and actor, known for The Skin I Live In (2011), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) and The Constant Gardener (2005).9 stars
**La Piel que habito
**Hable con ella
**Tierra
*Te doy mis ojos
*The Constant Gardener
*Volver- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
John Morris was born on 18 October 1926 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, USA. He was a composer, known for Blazing Saddles (1974), The Elephant Man (1980) and Coach (1989). He was married to Francesca Bosetti. He died on 25 January 2018 in Red Hook, New York, USA.9 stars
**The Elephant Man
**The Woman in Red
**The Producers
*Blazing Saddles
*Silent Movie
*Dirty Dancing- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Composer and conductor Alexandre Desplat, Oscar winner and seven-time Academy Award nominated, for his prolific filmography and his collaborations with Stephen Frears, Terrence Malick, Ang Lee, Kathryn Bigelow, Jacques Audiard, Wes Anderson, Roman Polanski, George Clooney or Matteo Garrone is one of the most worthy heirs of the French masters of film music.
Brought up in a cultural and musical mix thanks to his Greek mother and his French father who studied and got married in California, he grew up listening to French symphonists, Ravel or Debussy , world music and jazz.
He studied piano and trumpet before choosing the flute as the main instrument. As a free auditor in Claude Ballif's analysis class at the CNSM, he enriches his classical musical education by studying Brazilian and African music. He will record later with Carlinhos Brown or Ray Lema.
Passionate about film music, it's as much his musical sensitivity as his intimate approach to cinematographic language that will allow his privileged relationship with filmmakers. Inspired by the scores of Maurice Jarre, Bernard Herrmann, Nino Rota or Georges Delerue, it is after hearing the score of John Williams for Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) that he decides to compose exclusively for the big screen.
During the recording of his first feature film he meets violinist Dominique Lemonnier. This is the beginning of an exceptional artistic exchange as she becomes her favorite soloist, artistic director and wife. With his strong sense of interpretation, his creative spirit and his singular violin playing, Solré inspired Alexandre's compositions, influencing his music in depth, initiating a new way of writing for the strings in the cinema.
Collaborator of Jacques Audiard since his first film, he creates for his works strong and singular compositions and he won in 2005 for The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005) the Silver Bear of the Berlinale, and his first Caesar. He works in France with Philippe de Broca and Francis Girod but Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003) of Peter Webber, his 50th score for the film, he gets a first Golden Globe nomination and BAFTA and began his rise in Hollywood. Leading American career and European collaborations and remaining faithful to his directors, he composes among others Syriana (2005)'s scores of Stephen Gaghan, Birth (2004) of Jonathan Glazer, Coco Before Chanel (2009) by Anne Fontaine, Army of Crime (2009) by Robert Guédiguian, The Heir Apparent: Largo Winch (2008) by Jérôme Salle, Intimate Enemies (2007) or Hostage (2005) by Florent-Emilio Siri.
Prizes and collaborations with the greatest directors follow one another. In 2007, he received his first Oscar nomination for Stephen Frears's The Queen (2006) and won his first European Film Award. The same year, he won the Golden Globe, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award, and the World Soundtrack Award for John Curran's score The Painted Veil (2006), performed by pianist Láng Lang. He composed in 2008 for Lust, Caution (2007) by Ang Lee and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) by David Fincher which will earn him a second Oscar nomination and a fourth Golden Globes and BAFTA nomination.
With his score for The Ghost Writer (2010) by Roman Polanski, he won in 2010 a second César and a second European Film Award. The same year he wrote the music of The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009) by Chris Weitz, whose album was a platinum record, and Tom Hooper's The King's Speech (2010) for which he won the BAFTA, the Grammy Award, and was nominated for the fourth time at the Oscars and for the fifth time at the Golden Globes.
In 2010-2011 he wrote the music of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011) which became the third greatest success of all time. He composed in 2011 nine partitions, The Tree of Life (2011) of Terrence Malick, Carnage (2011) by Roman Polanski, Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) by George Clooney , which earned him another Oscar nomination, The Well-Digger's Daughter (2011) by Daniel Auteuil and The Ides of March (2011) by George Clooney.
In 2012 he worked with Kathryn Bigelow for Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Matteo Garrone for Reality (2012), Gilles Bourdos for Renoir (2012), Jérôme Salle for Zulu (2013), George Clooney for Moonrise Kingdom (2012) and Jacques Audiard for Rust and Bone (2012) for which he won a third Cesar. For his score of Argo (2012) of Ben Affleck, Oscar for Best Picture, it is named for the sixth time BAFTA, and for the fifth time at the Golden Globes and the Oscars.
He signed in 2013 the partition The Monuments Men (2014) from George Clooney, Venus in Fur (2013) of Roman Polanski, and was appointed to the BAFTAs and the Oscars for Philomena (2013) of Stephen Frears.
In 2014 he composed the music Godzilla (2014) of Gareth Edwards, and receives exceptional fact, two Oscar nominations for The Imitation Game (2014) of Morten Tyldum and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) by George Clooney, for which he won a BAFTA, Grammy and Oscar.
Member of the jury of the Cannes Film Festival in 2012, he became in 2014 the first composer President of the jury of the Venice Film Festival. Crowning long years of collaboration, he directed the London Symphony Orchestra in December 2014 for a concert of his works at the Barbican Theater in London.
In 2018, Alexandre Desplat received a second Oscar, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for The Shape of Water (2017) of Guillermo del Toro.9 stars
**Girl with a Pearl Earring
**Tamara Drewe
*The Luzhin Defense
*The Painted Veil
*Casanova
*Birth
*Chéri- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Angelo Badalamenti was born on 22 March 1937 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He was a composer and actor, known for Mulholland Drive (2001), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) and Lost Highway (1997). He was married to Lonny Irgens. He died on 11 December 2022 in Lincoln Park, New Jersey, USA.9 stars
**Blue Velvet
**Wild at Heart
**Mulholland Dr.
*Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
*Holy Smoke
*La Cité des enfants perdus- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Violinist and conductor Victor Young was a prolific composer and arranger, who worked on more than 300 film scores over a period of twenty years. He came from an impoverished, but musical background and was trained on the violin at the Warsaw Imperial Conservatory, later studying piano in Paris under the French master Isidor Philipp. A prodigious talent, Young made his professional debut as a teenager with the Warsaw Philharmonic. However, World War I intervened, and he spent several months interned in a prison facility in Russia. Somehow, he was able to escape. By 1920, he had found his way to the United States and resumed work as a violinist with the Central Park Casino Orchestra in Chicago. He also diversified as an arranger and conductor for radio and the theatre. His first connection with the film industry came about, when he secured a position as assistant director with the Balaban and Katz cinema chain, writing and arranging as many as five (silent) film scores a week.
During the late 1920's, Young was back as musical director for 'Harvest of Stars' on radio, and as a talent scout for Edison Records. He briefly arranged for bandleader Ted Fio Rito before fronting his own orchestra in 1935, backed by a recording deal with Decca. He worked with many of the great vocalists of the period, including Judy Garland, Lee Wiley and The Boswell Sisters. His high profile brought him to the attention of Paramount, where he was signed to a one-year contract in 1936. He worked for the studio again between 1940 and 1949, but, by that time, his reputation had become so formidable that he came to be regarded as the pre-eminent film composer, and assigned the lion's share of A-grade features. His music subtly and seamlessly integrated into dramas like Reap the Wild Wind (1942), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), So Evil My Love (1948), John Ford's The Quiet Man (1952) and the western classic Shane (1953).
Young also wrote countless evergreen songs, many for top-flight singers, like Bing Crosby. His first big hit was "Sweet Sue" (popularly recorded by Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra), followed by the melodic jazz standard "Stella by Starlight" (which served as the theme for The Uninvited (1944)) and the ballad "When I Fall in Love" (a huge hit for Nat 'King' Cole, who featured the song in the movie Istanbul (1957)). For Broadway, Young wrote both music and lyrics for "Seventh Heaven", in 1955. Nominated for a staggering 22 Academy Awards, Young had his only win (for Around the World in 80 Days (1956)), rather sadly, after his sudden death from a stroke at the age of 56. It has been suggested, that his film compositions, while polished, lacked the élan or authoritative stamp of a Max Steiner or a Bernard Herrmann. Nonetheless, the sheer volume and enduring popularity of Young's music ensure his immortality among the ranks of the great songwriters and film composers of the 20th century.9 stars
**Samson and Delilah
**The Greatest Show on Earth
**The Country Girl
**Around the World in Eighty Days
*The Palm Beach Story- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Howard Shore is a Canadian composer, born in Toronto. He was born in a Jewish family. He started studying music when 8-years-old, and played as a member of bands by the time he was 13-years-old. He was interested in a professional career in music as a teenager. He studied music at the Berklee College of Music, a college of contemporary music located in Boston.
For a few years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Shore was a member of Lighthouse, a jazz fusion band. In the 1970s, Shore mainly composed music for theatrical performances and a few television shows. His most notable work was composing the music for the one-man-act show of stage magician Doug Henning. He also served as a musical director in then-new television show "Saturday Night Live" (1975-). He was hired by the show's producer Lorne Michaels, who was a close friend of Shore since their teen years.
