Elmer Bernstein
Elmer Bernstein (/ˈbɜːrnstiːn/ BURN-steen; April 4, 1922 – August 18, 2004)[1][2] 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.[3] For his work, he received an Academy Award for Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) and Primetime Emmy Award. He also received seven Golden Globe Awards, five Grammy Awards, and two Tony Award nominations.
Elmer Bernstein
April 4, 1922
New York City, U.S.
August 18, 2004 (aged 82)
Ojai, California, U.S.
- Composer
- conductor
- songwriter
Keyboards
1951–2004
-
Rhoda Federgreen(m. 1942; div. 1945)
-
Pearl Glusman(m. 1946; div. 1965)
-
Eve Adamson(m. 1965)
He composed and arranged scores for 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), Trading Places (1983), Ghostbusters (1984), Spies Like Us (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.
Early life[edit]
Bernstein was born to a Jewish family[2] in New York City, the son of Selma (née Feinstein, 1901–1991), from Ukraine, and Edward Bernstein (1896–1968), from Austria-Hungary.[4]
He was not related to the celebrated composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, though they were friends.[5] 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/Los Angeles.[6] 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.[7]
Elmer 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.
Classical[edit]
Having studied composition under Aaron Copland, Roger Sessions, and Stefan Wolpe, Bernstein also performed as a concert pianist between 1939 and 1950 and wrote numerous classical compositions, including three orchestral suites, two song cycles, various compositions for viola and piano and for solo piano, and a string quartet.
As president of the Young Musicians Foundation, Bernstein became acquainted with classical guitarist Christopher Parkening and wrote a Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra, which Parkening recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra under Bernstein's baton for the Angel label in 1999. In addition, Bernstein was a professor at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music and conductor of the San Fernando Valley Symphony in the early 1970s.[12]
Personal life and death[edit]
Bernstein was married three times, first to Rhoda Federgreen. Their marriage lasted from 1942 to 1946.[13] Bernstein's second wife was Pearl Glusman, whom he wed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on December 21, 1946.[14][15] After the couple's divorce in 1965, Bernstein married Eve Adamson. They remained together for 39 years, until his death.[15]
In the 1960s, Bernstein was an owner in the Triad Stable Thoroughbred racing partnership, named for a music term. His partners included his assistant, Robert Helfer, and the wife of the Triad Stable's trainer Morton Lipton.[16]
The Bernsteins in the 1990s resided in Hope Ranch, a suburb of Santa Barbara, California.[10] Later, they moved to a home in Ojai, California, where Bernstein died of cancer on August 18, 2004.[17] His publicist Cathy Mouton simply stated at the time that Bernstein had died following a lengthy illness.[15][18] 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.[15][18]
Influences and legacy[edit]
Bernstein considered these artists as influences on his work: 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.
Composers who have acknowledged the influence of Bernstein's work on their own include James Newton Howard,[19] 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, Ennio Morricone, Danny Elfman, Alan Menken, Randy Newman, and Randy Edelman.
