Elmer Bernstein ( / ˈ b ɜːr n s t iː n / BURN -steen ; April 4, 1922 – August 18, 2004) was an American composer and conductor. His career lasted more than 50 years, during which he created some of the most well-known and unforgettable music in Hollywood history. He wrote over 150 original film scores and music for nearly 80 television shows. For his work, he received an Academy Award for Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) and a Primetime Emmy Award. He also earned seven Golden Globe Awards, five Grammy Awards, and two Tony Award nominations.
He composed and arranged music for more than 100 films, 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 also known for his work on comedic films such as 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), and Three Amigos (1986).
He frequently worked with directors Martin Scorsese, Robert Mulligan, John Landis, Ivan Reitman, John Sturges, Bill Duke, George Roy Hill, Richard Fleischer, John Frankenheimer, and Henry Hathaway.
Early life
Bernstein was born into a Jewish family in New York City. His mother was Selma (née Feinstein, 1901–1991), who was born in Ukraine, and his father was Edward Bernstein (1896–1968), who was born in Austria-Hungary.
He was not related to Leonard Bernstein, another composer and conductor, though they were friends. In the music world, they were often told apart by the nicknames "Bernstein West" (Elmer) and "Bernstein East" (Leonard), based on where they worked: East for New York City, West for Hollywood and Los Angeles. They also pronounced their last names differently: Elmer said "BERN-steen," and Leonard said "BERN-styne."
As a child, Bernstein performed professionally as a dancer and actor. He played the role of Caliban in The Tempest on Broadway and won prizes for his painting. He attended Walden School in Manhattan and became interested in music. At age 12, he received a piano scholarship from Henriette Michelson, a Juilliard teacher who helped him throughout his career as a pianist. She introduced him to composer Aaron Copland, who encouraged him and arranged for him to study with Israel Citkowitz.
During World War II, Bernstein joined the United States Army Air Forces and wrote music for the Armed Forces Radio.
Elmer Bernstein’s music shares some similarities with Aaron Copland’s music, especially in his western film scores. These include parts of Big Jake, the Gregory Peck film Amazing Grace, Chuck, and the 1958 film version of Erskine Caldwell’s novel God’s Little Acre.
Throughout his life, Bernstein remained interested in many areas of the arts beyond music. In 1959, while scoring The Story on Page One, he considered becoming a novelist and asked the film’s screenwriter, Clifford Odets, to teach him how to write fiction.
Scoring career
Bernstein's first film scores were made for Columbia Pictures under director David Miller, including the 1952 film noir thriller Sudden Fear, which was nominated for several Academy Awards. However, his career faced challenges the same year when, along with many other artists in Hollywood, Bernstein was criticized during the McCarthy era. Bernstein was called by the House Un-American Activities Committee after it was found that he had written music reviews for a Communist newspaper. In a 2002 interview, he said, "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 refusing to name names and stating he had never attended a Communist Party meeting, Bernstein was "greylisted," which limited his work opportunities. He scored low-budget B movies such as Robot Monster and Cat-Women of the Moon (both 1953), produced by Al Zimbalist. His score for Robot Monster, which became known for being one of the worst films ever made, gained attention among fans of cult movies. During this time, he also worked as a session musician and served as the rehearsal pianist for Oklahoma! (1955).
His most notable score during the greylist period was for the addiction-themed drama The Man with the Golden Arm (premiered 1955, released widely in 1956), directed by Otto Preminger and starring Frank Sinatra. The jazz-style score earned him his first of 14 Academy Award nominations.
Bernstein was hired by Cecil B. DeMille to score his 1956 Biblical epic The Ten Commandments. Initially, he was asked only to write music for the film's dance scenes and other onscreen musical moments. After DeMille’s regular composer, Victor Young, declined due to health issues, Bernstein was promoted and wrote 2½ hours of music for the film. The movie became a major success and solidified Bernstein’s reputation as a top film composer.
Bernstein composed music for over 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), True Grit, The Man with the Golden Arm, To Kill a Mockingbird, Robot Monster, Ghostbusters, Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965), and the fanfare for National Geographic television specials. His theme for The Magnificent Seven was later used in commercials for Marlboro cigarettes. Bernstein also scored many short films by Ray and Charles Eames.
In 1961, Bernstein co-founded Äva Records, an American record label in Los Angeles, with Fred Astaire, Jackie Mills, and Tommy Wolf.
In addition to film music, Bernstein wrote scores for two Broadway musicals: How Now, Dow Jones (1967) with lyricist Carolyn Leigh and Merlin (1983) with lyricist Don Black.
One of Bernstein’s tunes became a lasting part of U.S. college sports culture. In 1968, University of South Carolina football coach Paul Dietzel adapted the song "Step to the Rear" from How Now, Dow Jones into a new version, "The Fighting Gamecocks Lead the Way," which became the school’s fight song.