In 1978, Shore started his career as a film score composer, with scoring the B-movie " I Miss You, Hugs and Kisses" (1978). His next film score was composed for the horror film "The Brood" (1979). Shore had a good working relationship with the film's director David Cronenberg. Cronenberg would continue to use Shore as the composer of most of his films, with the exception of "The Dead Zone" (1983).
In the 1980s, Shore also composed the film scores of works by other directors, such as "After Hours" (1985) by Martin Scorsese, and "Big" (1988) by Penny Marshall. He received more acclaim for composing the film score for "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991), a major hit of its era. Shore was nominated for a BAFTA award for this film score.
By the 1990s, Shore was an established composer of high repute and worked in an ever increasing number of films. Among his better known works were the film scores for comedy film "Mrs. Doubtfire" (1993) and crime thriller "Seven" (1995). Shore received even more critical acclaim in the 2000s, when he composed the film score for fantasy film "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" (2001). He won an Academy Award and a Grammy for the film score, and received nominations for a BAFTA award and a Golden Globe.
Shore continued his career with the film scores of acclaimed films "Gangs of New York" (2002), "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" (2002), and "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" (2003). He received his second Academy Award for the film score of "The Return of the King", and his third Academy Award as the composer of hit song "Into the West". He won several other major awards for these film scores. His film scores for "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy are considered the most famous and successful works of his career.
For the rest of the 2000s, Shore closely collaborated with director Martin Scorsese. Shore won a Golden Globe for the film score of Scorsese's "The Aviator" (2004). In the 2010s, Shore continues to work regularly, mostly known for composing film scores for works by directors David Cronenberg, Martin Scorsese, and Peter Jackson. He was the main composer for "The Hobbit" trilogy by Peter Jackson, and the fantasy film "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" (2010) by David Slade.8 stars
**Single White Female
**A Dangerous Method
*High Fidelity
*The Cell
*The Silence of the Lambs
*Striptease- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, but brought up in Pennsylvania, where he played the flute in a local band, as a youth, before sending some arrangements to Benny Goodman. Goodman offered him a job and, after serving in WWII, he joined the rearranged Glenn Miller band. In 1952, he was given a two-week assignment at Universal to work on an Bud Abbott and Lou Costello film and ended up staying for six years. Success with The Glenn Miller Story (1954) allowed him to score many other films, helping along the way to change the style of film background music by injecting jazz into the traditional orchestral arrangements of the 1950s. He was nominated for 18 Oscars and won four; in addition, he won 20 Grammys and 2 Emmys, made over 50 albums and had 500 works published. Mancini collaborated extensively with Blake Edwards -- firstly on TV's Peter Gunn (1958), then on Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), which won him two Oscars; he won further Oscars for the titles song for Days of Wine and Roses (1962) and the score for Victor/Victoria (1982); he will be best-remembered for the theme tune for The Pink Panther (1963).8 stars
**Breakfast at Tiffany's
**Charade
*The Pink Panther
*Wait until Dark
*The Great Race
*Ghost Dad- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Dave Grusin was born on 26 June 1934 in Littleton, Colorado, USA. He is a composer and actor, known for The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), The Firm (1993) and The Graduate (1967). He was previously married to Edith Ruth Price, Sara Jane Tallman and Barbara Jo Davidson.8 stars
**Tootsie
**Absence of Malice
**Selena
*The Firm
*Divorce American Style- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Raymond Lefebvre was born on 20 November 1929 in Calais, Pas-de-Calais, France. He was a composer and actor, known for The Gendarme of Saint-Tropez (1964). He was married to Nicole Bernard-Savary. He died on 27 June 2008 in Seine-Port, Seine-et-Marne, France.8 stars
**Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez
*Le Gendarme se marie
*Le Gendarme à New York
*Le Gendarme en balade
*Le Gendarme et les extra-terrestres
*Le Gendarme et les gendarmettes
*La Soupe aux choux- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
George Duning was educated in Cincinnati, Ohio, and during his early 20s played trumpet and piano for the Kay Kyser band, later arranging most of the music for Kyser's popular "Kollege of Musical Knowledge" radio program. It was during the Kyser band's appearance in Carolina Moon (1940) that Duning's work was noticed, leading to a contract with Columbia Pictures.7 stars
**From Here to Eternity
**The Man from Laramie
*Picnic
*Bell, Book and Candle
*Houseboat- Music Department
- Producer
- Composer
Considered to be one of the greatest minds in music and television history, Quincy Delight Jones, Jr. was born on March 14, 1933 in Chicago, Illinois. He is the son of Sarah Frances (Wells), a bank executive, and Quincy Delight Jones, Sr., a carpenter.
Jones found his love for music while he was enrolled in grade school at Seattle's Garfield High School, this is also where he had met Ray Charles whom he later worked and became friends with. In 1951, Quincy Jones had won a scholarship to the Berklee College Of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. Jones however dropped out when he got the opportunity to tour with Lionel Hampton's band as a trumpeter and conductor. Jones also worked for the European production of Harold Arlen's blues opera, Free and Easy in 1959. After Jones had worked on several projects overseas he returned to New York where he composed and arranged, and recorded for artists such as Duke Ellington, Ray Charles, Sarah Vaughan, Count Basie, Dinah Washington, LeVern Baker, and Big Maybell. Jones was working with these artists while holding an executive position at Mercury Records, being one of the very few African Americans at the time to have such a position.
In 1963, Quincy Jones won his first Grammy award for his Count Basie arrangement of "I Can't Stop Loving You". In 1964, by the request of director Sidney Lumet, Jones composed the music for his movie, The Pawnbroker. This would be the first of many Jones composed for film scores. By the mid-1960's Quincy Jones became the conductor and arranger for Frank Sinatra's orchestra. Jones also conducted and arranged one of Sinatra's most memorable songs, Fly Me To The Moon. Jones appeared on a lot of film credits for his music such as The Slender Thread, Walk, Don't Run, In Cold Blood, In The Heat Of The Night, A Dandy In Aspic, Mackenna's Gold, and The Italian Job. In 1972 Quincy Jones was the theme song composer for the hit-sitcom, Sanford And Son.
Quincy Jones in 1978 worked on music for the Wiz, this is where he met icon, Michael Jackson. Jackson at the time was looking for a producer, Jones recommended some producers but in the end asked Jackson if he could do it, Jackson said yes. In 1982 as a result of this partnership, Jones had formed a tapestry with Jackson which was unbreakable it was called, Thriller. The Thriller album sold more than 100 million records world-wide. Jones continued working with Jackson with his Bad album in 1987. However after Jones recommended Jackson seek other producers to update his music. Jones referred Jackson to producer, Teddy Riley. This ended a partnership between two-greats, Jackson and Jones would never collaborate again.
In 1981 Jones had an album called, The Dude. In 1985 Jones scored the film adaptation of The Color Purple. Jones also was a philanthropist, in 1985 gathering multiple stars to participate in the song We Are The World to help raise money to help the victims of the Ethopian disaster.
In 1990 Jones composed a theme song for the new sitcom which was centered around Will Smith, The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air. Jones was also the executive producer of the show.
Quincy Jones will forever be remembered as someone who helped sculpt music in every form, he refined music and through the music he helped sculpt brought messages of peace, justice, love, funk, and hope.7 stars
**Cactus Flower
*The Color Purple
*In the Heat of the Night
*In Cold Blood
*$
*The Italian Job- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Composer, conductor and author, educated at UCLA, a staff pianist for KFWB in Hollywood for four years, then to vaudeville for one year. Two years after joining the Hal Roach Studios, he took over its music department, which he directed for ten years. Joining ASCAP in 1952, his most-popular composition is the Laurel and Hardy theme, "Dance of The Cuckoos," which Hatley always spelled "Ku-Ku".7 stars
**Sons of the Desert
**Way Out West
*Saps at Sea
*Swiss Miss
*The Music Box- Composer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Cyril J. Mockridge was born on 6 August 1896 in London, England, UK. He was a composer, known for Guys and Dolls (1955), My Darling Clementine (1946) and Miracle on 34th Street (1947). He was married to Betty J Mockridge. He died on 18 January 1979 in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.7 stars
**The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
*River of No Return
*We're Not Married!
*Let's Make It Legal
*Bus Stop
*Poor Little Rich Girl- Composer
- Writer
- Music Department
During his roughly 15-year-long career, Fumio Hayasaka composed scores for some of the biggest names in Japanese cinema and was regarded by many as the finest Japanese film composer alive. Many of his scores were written for no less a cinematic luminary than Akira Kurosawa, including the legendary director's breakthrough multiple-perspective masterpiece "Rashomon" (1950). The brilliant composer's career was sadly cut short by tuberculosis in 1955, but his influence lives on not only in the still-watched films that bear his musical mark, but also in the work of the pupils he groomed as his successors. One such protégé, Masuru Sato, completed the score for Kurosawa's "I Live in Fear: Record of a Living Being" (1955), the project on which Hayasaka was working at the time of his death. Sato went on to provide scores for a substantial portion of Kurosawa's subsequent films. Another composer whose career owes a debt to Hayasaka is Akira Ifukube, whose work has enhanced the dramatic effect of many a "Godzilla" motion picture. It was Hayasaka who recommended Ifukube to Toho Studios.6 stars
**Ikiru
*Rashomon
*Sansho the Bailiff
*Seven Samurai
*Stray Dog- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
London-born piano child prodigy Adolph Deutsch trained at the Royal Academy of Music from the age of eight and composed his first piece, a waltz for piano, entitled "La Charmeuse", two years later. He moved to the U.S. in 1910 and got his first job working for a publishing house, during which time he took pains to attend musical recitals and rehearsals and fully immerse himself into the art of orchestration and composition. During the 1920's and early 30's, Deutsch free-lanced variously as arranger and musical director in New York and Chicago, turning out numerous top-flight arrangements for leading dance bands of the day. He spent five years as arranger/conductor with Paul Ash's semi-symphonic orchestra, which performed regularly at the Oriental and Paramount theatres. This was followed by a 39-week stint on The Kraft Music Hall radio show and a year with legendary bandleader Paul Whiteman's Musical Varieties network radio broadcast.
