Elmer Bernstein ( BURN-steen; April 4, 1922 – August 18, 2004) was an American composer and conductor. In a career that spanned over five decades, he composed "some of the most recognizable and memorable themes in Hollywood history", including over 150 original film scores, as well as scores for nearly 80 television productions. For his work, he received an Academy Award for Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) and a Primetime Emmy Award. He also received seven Golden Globe Awards, five Grammy Awards, and two Tony Award nominations.
Bernstein composed and arranged over 100 film scores, including Sudden Fear (1952), The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), The Ten Commandments (1956), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), The Magnificent Seven (1960), To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), The World of Henry Orient (1964), The Great Escape (1963), Hud (1963), Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967), True Grit (1969), My Left Foot (1989), The Grifters (1990), Cape Fear (1991), Twilight (1998), and Far from Heaven (2002). He is known for his work on the comedic films Animal House (1978), Meatballs (1979), Airplane! (1980), The Blues Brothers (1980), Stripes (1981), Heavy Metal (1981), Trading Places (1983), Ghostbusters (1984), Spies Like Us (1985), The Black Cauldron (1985) and Three Amigos (1986).
He also worked on frequent collaborations with directors Martin Scorsese, Robert Mulligan, John Landis, Ivan Reitman, John Sturges, Bill Duke, George Roy Hill, Richard Fleischer, John Frankenheimer, and Henry Hathaway.
In 1985, Bernstein composed the dark, orchestral score for Disney's animated feature The Black Cauldron. Utilizing the eerie electronic tones of the ondes Martenot, with no songs, his work marked a distinct musical shift for Disney animation, though a significant amount of his music was cut out due to last-minute revisions.
Bernstein was born to a Jewish family in New York City, the son of Selma (née Feinstein, 1901–1991), from Ukraine, and Edward Bernstein (1896–1968), from Austria-Hungary.
He was not related to fellow composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, though they were friends. Within the world of professional music, they were distinguished from each other by the use of the nicknames Bernstein West (Elmer) and Bernstein East (Leonard), based on their bases of operation: East for New York City, West for Hollywood and Los Angeles. They also pronounced their surnames differently; Elmer pronounced his name "BERN-steen", and Leonard used "BERN-styne".
During his childhood, Bernstein performed professionally as a dancer and an actor, in the latter case playing the part of Caliban in The Tempest on Broadway, and he also won several prizes for his painting. He attended Manhattan's progressive Walden School and gravitated toward music. At the age of 12 he was awarded a piano scholarship by Henriette Michelson, a Juilliard teacher who guided him throughout his entire career as a pianist. She took him to play some of his improvisations for composer Aaron Copland, who was encouraging and selected Israel Citkowitz as a teacher for the young boy.
Bernstein was drafted into the United States Army Air Forces during the World War II era where he wrote music for the Armed Forces Radio.
Elmer Bernstein's music has some stylistic similarities to Copland's music, most notably in his western scores, particularly sections of Big Jake, in the Gregory Peck film Amazing Grace and Chuck, and in his spirited score for the 1958 film adaptation of Erskine Caldwell's novel God's Little Acre.
He had a lifelong enthusiasm for an even wider spectrum of the arts than his childhood interests would imply and, in 1959, when he was scoring The Story on Page One, he considered becoming a novelist and asked the film's screenwriter, Clifford Odets, to give him lessons in writing fiction.
Early 1950s: Hollywood blacklist
Bernstein's first film scores were at Columbia Pictures for director David Miller, notably 1952's film noir thriller Sudden Fear, which was nominated for several Academy Awards. However, his career quickly faced a setback that same year when, along with many other artists in Hollywood, Bernstein faced censure during the McCarthy era. Bernstein was called by the House Un-American Activities Committee when it was discovered that he had written some music reviews for a Communist newspaper. He later said in a 2002 interview, "I’d been involved in so-called left-wing activities. During the war we were allies with the Soviet Union and I’d done benefit concerts and such things for Friends of the Soviet Union. That was enough. It was a paranoid era and pretty terrifying."
After he refused to name names, pointing out that he had never attended a Communist Party meeting, Bernstein was "greylisted". He found work scoring low-budget B movies like Robot Monster and Cat-Women of the Moon (both 1953), both of which were produced independently by Al Zimbalist. His score for Robot Monster, which gained a cult following as one of the worst films ever made, gained some notoriety among cult movie fans. During this period, he also worked as a session musician in studio music departments, notably as the rehearsal pianist for Oklahoma! (1955).
His most high-profile score during his greylist period was for the addiction-themed drama The Man with the Golden Arm (premiered 1955, but not released widely until 1956), directed by Otto Preminger and starring Frank Sinatra. The jazz-inflected score earned him the first of 14 Academy Award nominations.
Late 1950s-1960s: Breakthrough
Bernstein was hired by Cecil B. DeMille to score his 1956 Biblical epic The Ten Commandments. He was originally hired only to write and record diegetic music for the film's dance sequences and other onscreen musical passages, but was promoted after DeMille's regular composer Victor Young declined due to failing health. In total, Bernstein wrote 2½ hours of music for the film, which proved a massive hit and cemented his status as a top score composer.
Bernstein wrote the theme songs or other music for more than 200 films and TV shows, including The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, The Ten Commandments (1956), Johnny Staccato (1959 TV theme and Capitol Records album) received little attention in the US but the single went to number four in Britain, True Grit, The Man with the Golden Arm, To Kill a Mockingbird, Robot Monster, Ghostbusters, Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965), and the fanfare used in the National Geographic television specials.
His theme for The Magnificent Seven is also familiar to television viewers, as it was used in commercials for Marlboro cigarettes. Bernstein also provided the score to many of the short films of Ray and Charles Eames.