In Remembrance: Elmer Bernstein

     Film composer , who created some of the most identifiable scores of all time including the frenetic jazz of the breakthrough Hollywood soundtrack for The Man with the Golden Arm, passed away Wednesday, August 18 at his California home. He was 82.

     Bernstein was born on April 4, 1922 in New York, New York, growing up in a family interested in the arts. He enjoyed dancing and acting and won awards for painting. He was attracted to music at age twelve. He became a protégé of Aaron Copland, studying music with Roger Sessions and Stephan Wolpe. Bernstein was educated at the Walden School and New York University and later served in the US Army Air Corps in World War II. Bernstein was given the opportunity to arrange folk music and write scores for the Army Air Corps Radio Shows. Among his early composition work were scores for United Nations radio programs and television and industrial documentaries. His work caught the attention of Sidney Buchman, then a Vice President of Columbia Pictures. At the request of Buchman, Bernstein moved to Hollywood in 1950 to work on his first movie score for the football film, Saturday’s Hero. He first achieved recognition with his manic score for 1952’s thriller, Sudden Fear, starring Joan Crawford.

     However, Bernstein’s career was nearly over as quickly as it began, because of expressed sympathies to left-wing causes. He was summoned before the House Un-American Activities Committee and ordered to give names. He refused, saying he never attended any Communist meetings. Bernstein once joked, “I wasn’t important enough to be blacklisted, so I was put on the gray list.”  Still, major studios didn’t accept him and he was forced to work on low-budget films. His scores for 1953’s Robot Monster and Cat Women of the Moon became and remain cult favorites today.

     Cecil B. De Mille deserves most of the credit for resurrecting Bernstein’s career. Originally hired to just do the dance sequences of The Ten Commandments (1956), Bernstein was later requested to do the entire film. During the time he worked on his massive epic, he was hired by Otto Preminger to score The Man with the Golden Arm (1955). Bernstein proposed something that had never had been done in Hollywood before- an all jazz score. The smoking jazz exemplified the anguished emotions of Frank Sinatra’s heroin-addicted jazz musician and earned Bernstein his first Oscar nomination. The work from these two features is credited with changing the face of Hollywood film scores and inspiring a number of other composers.

     Other successes from the late 50’s were 1957’s Sweet Smell of Success and 1958’s Some Came Running, which also starred Sinatra.

     The 1960's proved to be a very successful time. Bernstein’s galloping march in The Magnificent Seven (1960) helped define the sound of the Western and earned him another Oscar nod. He also garnered a nomination, for his light Americana drenched score, reminiscent of Aaron Copland’s works, in the Gregory Peck-starring 1962 drama, To Kill a Mockingbird. His work can also be heard in the prison drama Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), the sweeping 1966 epic Hawaii and other hits like 1963’s Hud and The Great Escape.

     His only Oscar win came in 1967 for his composition in the film Thoroughly Modern Millie. By this time he was scoring about 4-5 films a year, right through the 70’s. He had the good fortune of being behind John Wayne’s last seven movies including 1967’s True Grit and also penned the music for the sequels to The Magnificent Seven, 1969’s Guns of the Magnificent Seven and The Magnificent Seven Ride! in 1972.

     Always looking for new ground to cover, Bernstein turned his attentions to comedies. His name was attached to some of the biggest comedy blockbusters of the 70’s and 80’s including John Landis' National Lampoon's Animal House (1978).  Other credits include Meatballs (1979), Airplane! (1980), Stripes (1981), Trading Places (1983), and Ghostbusters (1984).

     Bernstein collaborated with Martin Scorsese on The Grifters (1989), starring Angelica Huston and John Cusack. When he heard that Scorsese was remaking Cape Fear (1991), Bernstein called the director and asked to write an adaptation of Bernard Herrmann's original score. He idolized Hermann and even worked some of Hermann’s unused Torn Curtain (1966) score into the memorable composition. He was associated with Scorsese on a total of seven projects including 1993’s adaptation of The Age of Innocence and 1999’s Bringing Out the Dead starring Nicholas Cage. "An interviewer once asked me to discuss my collaboration with Elmer Bernstein, and precisely why I chose to work with him. My first thought was: How could I not work with Elmer, when I had the chance? Simply put, he's the best there is—the very best,” Scorsese once noted.

     In 2002, Bernstein received his fourteenth and last Oscar nomination for the soaring, melancholy score for Far From Heaven.

     Bernstein was active in his community, having served as a vice-president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and president of the Composers and Lyricists Guild of America. He is a founding life member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. For ten years he was president of the Young Musicians Foundation, an organization which promotes new, young talent in the concert world. He was also instrumental in founding the record label Varese Sarabande, specializing in film score soundtracks. At the time of his death, he was president of the Film Music Museum, an organization devoted to the preservation and storage of film music and a member of the Board of Directors of ASCAP.

     His prolific career spanned seven decades and he was revered for experimenting with various techniques that bolstered the films. Through 200 movies and 80 television shows, like Gunsmoke and Ellery Queen, Bernstein would prove that he could adapt to any kind of music. His music from The Magnificent Seven was featured for many years in Marlboro commercials. He even took home an Emmy Award in 1964 for The Making of the President: 1960. Bernstein will be remembered as one of the best film composers in Hollywood.

     "Film music, properly done, should give the film a kind of emotional rail on which to ride," Bernstein told The Associated Press in a 2001 interview. "Without even realizing that you're listening to music that's doing something to your emotions, you will have an emotional experience."