In 1937, Deutsch was signed to a personal contract by director Mervyn LeRoy for Warner Brothers. Six years later, he founded the Screen Composer's Association and eventually served ten years (1943-53) as its president and another two years as Professor Emeritus. During his tenure at Warners he composed often subtle music for many of the studio's moody, low key films noir and melodramas. They included The Maltese Falcon (1941), Lucky Jordan (1942), The Mask of Dimitrios (1944) and the haunting score for High Sierra (1940), reminiscent of Max Steiner, and complete with a rousing, up-beat finale. His regular orchestrators during this period were Jerome Moross and Arthur Lange.
Since Ray Heindorf handled the relatively few musicals made at Warners, Deutsch did not have a lot to do with the genre until he joined MGM in 1948, as a replacement for the ailing Herbert Stothart. Handed an eight-year contract, Deutsch first assisted on the musical Luxury Liner (1948) and then received several prestige assignments, beginning with the Technicolor re-make of Little Women (1949). He was subsequently promoted to musical director for MGM's lavish musicals Annie Get Your Gun (1950), Show Boat (1951) and The Belle of New York (1952). He won three Oscars for Best Score, the first for "Annie Get Your Gun", the other two for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) and Oklahoma! (1955).
In addition to his studio work, Deutsch composed a symphonic work, "The Scottish Suite" (1936) and a "Prelude and Salute to Oscar" for the 18th Academy Award Presentation in 1946. His instrumental compositions include the numbers 'Clarabelle', 'Three Sisters', 'Skyride', 'Margo', 'Stairway' and 'Lonely Room' (the main theme from The Apartment). From 1946 to 1947, Deutsch also served as musical director on Hedda Hopper's weekly national radio broadcast of "This Is Hollywood".6 stars
**The Maltese Falcon
**Some Like It Hot
**The Apartment- Composer
- Music Department
- Director
Michael Nyman studied piano, harpsichord and music history with Alan Bush at the Royal Academy of Music, and musicology with Thurston Dart at King's College, London. Between 1968 and 1978 he worked as a music critic and in 1977 he founded the Campiello Band, later renamed the Michael Nyman Band. Many of his filmscores were composed for the films of Peter Greenaway. He has also written several operas, ballet music and a large number of chamber and concert pieces.6 stars
**The Piano
**The End of the Affair
**Nathalie...- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Versatile in many different musical fields, Leroy Shield started out as organist and pianist at the age of five. He made his professional début at 12 and at 15 became an arranger, composer and concert pianist. He accompanied opera singer Eva Gauthier during her American concert tours and pioneered the modernist composers Ravel, Milhaud, Holst, Baxt, and Casella. He won a scholarship in piano at Columbia Conservatory in Chicago and also studied at the University of Chicago. In 1923 he joined the staff of the Victor Talking Machine Company as pianist and ³musical director² of Victor recording sessions, first in New York and Camden, later in other parts of the country. In 1930 he became "Musical Director in charge of Hollywood, Calif., Activities" and it was in this capacity that he composed and oversaw the recording of background and effect music at the Hal Roach Studios, producers of the Laurel & Hardy, Our Gang, and other comedies. Most of these tracks, recorded during 1930 and 1931, were so successful that the studio kept recycling them, hence their considerable familiarity even today. His contributions to the films, however, were rarely credited. In 1931 Shield became Director of Music for NBC's Central division, residing in Chicago. He became a very important and busy figure in Chicago, arranging for and leading his orchestra in several musical radio shows. In 1933, 1935 and 1936 he briefly returned to California to record more music for the Hal Roach Studios. In 1945 he relocated once again, to New York, as contractor of NBC's Orchestra section. In this capacity he worked closely with conductor Arturo Toscanini, joining him on his nationwide concert tour in 1950. He retired in 1955.6 stars
**Our Relations
**Pardon Us
*Saps at Sea
*Top Flat- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Mario Nascimbene was born on 28 November 1913 in Milan, Lombardy, Italy. He was a composer and actor, known for The French Dispatch (2021), Matchstick Men (2003) and Violent Summer (1959). He was married to Mara Caterina Ripari and Tamara Adrian. He died on 6 January 2002 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.6 stars
**A Farewell to Arms (1957)
*Solomon and Sheba
*Barabbas
*The Quiet American (1958)
*The Barefoot Contessa- Composer
- Soundtrack
- Music Department
Jocelyn Pook is one of the UK's most versatile composers, having written extensively for stage, screen, opera house and concert hall. Often remembered for her film score to Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, which won her a Chicago Film Award and a Golden Globe nomination, she has worked with some of the world's leading directors, musicians and artists including Martin Scorsese, Peter Gabriel, Massive Attack, Laurie Anderson. Her first opera Ingerland was commissioned by ROH2 for the Royal Opera House's Linbury Studio in 2010, and The BBC Proms and The King's Singers commissioned her to collaborate with Poet Laureate Andrew Motion on a work entitled Mobile. Jocelyn won an Olivier Award for the National Theatre's production of St Joan, and a British Composer Award for her multi-media music-theatre piece Speaking in Tunes. She won a second British Composer Award for her soundtrack to Akram Khan's dance production DESH. In 2014 she composed the score for his dance piece Dust choreographed for English National Ballet to mark the centenary of the First World War, as well as the score for Mike Bartlett's play King Charles III which premiered at Almeida Theatre, London and transferred to West End and Broadway NY. Her most recent ballet for English National Ballet, M-Dao, choreographed by Yabin Wang, premiered in 2016 at Sadler's Wells. In 2018 Jocelyn won a BAFTA for her score for the 2017 TV film version of King Charles III. She composed the soundtracks for The Wife, acclaimed feature film starring Glenn Close, and for The Staircase, the extraordinary documentary series directed by Jean-Xavier Lestrade. This year Pook was commissioned by The Proms to compose a new piece for Prom 49: in The Lost Words:"You Need To Listen To Us" she sets words from speeches by environmental activist Greta Thunberg to music. She also composed the soundtrack for The Kingmaker, a documentary film about the controversial political career of Imelda Marcos, the former first lady of the Philippines, directed by Lauren Greenfield, to be released later this autumn.5 stars
**Eyes Wide Shut
*The Merchant of Venice
*Brick Lane
*Room in Rome- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Born in Poland in 1955, Zbigniew Preisner studied philosophy and history in the university of Cracow. In his twenties he started to study music in a autodidactical way: buying records and learning to write by taking the music in parts. He started to write his own compositions. His style has always been very romantic, influenced by romantic polish composers from the XIX century and others like Paganini or Sibelius. He has always emphasized the importance of melody in music. He doesn't like experimental modern music.
In 1981 he began his collaboration with filmmakers. While he was working with Antoni Krauze's movie "Weather Report" he met director Krzystof Kieslowski who invited him to work in his new movie "No End" about Poland under the martial law at the beginning of the 80s.
With that movie he began a very close collaboration with Kieslowski and his screenwriter Krzystof Piesiewicz. He works while the script for the movie is still being written but he usually also takes part in the editing of the movie.
Their next collaboration became a success worldwide. "Decalogue" won the European film award for best film and also awards in Cannes and other festivals. Kieslowski became one of the most importants directors in Europe and Preisner the leading film music composer of his generation.
At the same time he continued his collaboration with Kieslowski in such films like "La double vie de Veronique" and the trilogy of colours ("Blue", "White" and "Red") he also wrote soundtracks for others important directors like Louis Malle, Agniezka Holland or Héctor Babenco.
His collaboration with Kieslowski ended with his death in 1996. In the last years Preisner not only has continued his collaboration in others movies but he also has been involved in others musical projects like the writing of an opera to be performed in London and features for the Varsovia Simphony orchestra.5 stars
**La Double Vie de Véronique
**Trois Couleurs: Bleu
*Trois Coleurs: Rouge- Music Department
- Composer
- Director
Elliot Goldenthal is an Academy Award-winning composer best known for his original music scores for such films as Frida (2002) and Across the Universe (2007), among his other works.
He was born on May 2, 1954, in Brooklyn, New York. His father was a house-painter, and his mother was a seamstress. Young Goldenthal was fond of music and theatre, he played with his school rock band during the 1960s. In 1968, he staged his first ballet at John Dewey High School in Brooklyn, from which he graduated in 1971. He attended the Manhattan School of Music, studied under Aaron Copland and John Corigliano, and earned his MA in composition.
Among Goldenthal's most notable works are his original music scores for numerous films, such as Julie Taymor's Frida (2002), Clark Johnson's S.W.A.T. (2003), Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever (1995) and Batman & Robin (1997). Goldenthal also has been collaborating with director Neil Jordan on five films, among those are Michael Collins (1996), and Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994), for which he earned two Oscar nominations.