John Landis, who grew up near Bernstein, became friends with him through his children. Later, Landis asked Bernstein to compose the music for National Lampoon's Animal House, despite the studio’s objections. Landis believed Bernstein’s score, which treated the film’s comedic characters as if they were real heroes, would highlight the humor. The film’s opening theme was based on a variation of a secondary theme from Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture. Bernstein accepted the job, which marked the start of a new phase in his career. He continued composing for comedies like Ghostbusters, Stripes, Airplane!, and The Blues Brothers, as well as most of Landis’s films for the next 15 years, including An American Werewolf in London, Trading Places, and the music video for Michael Jackson’s "Thriller."
When Martin Scorsese announced a remake of Cape Fear, Bernstein adapted Bernard Herrmann’s original score for the new film. Bernstein eagerly accepted the opportunity to work with Scorsese and to honor Herrmann. Scorsese and Bernstein later collaborated on The Age of Innocence (1993) and Bringing Out the Dead (1999). Bernstein had previously conducted Herrmann’s unused score for Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain (1966).
Classical
Leonard Bernstein learned composition from Aaron Copland, Roger Sessions, and Stefan Wolpe. Between 1939 and 1950, he played piano in concerts and created many classical pieces, such as three orchestral suites, two song cycles, works for viola and piano, solo piano pieces, and a string quartet.
As president of the Young Musicians Foundation, Bernstein met classical guitarist Christopher Parkening. Bernstein wrote a Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra, which Parkening recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Bernstein, for the Angel label in 1999. In the early 1970s, Bernstein taught at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music and led the San Fernando Valley Symphony.
Personal life and death
Leonard Bernstein was married three times. His first marriage was to Rhoda Federgreen, and it lasted from 1942 to 1946. His second wife was Pearl Glusman, and they married in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on December 21, 1946. After their divorce in 1965, Bernstein married Eve Adamson. They remained married for 39 years until Bernstein’s death.
In the 1960s, Bernstein was part of a horse racing partnership called Triad Stable. The name "Triad Stable" came from a music term. His partners included his assistant, Robert Helfer, and the wife of the stable’s trainer, Morton Lipton.
In the 1990s, Bernstein and his family lived in Hope Ranch, a suburb of Santa Barbara, California. Later, they moved to a home in Ojai, California, where Bernstein died of cancer on August 18, 2004. His publicist, Cathy Mouton, said at the time that Bernstein had died after a long illness. He was survived by his wife, Eve, and their two daughters, Emilie and Elizabeth; by his two sons, Peter and Gregory Bernstein, from his earlier marriage to Pearl Glusman; and by five grandchildren.
Influences and legacy
Leonard Bernstein was influenced by the work of these artists: Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Dimitri Tiomkin, Duke Ellington, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Waxman, Miklós Rózsa, Jimmie Lunceford, Max Steiner, Victor Young, Aaron Copland, Bernard Herrmann, Nino Rota, Roger Sessions, Stefan Wolpe.
Many composers have said that Bernstein's work influenced them, including James Newton Howard, Alan Silvestri, Georges Delerue, Howard Shore, John Barry, Lalo Schifrin, Dick Hyman, Hans Zimmer, James Horner, Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, Trevor Jones, Mark Isham, Bear McCreary (who was mentored by Bernstein), Ennio Morricone, Danny Elfman, Alan Menken, Randy Newman, and Randy Edelman.
Awards and nominations
Throughout his career, Bernstein received an Academy Award, an Emmy Award, and two Golden Globe Awards. He was also nominated for the Tony Award three times and for the Grammy Award five times. He earned 14 Academy Award nominations and was nominated at least once each decade from the 1950s until the 2000s. However, he won only one Academy Award for Thoroughly Modern Millie for Best Original Music Score. Bernstein received Golden Globe Awards for his scores in To Kill a Mockingbird and Hawaii. In 1963, he won a Primetime Emmy Award for his score in The Making of The President 1960. He also received Western Heritage Awards for The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Hallelujah Trail (1965).
Additional honors included lifetime achievement awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, ASCAP, the Society for the Preservation of Film Music, and several film festivals, including the US, Woodstock, Santa Barbara, Newport Beach, and Flanders International Film Festivals, as well as the Foundation for a Creative America. In 1996, Bernstein received a star on Hollywood Boulevard. In 1999, he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Music from Five Towns College in New York and honored by the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. In 2001, he received ASCAP’s Founders Award, and in 2004, he was given the NARAS Governors Award. In 2003, Bernstein was featured on This Is Your Life in London’s Royal Albert Hall after conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra during his 80th birthday celebrations.
Bernstein’s scores for The Magnificent Seven and To Kill a Mockingbird were ranked by the American Film Institute as the eighth and seventeenth greatest American film scores of all time on the list AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores. Bernstein, Bernard Herrmann, Max Steiner, and Jerry Goldsmith are the only composers with two scores on the list, placing them second behind John Williams, who has three. Other Bernstein film scores nominated for the list include The Age of Innocence (1993), Far from Heaven (2002), The Great Escape (1963), Hawaii (1966), The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), Summer and Smoke (1961), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), The Ten Commandments (1956), and Walk on the Wild Side (1962).