Eventually, the tone I need will come to me. Bernstein described his approach as being straightforward: ''I have this thing that if I run the rough cut of the film often enough, over and over again, it will start to talk to me. A productive period followed, including scores for ''Sweet Smell of Success'' (1957), ''The Magnificent Seven'' (1960), ''Walk on the Wild Side'' (1962), ''To Kill a Mockingbird'' (1962), ''Birdman of Alcatraz'' (1962), ''The Great Escape'' (1963), ''Hud'' (1963), ''True Grit'' (1969), ''Animal House'' (1978), ''Airplane!'' (1980), ''Stripes'' (1981), ''Ghostbusters (1984), ''My Left Foot'' (1989), ''The Grifters'' (1990), a remake of ''Cape Fear'' (1991) that was a reconfiguring of and a variation on the music for the original ''Cape Fear'' by his idol Bernard Herrmann, and ''The Age of Innocence'' (1993). Bernstein as a man who could make a symphony orchestra the handmaiden of cinema. It was released in 1956 with its heroic score for large orchestra, and established Mr. Bernstein if he would like to write the score for his biblical epic, ''The Ten Commandments.'' That movie was attended by a lot of publicity and had a budget that was huge for the time: $14 million. He did a creditable job and seemed to have good ideas, Ms. DeMille, who was then working out the choreography for ''Oklahoma!'' That score, filled with screeching trumpets and saxophone ostinati, was markedly different from the prevailing lush sound of film music created by Alfred Newman, Max Steiner and other composers influenced by Romantic and Post-Romantic music.Īnother break came his way in 1954, when he worked as the rehearsal pianist for Agnes de Mille, niece of the director Cecil B. However, as he once said, ''I wasn't important enough to be blacklisted, so I was put on a gray list,'' and his politics were of no interest to Otto Preminger, who hired him to do the music for ''The Man With the Golden Arm'' (1955). Work dried up and the only assignments he could get at the height of the purge of suspected Hollywood Communists by the House Un-American Activities Committee were oddments like ''Robot Monster'' (1953) and ''Miss Robin Crusoe'' (1954). His career was sidetracked in 1950 for five years because he considered himself a Communist. His first score was for ''Boots Malone,'' a vehicle for the actor William Holden that was released in 1952. Bernstein originally intended to be a concert pianist and gave several performances in New York from 1946 to 1950, when he started writing for films. Bernstein was nominated for 14 Academy Awards, but won only one, for ''Thoroughly Modern Millie'' (1967), which most critics did not consider his best work. His death was announced to The Associated Press by his publicist, Cathy Mouton.Īmong his highly praised contributions were the jazz motif for ''The Man With the Golden Arm,'' the deceptively simple but haunting theme for flute, harp and piano in ''To Kill a Mockingbird,'' the martial music threaded throughout ''The Great Escape'' and the unsettling sounds that accompanied ''The Grifters.'' Elmer Bernstein, the Academy Award-winning composer of more than 200 film scores, many more memorable than the movies they accompanied, died on Wednesday at his home in Ojai, Calif.
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