Since the early 1980s, Elliot Goldenthal has been working together with Julie Taymor. Their partnership in film and in life has been one of the most rewarding in film business; the couple made such acclaimed films as Titus (1999), Frida (2002) and Across the Universe (2007), among their other works, earning numerous awards and nominations for their highly innovative creativity.5 stars
**Frida
**Heat
*A Time to Kill- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Jean-Claude Petit was born on 14 November 1943 in Vaires-sur-Marne, Seine-et-Marne, France. He is a composer and actor, known for Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), Jean de Florette (1986) and The Boondock Saints (1999).5 stars
**Jean de Florette
**Manon des Sources
*Cyrano de Bergerac- Music Department
- Composer
- Additional Crew
Louis Levy was born on 20 November 1894 in London, England, UK. He was a composer, known for The 39 Steps (1935), The Lady Vanishes (1938) and The Good Companions (1933). He died on 18 August 1957 in Slough, Berkshire, England, UK.5 stars
**The Lady Vanishes
**The 39 Steps
*Under Capricorn- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Armando Trovajoli was born on 2 September 1917 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He was a composer and actor, known for Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), A Special Day (1977) and Get Smart (2008). He was married to Maria Paola Trovajoli and Pier Angeli. He died on 1 March 2013 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.5 stars
**Ieri oggi domani
**Una giornata particolare
*Matrimonio all' italiana- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Michel Legrand is a three-time Academy Award-winning French composer, conductor and pianist who composed over 200 film and television scores as well as recorded over a hundred albums of jazz, popular and classical music.
He was born on February 24, 1932, in Becon-les-Bruyeres, in the Paris suburbs, France. His father, Raymond Legrand, was a French composer and actor. His mother, Marcelle der Mikaelian, was descended from the Armenian bourgeousie. From 1942 - 1949 young Legrand studied piano at the Paris Conservatoire. There his teachers were Nadia Boulanger and Henri Challan among other renown musicians. He received numerous awards for his skills in composition and piano and mastered a dozen other instruments. In 1947 he attended a concert by Dizzy Gillespie and caught a jazz bug. He started working as a pianist for major French singers. He eventually collaborated with Dizzy Gillespie on several albums and film scores.
In 1954 Legrand became an overnight star after his album "I Love Paris" became a hit, it went on selling over 8 million copies. He followed the success with such albums as "Holiday in Rome" (1955) and "Michel Legrand Plays Cole Porter" (1957). In 1958 he was invited to play at Moscow Festival of Students and Youth. There, in Moscow, he met his future wife, a young French model with who he went on to have three children.
In the late 1950s and 1960s Legrand was caught up in the French New Wave. He scored seven films for jean-Luc Godard, he also made ten films with Jacques Demy, and became responsible for creating the genre of musical in the French Cinema. In 1963 Legrand did The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), the first film musical that was entirely sung. For that film score he received three Oscar nominations. His beautiful, haunting melody, "I Will Wait For You", received nomination for Best Original Song.
In 1966 Legrand decided to take his chances in Hollywood, and moved to Los Angeles with his wife and three children. His friendship with Quincy Jones and Hank Mancini helped him a great deal, especially in meeting the lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman. In 1969 Legrand won his first Oscar for Best Music, Original Song for "The Windmills of Your Mind" and was also nominated for Best Music, Original score for a Motion Picture for The Thomas Crown Affair (1968). Eventually Legrand went on to become a star in the US, he received twelve nominations for Academy Awards, and won two more Oscars. He was also nominated for a Grammy 27 times and received 5 Grammys in the 1970s.
In the 1980s and 1990s Legrand continued giving live concerts with his own jazz trio. He also led his big band which he took on several international tours, accompanying such stars as Ray Charles , Diana Ross , Björk , and Stéphane Grappelli who celebrated his 85th birthday in 1992. He also recorded several classical albums, including an album with cross-genre hits entitled "Kiri Sings Michel Legrand" with the opera singer Kiri te Kanawa. During the 2000s Legrand has been working mainly in the studio, and also made several international tours.
In 2005 a compilation of Legrand's best known film soundtracks was released under the title "Le Cinema de Michel Legrand", featuring 90 songs composed in the course of his career.5 stars
**The Swimming Pool
*The Thomas Crown Affair
*Une Femme est une femme
*Lady Sings the Blues- Composer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Born in Burano (Venice) in 1941, Pino Donaggio studied violin at the Conservatory of Venice and Milan.
After a period of adolescent performer of classical music with the Solisti Veneti and the Soloists of Milan, in 1959 he began to devote himself to the pop music that soon led to international success.
He has participated in ten editions of the Sanremo Festival getting a 3rd place in 1963 with the song "Giovane giovane" and a 4th place in 1966 with the song "Una casa in cima al mondo". His best-known song and performed is 1965 "Io che non vivo (senza te)" starring, among others, also by Elvis Presley.
Since 1973, Donaggio began gradually to abandon pop music to devote himself to composing music for films. In over forty years of activity it has put together more than two hundred soundtracks for the big and small screen, both in Italy and abroad.
He lives and works in Venice.5 stars
**Carrie
*Don't Look Now
*Dressed to Kill
*Body Double- Composer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Michael Small was born on 30 May 1939 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a composer, known for Klute (1971), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) and Marathon Man (1976). He was married to Lynn. He died on 24 November 2003 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.5 stars
**Marathon Man
**Audrey Rose
*Klute- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
George Fenton was born on 19 October 1949 in Bromley, Kent, England, UK. He is a composer and actor, known for Groundhog Day (1993), Ever After: A Cinderella Story (1998) and The Bounty Hunter (2010).5 stars
*Dangerous Liaisons
*Sweet Home Alabama
*You've Got Mail
*Cry Freedom
*The Crucible- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Hugo Friedhofer -- how many times have you seen that name in the credits of 1930s and '40s movies for "orchestration" or "musical arranger" and thought -- Gee, what a busy guy! He was, and, ironically, much of that work went uncredited. He is not usually mentioned with the great film composers of early Hollywood, but he was very much an equal and as prolific once he received the opportunities to compose as well. Friedhofer began studying the cello at age 13. In 1917, he dropped out of high school in support of a teacher who had been fired for radical and anti-war beliefs. He worked as a cellist for the People's Symphony Orchestra in San Francisco (always a liberal kind of place). He married quite young at 19 and had a child by the age of 22. He quickly put his music expertise to a working life by playing in theater orchestras and accompanying silent films and stage shows between features. He also started writing arrangements of music and worked at the Granada Theater (became the Paramount in 1931), with the opportunity to write some incidental music.
Friedhofer came to Los Angeles in the later 1920s and became a friend of the violinist George Lipschultz, who just happened to be the musical director at Twentieth Century Fox. It was 1929, and Lipschultz asked him to fill in a musician spot for film music recording at a small studio. That was the beginning of Friedhofer's career in films. When this small studio was taken over by Fox, he and other musicians were on the street. But he was brought to the notice of Erich Korngold, a relatively new film composer at Warner Bros. where Max Steiner was king. Friedhofer was hired by Warner Bros soon after to arrange scores for musicals and orchestrate scores-mostly for these two composers. Including orchestrating all of Korngold's movie scores and fifty of Steiner's, Friedhofer would orchestrate or musically direct 105 films into the mid 1950s during his career.
But he was already doing significant film composing as well from 1930 along with incidental and stock music for several studios before his stay at Warner. Friedhofer's developing style was in the romantic vein of his contemporaries. He studied composition with Ernst Toch after aiding the composer with contributions to Peter Ibbetson (1935) at Paramount. With the move to Warner, Friedhofer's problem became being just too valuable as an orchestrator and musical director for Warner to free him for composing assignments until the late 1930s. With tight budgets and the need for musical managers to wear several hats, Friedhofer's legendary efficiency was hard to give up. His first full film score was for Samuel Goldwyn's The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938) after being recommended by another film composer great Alfred Newman. His first for Warner's was The Oklahoma Kid (1939) (with James Cagney debuting as a cowboy!). He did not get credit for this nor for The Mark of Zorro (1940) (co-work with Newman) and Santa Fe Trail (1940) both in 1940. Into and after the war years Friedhofer was very busy -- but still not getting the composing credit due -- as for Gilda (1946). All told, he was not credited as composer for some 120 films.
Friedhofer broke from the confines of Warner Bros. finally in 1946 to freelance and received the grand prize right off. Again, it was Newman who recommended him for scoring Goldwyn's wonderful post-war drama of adjustment The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and Friedhofer showed his power as composer with a score that engaged the story at every turn and most deservedly won the Oscar for Best Score. Other memorable credited scores included such classics as: the gripping music for Lifeboat (1944), directed by Alfred Hitchcock; the delightful Christmas strings score of The Bishop's Wife (1947); and the soaring music for 'Ingrid Bergman' in Joan of Arc (1948).
Though he continued in demand, much of Friedhofer's scoring output through the 1950s went to films mostly relegated to Saturday mornings these days, but there were notables, as the 1957 duo An Affair to Remember (1957) and the well-received The Sun Also Rises (1957). And the next year came the engaging and thought-provoking The Barbarian and the Geisha (1958) (a fine performance by John Wayne) under the always versatile direction of John Huston. He also did some TV episodic and mini-movie music through the 1960s in addition to more films.
Friedhofer had all the qualities of an accomplished, indeed, incisive and intuitive film composer -- proved with a total of eight Oscar nominations -- and yet he was his own worst enemy. Anxieties about his abilities brought self-criticism and doubts that boiled out in a misanthropic view of the world in general that no amount of praise from public or friends could dislodge. At the least he should have believed that he had succeeded in grand style -- with nearly 250 pieces of screen music as a realistic basis for affirmation.5 stars
**Gilda
*Lifeboat
*The Rains of Ranchipur
*Joan of Arc- Music Department
- Composer
- Producer
Alan Menken is an American composer, songwriter, music conductor, director and record producer.
Menken is best known for his scores and songs for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. His scores and songs for The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and Pocahontas (1995) have each won him two Academy Awards. He also composed the scores and songs for Little Shop of Horrors (1987), Newsies (1992), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Hercules (1997), Home on the Range (2004), Enchanted (2007), Tangled (2010), among others.
He is also known for his work in musical theatre for Broadway and elsewhere. Some of these are based on his Disney films, but other stage hits include Little Shop of Horrors (1982), A Christmas Carol (1994) and Sister Act (2009).
Menken has collaborated with such lyricists as Lynn Ahrens, Howard Ashman, Jack Feldman, Tim Rice, Glenn Slater, Stephen Schwartz and David Zippel. With eight Academy Award wins, Menken is the second most prolific Oscar winner in the music categories after Alfred Newman, who has 9 Oscars. He has also won 11 Grammy Awards, a Tony Award, Emmy Award, 7 Golden Globe Awards and many other honors.5 stars
**Aladdin
*Beauty and the Beast
*Pocahontas
*The Little Mermaid- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Nicola Piovani was born on 26 May 1946 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He is a composer and actor, known for Life Is Beautiful (1997), The Tiger and the Snow (2005) and The Son's Room (2001).4 stars
**La Vita è Bella
*Het Meisje met het Rode Haar
*La Stanza del Figlio- Music Department
- Composer
- Writer
Irving Berlin was born Israel Isidor Baline on May 11, 1888 in Mogilev, Belarus, Russian Empire. Towering composer, songwriter, ("God Bless America", "Always", "Blue Skies", "White Christmas") author and publisher, he came to the United States at age 5 and was educated in New York's public schools. His earliest musical education was from his father, a cantor. He earned Honorary degrees from Bucknell University and Temple University. Beginning his career as a song-plugger for publisher Harry von Tilzer, Berlin worked as a singing waiter in Chinatown. In 1909, he was hired as a staff lyricist by the Ted Snyder Company, and became a partner to that firm four years later.
In 1910, he began doing vaudeville appearances in the United States and abroad, and also appeared with Snyder in the Broadway musical "Up and Down Broadway", that ran for 72 performances. He joined ASCAP as a charter member in 1914, and served on its first board of directors between 1914-1918. Berlin enlisted the United States Army infantry in World War I, and was a sergeant at Camp Upton, New York. After the war, he established his own public-relations firm, and in 1921, he built the 1025-seat Music Box Theatre (at 239 W. 45th Street, New York) with Sam H. Harris. After Harris' death in 1941, Berlin assumed full ownership and the theatre remains a Broadway institution to this day.
Among his many awards was the Medal for Merit for his 1942 all-soldier show "This Is the Army", which toured the United States, Europe and South Pacific battle zones; all proceeds were assigned to Army Emergency Relief and other service agencies. Berlin was also a member of the French Legion of Honor and held the Congressional Medal of Honor for "God Bless America", the proceeds from which went to the God Bless America Fund. His songs were sung by Fred Astaire, Al Jolson, Judy Garland, Bing Crosby, Dick Powell, Alice Faye and many others. Irving Berlin died at the age of 101 of natural causes on September 22, 1989 in New York City.4 stars
**Top Hat
*Carefree
*Follow the Fleet- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Born: February 5, 1902 in Warsaw, Poland Died: April 25, 1983 in Los Angeles, California, USA Kaper displayed musical talent as early as the age of seven when his family acquired a piano. His inclination to music led him to study both piano and composition, while also taking courses in law to satisfy his father. At twenty-one he graduated from The Chopin Music School. To continue his musical education he went to Berlin. In order to support himself during this period he began writing songs for a cabaret. Later he worked as an arranger and a composer for both stage and film productions. In 1933, as the Nazis rose to power in Germany, Kaper moved to Paris and worked in the French film industry. This phase of his career lasted only two years, for in 1935 MGM executive Louis B. Mayer was on vacation in Europe and happened to hear one of Kaper's songs. Mayer offered the composer a contract, and Kaper soon found himself working in Hollywood. One of his first efforts for MGM was the title tune for the film San Francisco (1936), a song which was so appealing to the American public that it became a standard. During his early years at MGM, the studio kept Kaper busy as a songwriter. But the composer looked for opportunities to write complete background scores. In the forties he did provide music for dramatic films such as Gaslight (1944), Green Dolphin Street (1947) and Act of Violence (1949). This last film, a disturbing thriller directed by Fred Zinneman, shows how sophisticated and daring Kaper's music could be. Drawing on his knowledge of modern composition, he was surprisingly successful at incorporating dissonant, abstract sounds into his film scores considering the conservative tastes that prevailed in Hollywood. But it is important to note that the composer always depended on others to orchestrate his work. Kaper wrote his scores at the piano. Then he would give what he'd written to an orchestrator and they would discuss how to expand on the piano reduction. In the fifties Kaper was given more opportunities to show his range. He created edgy, modern scores for films like Them! (1954) and rich, romantic scores for films like The Brothers Karamazov (1958), while still turning out catchy melodies for musicals like Lili (1953). By the end of the decade, though, it was clear that the Hollywood studios were in decline and that the days of in-house music departments were over. When the ax fell at MGM, Kaper went on working as a freelance film composer. One of his last major film assignments was Lord Jim (1965), an adaptation of the Conrad novel. To complement the epic scope of the film, Kaper used not only a large symphony orchestra but also many instruments indigenous to the story's Asian setting. Like most Hollywood composers of the studio era, Kaper found himself working on fewer movies during the sixties. His last credit on a theatrical release was A Flea in Her Ear (1968). Though he was later hired to work on The Salzburg Connection (1972), his score was discarded. Kaper died at his home in Los Angeles in 1983. by Casey Maddren Bibliography The Film Music of Bronislaw Kaper, notes by Tony Thomas, Delos Records, 1975 Variety, obituary, May 4, 1983 Interview with Pete Rugolo conducted by the author, 19984 stars
**Gaslight
**A Day at the Races- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Jack Nitzsche was born on 22 April 1937 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was a composer and actor, known for An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), The Exorcist (1973) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). He was married to Buffy Sainte-Marie and Gracia Ann May. He died on 25 August 2000 in Hollywood, California, USA.4 stars
**One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
*Nine 1/2 Weeks
*Mermaids- Music Department
- Composer
- Producer
Michael Gore was born on 5 March 1951 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He is a composer and producer, known for Pretty in Pink (1986), Fame (1980) and Footloose (1984).4 stars
**Fame
**Terms of Endearment- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Versatile American arranger/conductor who started as a trombonist with several big bands, including Tommy Dorsey. In a long, distinguished career, he not only scored numerous films and television shows, but made many now-legendary recordings in collaboration with such people as Rosemary Clooney, Nat 'King' Cole, and, most notably, Frank Sinatra. With the latter, he recorded a series of albums now regarded as legendary ("Songs for Swingin' Lovers", "The Concert Sinatra", etc.). He recorded prolifically on his own, as well, scoring two top-ten hits with "Lisbon Antigua" (#1, 1956) and "Theme from 'Route 66'" (# 10, 1962). In his later years, he made a series of successful albums with pop diva Linda Ronstadt.4 stars
**Lolita (1962)
**Paris When It Sizzles- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Ryuichi Sakamoto was born on 17 January 1952 in Tokyo, Japan. He was a composer and actor, known for The Last Emperor (1987), The Revenant (2015) and Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983). He was married to Akiko Yano. He died on 28 March 2023 in Tokyo, Japan.4 stars
**Tacones lejanos
**Femme Fatale- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Composer ("'Batman' Theme), conductor, arrager and trumpeter, educated in high school and through private music study. He was a trumpeter and arranger with dance orchestras including those of Harry James, Woody Herman, and Charlie Spivak between 1941 and 1951. He was a staff arranger and arranger for the "Arthur Godfrey Show" and the "Kate Smith Show" over ABC, and also formed his own orchestra, playing theatres, hotels, clubs and colleges, and made many recordings. Joining ASCAP in 1953, his oher popular song and instrumental compositions include "Coral Reef", "Cute", "Plymouth Rock", "Buttercup", "Two for the Blues", "Oh What a Night for Love", "Cherry Point", "The Kid from Red Bank", "Repetition", "Splanky", "Sunday Morning", "Hot Pink", "Little Pony", "Lake Placid", "Why Not?", "Blowin' Up a Storm", "I'm Shoutin' Again", "Eee Dee", "Jump for Johnny", "The Long Night", "The Good Earth", "Wildroot", "Late Date", "It's Always Nice to Be With You", "I Must Know", and "Girl Talk".4 stars
**Barefoot in the Park
*How to Murder Your Wife
*The Odd Couple- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Kenyon Hopkins was born on 15 January 1912 in Coffeyville, Kansas, USA. He was a composer, known for 12 Angry Men (1957), The Hustler (1961) and East Side/West Side (1963). He died on 7 April 1983 in Princeton, New Jersey, USA.4 stars
**12 Angry Men
**The Hustler- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Stephen Warbeck began studying piano and composing at the age of four. His parents were keen amateur musicians who encouraged Stephen to pursue his musical talents. By his mid-teens, Stephen developed an affinity for rock 'n' roll as well as for theatre. He studied Drama and French at Bristol University, and began his career at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, as a musician and actor. After eight years of working as a composer and performer for the stage, Stephen began writing music for film and television. Since the early 1980s, Stephen has built up a considerable filmography. As well as writing music for more than forty television projects, (for which he has received five BAFTA nominations, including one for the highly successful series Prime Suspect), he has scored many feature films including The Other Man (2008), Proof (2005), Two Brothers (2004), Mrs. Brown (1997), Mystery Men (1999), Quills (2000), Billy Elliot (2000), Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001), Birthday Girl (2002), and Shakespeare in Love (1998), for which he won an Academy Award. Some of Stephen's notable stage productions include the National Theatre's An Inspector Calls, John Madden's production of Proof , Sam Mendes' production of To The Green Fields Beyond, both at the Donmar, and The White Devil for the Royal Shakespeare Company. He has written for several shows at the Almeida, including The Triumph Of Love, Parlour Song and When The Rain Stops Falling. Stephen most recently collaborated with Ian Rickson on Jerusalem at the Royal Court. In addition to composing for film and television, Stephen has written music for numerous radio plays, and is a founder member of the anarchic pub band The hKippers, for whom he composes and performs. He has his own ensemble and another small band called The Metropolitan Water Board. Stephen has written several concert pieces, "Peter Pan" is his first ballet score.4 stars
**Shakespeare in Love
*Birthday Girl
*Proof- Music Department
- Composer
- Writer
Jerome David Kern was born in 1885. He began his stage career grafting American songs (for which he wrote the music) into imported European operettas. His breakthrough came with the song "They Didn't Believe Me", written (with lyrics by Edward Laska) for a show called "The Girl from Utah". It established him as a major American composer in 1914. Married to a Englishwoman, Kern became an Anglophile, and teamed up with British writers Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse to write the so-called "Princess Theatre musicals"--shows like "Very Good, Eddie" and "Leave It To Jane", which were unusual not so much for their silly storylines but for the fact that the characters were everyday people rather than the exotic characters of operetta, and also for the fact that these shows had few sets and small casts. He later wrote shows like "Sally" and "Sunny", both loaded with song hits, star casts and spectacular sets but silly plots. Finally, looking for an entirely different type of musical, Kern decided to adapt Edna Ferber's novel "Show Boat" to the musical stage. Although Oscar Hammerstein II agreed to do the adaptation and lyrics, nearly everyone (including Ferber) thought Kern and Hammerstein had lost their minds. "Show Boat"'s storyline featured interracial marriage, wife desertion, alcoholism and gambling, and the most realistic characters ever seen in a musical up to then, not to mention the song "Ol' Man River" and an opening chorus of black dockworkers singing about their work. Most of the songs were integrated so well into the story that they could not possibly have been sung in another show or taken out of "Show Boat" without damaging the plot. And "Show Boat" featured a song, "Mis'ry's Comin' Round", which was so utterly tragic that Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. ordered it cut--and it remained cut, existing only as background music, until the 1994 revival. In spite of all this, "Show Boat" became a huge hit and has remained one of the musical theater's greatest classics and most often revived shows--the only musical pre-1943 to be revived over and over. Kern, however, did not experiment any further--his other hit shows, "Music In The Air", "Roberta" and "The Cat and the Fiddle", contain classic songs that are still sung, but the shows are almost never revived. After a heart attack in 1939, Kern wrote songs exclusively for movie musicals. Two of his movie musicals, Swing Time (1936) with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and Cover Girl (1944) with Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly, have become famous for their songs and dances. Kern died of a stroke at the age of 60, in 1945.4 stars
**Swing Time
*Roberta
*You Were Never Lovelier- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
James Horner began studying piano at the age of five, and trained at the Royal College of Music in London, England, before moving to California in the 1970s. After receiving a bachelor's degree in music at USC, he would go on to earn his master's degree at UCLA and teach music theory there. He later completed his Ph.D. in Music Composition and Theory at UCLA. Horner began scoring student films for the American Film Institute in the late 1970s, which paved the way for scoring assignments on a number of small-scale films. His first large, high-profile project was composing music for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), which would lead to numerous other film offers and opportunities to work with world-class performers such as the London Symphony Orchestra. With over 75 projects to his name, and work with people such as George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Oliver Stone, and Ron Howard, Horner firmly established himself as a strong voice in the world of film scoring. In addition, Horner composed a classical concert piece in the 1980s, called "Spectral Shimmers", which was world premiered by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Horner passed away in a plane crash on June 22, 2015, two months short of his 62nd birthday.4 stars
*The Name of the Rose
*Jumanji
*The Mask of Zorro
*A Beautiful Mind- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
German-American pianist, composer, arranger and conductor André George Previn (born Andreas Ludwig Priwin, in Berlin) was for eight decades a hugely influential and prolific figure in jazz, as well as classical and film music. Being Jewish, Previn's family was forced to leave Hitler's Germany in 1939. Hollywood naturally beckoned, since André's grand uncle (Charles Previn) was already well established as musical director at Universal (1936-42). Child prodigy André recorded his first piano jazz album at the age of sixteen while continuing studies at Beverly Hills High School.
He joined MGM at age 17 in 1946 (initially as an uncredited music supervisor/arranger), later as orchestra conductor and still later as a composer of film scores. He remained under contract at the studio until 1960. During his tenure in Hollywood, he was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, winning four (all for Best Adapted Score: Gigi (1958), Porgy and Bess (1959), Irma la Douce (1963), and My Fair Lady (1964)). In the 1950s, he recorded several acclaimed jazz albums with drummer Shelly Manne and pianist Russ Freeman, featuring excellent tracks like "Who's on First" and "Strike Out the Band". He began conducting with the St. Louis Symphony in 1961 while still working primarily as a jazz and studio musician. Much of his recorded work consisted of show tunes adapted for jazz. Gradually, his interest in classical music won out.
By the late 1960s, Previn had settled in England and in 1968 was made principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, a position he occupied for eleven years. His popularity led to cameo TV appearances (including a famous sketch for the 1971 Christmas special of the The Morecambe & Wise Show (1968), in which he appeared as "Mr. Andrew Preview") and television advertising (Vauxhall, Ferguson TX portable television etc.). From 1985 to 1989, he was musical director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic as well as with the Royal Philharmonic (1985-88, subsequently also principal conductor, from 1988-91).
In 1993, he was appointed conductor laureate of the London Symphony and three years later was made an Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to music. He won 10 Grammy Awards (including two for jazz and two for film music) and was nominated for six Emmys. Previn latterly returned to recording jazz albums with, among others, Ella Fitzgerald (1983), Joe Pass & Ray Brown (1989), and Kiri Te Kanawa (1992). Two excellent tribute albums released, respectively in 1998 and 2000 for Deutsche Grammophon, were 'We Got Rhythm: A Gershwin Songbook' and 'We Got it Good: An Ellington Songbook'.
Married (and divorced) five times, his ex-wives included Dory Previn and Mia Farrow. Previn died in New York on February 28, 2019, aged 89.4 stars
**Irma la Douce
*Kiss Me, Stupid
*The Fortune Cookie- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Basil Poledouris was born on August 21, 1945 in Kansas City. He started taking piano lessons when he was 7 years old. Eventually, he went on to become a student at USC, where he studied the arts of directing, cinematography, editing, sound and, of course, music. It was also at USC he met John Milius and Randal Kleiser, both acclaimed directors with whom he would work in the future. Even though Basil had already composed music to John Milius' much talked about Big Wednesday (1978), his real breakthrough came in 1982 when he composed the score to Milius' epic fantasy movie, Conan the Barbarian (1982). The powerful themes that Basil created for this movie opened the eyes of the movie industry, as well as the public, and it is arguably one of the best soundtracks of the 80s. Basil went on to make soundtracks for such movies as: RoboCop (1987) (the second Paul Verhoeven movie of many for which he has composed, the first being 1985's Flesh+Blood (1985)), Lonesome Dove (1989) (for which he won an Emmy), Farewell to the King (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Free Willy (1993), in Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers (1997) with Casper Van Dien and Denise Richards and Les Misérables (1998).4 stars
**The Blue Lagoon
*Starship Troopers
*Protocol- Composer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Rachel Portman, Composer
British composer Rachel Portman became the first female composer to win an Academy Award, which she received for the score of Emma. She was also the first female composer to win a Primetime Emmy Award, which she received for the film, Bessie. She has received two further Academy Nominations for The Cider House Rules and Chocolat, which also earned her a Golden Globe Nomination. Rachel was given an OBE in 2010 and is an honorary fellow of Worcester College, Oxford. She's also a Fellow of the Royal College of Music. Rachel has written stage and concert commissions including a musical of Little House on the Prairie, and an opera of Saint Exupery's, The Little Prince for Houston Grand Opera. For the BBC Proms, she wrote The Water Diviner, a dramatic choral symphony. She also wrote 'Endangered' performed at the World Environment Day Concert, at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Beijing. Other works include Earth Song for the BBC Singers, a solo piano album Ask The River and most recently for Joyce Di Donato, The First Morning of the World as part of her Eden programme.32 stars
**Emma
*The Duchess
*Sirens
*Oliver Twist
*The Human Stain
*The Lake House- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Ernest Gold was born on 13 July 1921 in Vienna, Austria. He was a composer, known for It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), Exodus (1960) and On the Beach (1959). He was married to Jeanette (Jan) Keller, Marni Nixon and Ruth Andree Golbin. He died on 17 March 1999 in Santa Monica, California, USA.4 stars
**It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World
**The Defiant Ones
*Inherit the Wind- Composer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Leonard Rosenman was born on 7 September 1924 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He was a composer, known for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), Barry Lyndon (1975) and La La Land (2016). He was married to Judie Gregg, Lyn Furr, Kay Scott and Adele Bracker. He died on 4 March 2008 in Woodland Hills, California, USA.4 stars
**East of Eden
**Rebel without a Cause- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Ron Goodwin was born on 17th February 1925 in Plymouth. He was the son of a London policeman who was detached to the harbour-town. His mother felt that piano lessons would be a good pastime, so in his fifth year, the little Ron was hoisted onto a piano-stool and his education on this instrument began. Ron himself was at that time not really convinced about that parental ambition.
In 1934 his father's detachment ended and the family moved back to London. Ron went for his elementary education to the Willesden County Grammar school, situated in the North-West of London. In the school an orchestra was set-up and Ron got slowly attracted by music. It fascinated him, that all these young people were playing different instruments but that the result was very harmonious.
When he was 11, he went to his teacher and asked for a place in the orchestra. His teacher replied: "We don't have enough trumpet players. Learn how to play the trumpet and we'll see". That's what they call "Hobson's Choice". And so he learned to play the trumpet. Ready after just a few lessons, Ron joined the school orchestra. He kept continuing with his trumpet lessons because he felt that there was more prosperity in a career as a trumpet player than as a pianist. Moreover he had more fun in playing the trumpet. Nevertheless he also continued his piano lessons. The piano has always been a very useful instrument for him, when writing music. But frankly, he never became a virtuoso pianist. He was a much better trumpet player.
The end of the '30s was the era of swing with the great big bands of Glen Miller, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey and Woody Herman. In 1939, at the age of just 14, he formed his own dance band called "The Woodchoppers". Very soon the orchestra got some engagements here and there. The signature tune for their performances was "At the Woodchoppers Ball", a swinging Woody Herman composition. That explains the name "The Woodchoppers". The band was very soon semi-professional and very regularly entered competitions for dance bands.
After he had studied harmony and counterpoint, he left school in 1942. In deference to his mother's doubts about the security status and prospects of music as a career, he took a job as junior clerk in an insurance office. He held the job for three months. After repeatedly catching him fixing gigs for "The Woodchoppers" over the office 'phone, Ron's boss advised him to forget insurance and take his chances in music. He still thinks that this is the best advice ever given to him.
He started as a copyist for the music publisher Campbell Connelly. There he got the opportunity to work with and learn from Harry G. Stafford. This was an elderly thoroughly experienced arranger, who had arranged the music of Hubert Bath for Hitchcock's first English sound film Blackmail (1929) in 1929. Stafford taught him all the methods for producing arrangements and how to lay out a score. In that period he also studied a private course on how to conduct an orchestra with Siegfried de Chabot, a teacher at the Royal Music College.
After a few months working for Campbell Connelly, he applied for a job as an arranger for Norrie Paramor and Harry Gold. They were joint-proprietors of "The Paramor-Gold Orchestral Services" and they also had a jazz orchestra called "The Pieces of Eight". He was hired, although he thinks that it was not only because of his skills as an arranger. In that jazz orchestra there used to be an excellent trumpet player called Cyril Ellis. He was drafted for the Navy and so Paramor and Gold lacked a musician. Goodwin, being a trumpet player, replaced Cyril in the orchestra and was also the arranger of the "Paramor-Gold Orchestral Services".
As an arranger he was particularly working for a BBC program called "Composers Cavalcade". Every week a different well-known composer of light music, like Albert Ketelby, Noël Coward or Ivor Novello was chosen. Goodwin provided all the arrangements for these weekly broadcasts and he got a lot of experience through it. In the meantime his band, "The Woodchoppers", won several Dance Band competitions and in 1945 came fifth in the All Britain Dance Band Championship.
After the contract with Norrie Paramor ended, he started working for the music-publisher Edward Kassner. Here he arranged the music for various types of orchestras. One day a pub or dance orchestra, the other day for BBC radio orchestras. In the meantime he also did the orchestrations for well-know orchestra leaders like Stanley Black, Ted Heath, Geraldo, Peter Yorke and Ambrose.
In 1949 he started working for Polygon. In those days the record market was dominated by two giants: Decca and EMI. Polygon was the brainchild of Alan Freeman (not to be confused with the D.J. of the same name). He also continued working or the Kassner Music Company as a manager/publisher and he was determined to fulfil his greatest wish - making records. He already had some contacts in Australia who wanted pop records and he decided to have these sung by Petula Clark. Petula was born on 15 November 1932 as Sally Clark. From her seventh year she had been singing regularly and had become a popular child-star through her radio performances during World War II. In 1944, when she was 11, she signed a film contract for the Rank Organisation. Despite her popularity neither Decca nor EMI were willing to give her a contract. Alan Freeman approached Leslie Clark, Petula's father who was also her manager. Leslie Clark took up the opportunity, invested also some money and Polygon was born.
At the end of 1949 the first recording session took place. That day four titles were recorded: "You go to My Head", "Out of a Clear Blue Sky", "Music! Music! Music!" ("Put Another Nickel in...") and "Blossoms on the Bough", featuring Petula Clark and the Stargazers with accompaniment conducted by Ron Goodwin. He was then just 24 years old. The 2 records were released in Australia and became a big success there. In 1950 "Too Young" was recorded, a cover version of Nat King Cole's USA no. 1 hit, sung by the then completely unknown singer/pianist, Jimmy Young, with accompaniment conducted by Ron Goodwin. The record became a big hit and gave a huge impulse to the careers of both Jimmy Young and Ron Goodwin. After that, Ron also recorded his first two instrumental records.
Polygon was not able to handle the enormous success of Jimmy Young and by the end of 1952 he moved to Decca. Ron Goodwin already had his contract with Parlophone, but on the Decca label he conducted fifteen Jimmy Young records. Ron Goodwin was still very young and the producer Dickie Rowe called him Ronnie Goodwin on the first of those Decca records. It did not go so well with Polygon after that. The company was not able to make up for the loss of Jimmy Young. Petula proved to be their only continuing asset and in 1955 Polygon was amalgamated with (Pye) Nixa.
In the slipstream of the success of "Too Young" Ron Goodwin was from then on an established name in the British musical world, performing under the name: "Ron Goodwin and his Orchestra" or depending on the mood of the person in charge of the marketing: "Ron Goodwin and his Concert Orchestra". The orchestra he formed consisted at first of 36 persons but later it grew to 42. All of them were session musicians personally selected by him. These musicians worked for him only during the record sessions. A day later they could be working for, for instance, Mantovani or Geraldo. Indeed, the Mantovani orchestra was also comprised entirely of session musicians.
In 1951 Ron Goodwin met George Martin, who was at that time a young assistant recording manager at Parlophone. George offered him a contract of backings for 12 vocal singles and 6 singles with his own orchestra every year. His first instrumental record on Parlophone was released in 1953. In that same year he recorded his version of Charles Chaplin's "Limelight" and reached third place in the English hit parade with it.
In the following years he made numerous records with his orchestra and did the vocal backings of, amongst others: Eamonn Andrews, Joan Baxter, Christine Campbell, Petula Clark, Jim Dale, Bruce Forsyth, Nadia Gray, The Headliners, Edmund Hockridge, Dick James, Cynthia Lanagan, Zack Laurence, Lorne Lesley, Larry Marschall, Glen Mason, Spike Milligan, Morecambe & Wise, Parlophone Pops Orchestra, Rostal & Schaefer, Edna Savage, Peter Sellers, Joan Small, Ian Wallace, Alma Warren and Jimmy Young.
Nowadays, many of those names are not familiar any more to us, but in those days you could find them regularly in the hit parades. Jim Dale started as a rock-singer, but became later a comedian and a member of the cast of the "Carry on..." films. Dick James started his own publishing company and became later the publisher of all the Beatles hits. And Edmund Hockridge? He still has his own fan club.
In 1954 Ron Goodwin recorded his first album in his own right: "Film Favourites". After that followed many more LPs, also 2 oriental: "Music for an Arabian Night" and "Holiday in Beirut". Long before he recorded "Sergeant Pepper ....." with The Beatles, George Martin was the producer of many concept-albums. A perfect example is the Goodwin album "Out of this World". On this LP the galaxy is traversed in an orchestral way (without the use of synthesisers!). Released in 1958, a few months after the first satellite "Sputnik" was put into orbit. Photos of launched rockets were not available yet, so the rocket on the front cover is a drawn one.
In 1958 the skiffle-rhythm was a rage and Goodwin wrote "Skiffling Strings". The song entered the hit parade and the American label "Capitol" was interested to release it in the USA. But the Americans were wondering what "Skiffling" really meant. In America the skiffle-rage was completely unknown. So, the song was re-titled "Swingin' Sweethearts". Ron Goodwin and George Martin went to the States to promote the single in several television-broadcasts. Within 14 days the song entered the American hit parades and was later followed by "Lingering Lovers". Quite a number of his albums were released after that in the USA. In that year he received the Ivor Novello Award" for "Lingering Lovers" as the year's best English song.
Peter Sellers was already a well-known actor in Britain, especially because of his performances in the BBC broadcasting series "The Goon Show". In 1958, 1959 and 1960 he recorded three LPs. These albums are still considered as the standard for British comedy. The production of those albums was again in the hands of George Martin. Ron Goodwin did all the conducting of the accompanying music. The third album in the series was called: "Peter and Sophia". In 1960, Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren had just finished the shooting of the film The Millionairess (1960). In this film Sellers played an Indian doctor, who was waylaid by an enamoured Sophia Loren. The co-operation of both led to this album, on which they both did the song "Goodness Gracious Me!". The song became a massive hit and remained in the top 5 for weeks. For the recording of the album Sophia Loren was flown to London with her husband Carlo Ponti, where he met Ron Goodwin. In 1965 they renewed their acquaintance when Carlo Ponti produced the film Operation Crossbow (1965) and Ron Goodwin wrote the music.
Back in 1955, Ron Goodwin was involved for the first time in composing film music. Malcolm Arnold (of "Bridge on the River Kwai" fame) had written the score for the film The Night My Number Came Up (1955). The producer wanted several sequences with dance music in night club style. Arnold refused to write this music and so Ron Goodwin was asked to write these sequences. In the following years he wrote the music for several documentaries. 1956: "The Corrington Achievement" and in 1957 "Atlantic Line". They appear to be the exercises for the larger jobs.
In 1958 he met Lawrence P. Bachmann, at that time manager for Columbia Pictures in London. Bachmann had written a book and this was going to be filmed with the title Whirlpool (1959). He commissioned Ron Goodwin to write the music for this film. That was Goodwin's first contact with a feature film. A year later Bachmann became head of production of MGM-Europe. He liked the music Goodwin wrote for his film "Whirlpool" very much and he asked him to write the music for 4 or 5 films every year. The first of those was Village of the Damned (1960), still one of the best British science fiction films. This was followed by the very successful Miss Marple film-series featuring Margaret Rutherford.
Because he was so busy writing film music, there was no more time left for vocal backings and his contract as musical-director for Parlophone was not prolonged. For the time being, the last album he recorded was "Serenade", which contained his well-known version of "Elizabethan Serenade".
Films he scored in the early sixties included: Invasion Quartet (1961), Postman's Knock (1962) (with a hilarious vocal from Spike Milligan), The Day of the Triffids (1963), Kill or Cure (1962), Follow the Boys (1963) (featuring Connie Francis) and Sword of Lancelot (1963). These were followed in 1964 by the United Artists/Mirisch Corporation film 633 Squadron (1964). This score established Ron Goodwin on the international stage as a composer of film music. The main theme became one of his most well-known and for the past several years has been used as a sort of signature tune at the start of the Rotterdam Marathon to accompany and encourage the athletes. After that film there followed even more film scores of which the most well-known are: Of Human Bondage (1964), Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes (1965), Operation Crossbow (1965), The Trap (1966) (the theme from which was adopted by the BBC for their coverage of The London Marathon), Where Eagles Dare (1968), Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies (1969), Battle of Britain (1969), Frenzy (1972) - when he replaced a score by Henry Mancini - and Force 10 from Navarone (1978).
In 1969, a very awkward situation existed with Battle of Britain (1969). Originally Sir William Walton wrote the music for this film. The producers were not really satisfied with the music and they gave the assignment to Goodwin. Sir William Walton is a kind of an institution and there was a lot of commotion about it. But Ron Goodwin was not to blame that he was signed to do the score. That Goodwin's score was apparently better, is simply proved by the fact that it was accepted by the producers. Apart, that is, from the fact that they liked Walton's "Battle in the Air" sequence more than Goodwin's and this is used in the film. These things can happen if one can choose. And so, nobody was happy with the situation, not Walton and not Goodwin.
In "Battle of Britain" it was very important that the audience could constantly identify the combatants. Ron Goodwin therefore wrote a march for the German Luftwaffe which he called, yes indeed, "Luftwaffe March". A few years later, one of the Bands of the Royal Airforce was going to record an album with marches, including "Luftwaffe March". A march with that name, recorded by an RAF Band already existed, therefore the march was re-titled "Aces High". The first editions of the soundtrack album mention the title "Luftwaffe march". On the later re-issues the new title "Aces High" was used.
In 1966 he resumed recording again for EMI, of both his own compositions and those of others. Now in the famous "Studio 2" stereo series, first came "Adventure", followed by "Gypsy Fire", "Christmas Wonderland", "Legend of the Glass Mountain", "Excitement", "Spellbound" and many others. By 1975, over a million of these albums with "Ron Goodwin and his (Concert) orchestra" had been sold and he received a gold record from EMI.
In 1979 Goodwin recorded "The Beatles Concerto". For collectors of Beatles and related records this is a very interesting LP. It was not the umpteenth album with a medley of tunes by Lennon-McCartney-Harrison, but contains a number of Beatle songs, arranged in a classical form and performed by England's most talented concert-pianists: Peter Rostal and Paul Schaefer. These were accompanied by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The record was produced by Beatles producer George Martin. Anyone who loves the great piano concertos of Rachmaninov or Tchaikovsky will be impressed by "The Beatles Concerto". The sleeve with a fantastic full-colour inner sleeve with photos of the recording sessions is a gem. There were over 100,000 copies of the album sold. And still is there a demand for it.
The last film he scored, was the Danish animated feature Valhalla (1986). The soundtrack album was only released in Scandinavia and that is really a pity. The released soundtracks of Goodwin's animation-scores were more or less fairytale records for children: narration with background music and songs. But that is not the case with "Valhalla". This is a fantastic symphonic score, without the many songs which seems to be obligatory in all animation films. This music would perfectly fit a live-motion film, it is full of fresh and new elements. Maybe this is also a result of synergy, because he wrote this score in collaboration with the Dane, Bent Hesselmann.
In 1979 the City Fathers of his native town Plymouth invited him to compose a Suite for the commemoration of the 400th Anniversary of Sir Francis Drake's circumnavigation of the Globe. The vicinity of the Atlantic and the atmosphere of a harbour-town in his childhood years, probably had their influence on this Suite.
The influence of his lengthy stay in hit parade environments and his accompaniments of various pop artistes are audible in several scores. For instance That Riviera Touch (1966) and Kill or Cure (1962) are really swinging numbers. A problem for Goodwin was that his best scores were made in a period when film producers were not particularly interested in releasing a soundtrack, so many of them failed to get a release.
In 1970 Ron Goodwin was invited by the London Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to conduct a programme of his film music. To ease the tension between items, he improvised and told the audience some remarks and anecdotes about the performed pieces. They started to laugh. It turned out to be the turning point in his career. The idea was born to bring in concert a mixture of film and light music and the items melt together with a touch of humour. Within a few months a tour was organized and he toured constantly with different well-known Symphony orchestras all over the world, always playing to a full house. The orchestras he toured with included: The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, The Odense Symphony Orchestra, The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, The Denver Symphony Orchestra and The Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
Ron Goodwin has scored approximately 70 films, there are between 70 and 80 albums released of his music and he recorded and accompanied on 250-350 singles. Films of the type like "Where Eagles Dare", "Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines" and "Monte Carlo or Bust", to which the music of Ron Goodwin makes a great contribution, are not being made anymore. And that is unfortunate in two ways: firstly, because we will not see those kind of films anymore and secondly, because we will not hear that kind of music anymore!4 stars
**Frenzy
*Murder at the Gallop
*Murder Ahoy!- Composer
- Music Department
- Writer
Luis Bacalov was born on 30 August 1933 in San Martín, Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was a composer and writer, known for The Postman (1994), Django Unchained (2012) and Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003). He died on 15 November 2017 in Rome, Italy.3 stars
**Il Postino
*Hidden Moon- Composer
- Music Department
- Actress
Mica Levi is a musician and composer born in Guildford, UK and living in South East London.
She has previously written music for films including Under The Skin (2014, dir. Jonathan Glazer), Jackie (2016, dir. Pablo Larraín), Monos (2018, dir. Alejandro Landes), Zola (2020, dir. Janicza Bravo) and Mangrove (2020, dir. Steve McQueen).**Under the Skin
*Jackie- Composer
- Music Department
- Additional Crew
Wendy Carlos, one of the great innovators in synthesized and electronic music, was born as Walter Carlos in Rhode Island on November 14, 1939. She underwent a sex-change operation in 1972, details of which she revealed during a surprise Playboy interview in 1979. Walter's last credited release is "Sonic Seasonings" (1972). Wendy's first credited release is the "Tron" soundtrack (1982), which was released on CD in 2002.**A Clockwork Orange
*The Shining