Jerry Goldsmith

His scores for "Planet of the Apes" (1968), "The Omen" (1976), "Star Trek, the Motion Picture" (1979), "Alien" (1979), and "Poltergeist" (1982) made him the king of science fiction and horror movie music, but veteran film composer Jerry Goldsmith had more to offer than mere thrills and chills. A one-time student of acclaimed composer Miklós Rózsa, Goldsmith channeled his passion for classical composition into his work on such prestige pictures as "Lonely Are the Brave" (1962), "Lilies of the Field" (1963), and "Patton" (1970), the latter of which garnered him one of many Academy Award nominations for Best Original Score. During his journeyman years as an in-house composer for the Columbia Broadcasting System, Goldsmith was an indispensable component of such long-running television series as "Playhouse 90," "Dr. Kildare," "The Twilight Zone" and "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." but his stock in the film industry rose via his associations with such A-list directors as John Huston, Otto Preminger, John Sturges, and Franklin J. Schaffner. In the bell lap of his long and distinguished career, Goldsmith became the composer of choice for such new talents as Ridley Scott, Paul Verhoeven, Joe Dante and Curtis...

His scores for "Planet of the Apes" (1968), "The Omen" (1976), "Star Trek, the Motion Picture" (1979), "Alien" (1979), and "Poltergeist" (1982) made him the king of science fiction and horror movie music, but veteran film composer Jerry Goldsmith had more to offer than mere thrills and chills. A one-time student of acclaimed composer Miklós Rózsa, Goldsmith channeled his passion for classical composition into his work on such prestige pictures as "Lonely Are the Brave" (1962), "Lilies of the Field" (1963), and "Patton" (1970), the latter of which garnered him one of many Academy Award nominations for Best Original Score. During his journeyman years as an in-house composer for the Columbia Broadcasting System, Goldsmith was an indispensable component of such long-running television series as "Playhouse 90," "Dr. Kildare," "The Twilight Zone" and "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." but his stock in the film industry rose via his associations with such A-list directors as John Huston, Otto Preminger, John Sturges, and Franklin J. Schaffner. In the bell lap of his long and distinguished career, Goldsmith became the composer of choice for such new talents as Ridley Scott, Paul Verhoeven, Joe Dante and Curtis Hanson, while his scoring for the revived "Star Trek" franchise won him a new generation of followers. Cut down by cancer in 2004, Goldsmith had long since attained enshrinement as a top-flight Hollywood composer, able to bridge the distant past and the unforeseeable future with an infectious measure of wonder and optimism.

Jerrald King Goldsmith was born in Pasadena, CA on Feb. 10, 1929. He began studying piano at age six, and within five years, was a student of Polish concert pianist Jakob Gimpel. While studying with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, a composer of film scores for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and mentor of future film composers Nelson Riddle, Henry Mancini and John Williams, Goldsmith attended an exhibition of Alfred Hitchcock's "Spellbound" (1945) and was inspired enough by Miklós Rózsa's score to devote himself to a career as a film composer. Goldsmith attended Rózsa's classes at the University of Southern California, but completed his musical education at the more downmarket Los Angeles City College, where he offset his tuition with work as an assistant conductor and opera coach. Upon hearing that the Columbia Broadcasting Company was offering employees free workshops in radio production, Goldsmith secured work as a script typist in the network's music department. Though his first job was slotting library cues into radio dramas, he was later allowed to compose original music for such programs as "CBS Radio Workshop" and "Frontier Gentleman."

Goldsmith contributed uncredited cues to the Marilyn Monroe vehicle "Don't Bother to Knock" (1952), but made his proper debut as a film composer with the low-budget western "Black Patch" (1957). Over the next decade, he toggled between screens big and small, providing accompaniment for such CBS weeklies as "Playhouse 90" (1956-1961), "Perry Mason" (1957-1966) and "Dr. Kildare" (1961-66). His wall-to-wall music for the nearly wordless "Twilight Zone" (1959-1964) episode "The Invaders" garnered great acclaim and he contributed an edgy opening title to the Boris Karloff-hosted omnibus "Thriller" (1961-62). Though his work in films began with such pinchpenny projects as "City of Fear" (1959) and "Face of a Fugitive" (1959), he enjoyed an uptake in status on several Kirk Douglas films, among them "Lonely are the Brave" (1962), "The List of Adrian Messenger" (1962), and "Seven Days in May" (1964). Over the ensuing years, Goldsmith forged important director-composer relationships with John Huston, John Frankenheimer, John Sturges and Otto Preminger.

The vogue for espionage dramas in the wake of Eon Productions' profitable James Bond franchise starring Sean Connery provided Goldsmith with fat feature and TV paychecks. He provided the staccato main title and episodic cues for the popular spy series "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." (NBC, 1964-68) and scored Twentieth Century Fox's tongue-in-cheek Bond spoofs "Our Man Flint" (1966) and "In Like Flint" (1967), starring James Coburn. In a more sober vein, Goldsmith scored John Frankenheimer's edgy science fiction thriller "Seconds" (1966) starring Rock Hudson in a change-of-pace role and provided nearly 90 minutes of original music for Robert Wise's historical adventure-drama "The Sand Pebbles" (1966), starring Steve McQueen as an American sailor caught up in the Chinese Boxer Rebellion. Goldsmith offered more subdued scores for the Sidney Poitier films "Lilies of the Field" (1963) and "A Patch of Blue" (1965) while partnering profitably with director Franklin J. Schaffner on "Planet of the Apes" (1968), "Patton" (1968), and "Papillon" (1973), all of which garnered him Academy Award nominations for Best Original Music.

By his forties, Goldsmith was short-listed as one of Hollywood's premier film composers, with the majority of his efforts aimed at the big screen. Scores for the Burt Reynolds private eye caper "Shamus" (1973), Roman Polanski's tony period whodunit "Chinatown" (1974), the Charles Bronson vehicles "Breakout" (1975) and "Breakheart Pass" (1975), and the John Milius' fact-based adventure "The Wind and the Lion" (1975) followed, while on the small screen he scored the acclaimed miniseries "QB VII" (1974) and episodes of "The Waltons" (CBS, 1971-1981) and "Police Story" (NBC, 1973-77). He returned to genre with "Logan's Run" (1976), "Damnation Alley" (1977), "The Swarm" (1978), and "Magic" (1978) and won his only Oscar for "The Omen" (1976). Goldsmith's score for Ridley Scott's "Alien" (1979) was branded an instant classic, eschewing lyrical themes for dissonant snippets that telegraphed the film's preoccupation with paranoia and doom. In the Eighties, Goldsmith's music box-inspired "Poltergeist" (1982) score was another crowd-pleaser, while his martial accompaniment for "First Blood" (1982) led to profitable assignments on "Rambo: First Blood Part II" (1983) and "Rambo III" (1988).

Sci-fi horror practitioner Joe Dante tapped Goldsmith for a number of his films, among them "Gremlins" (1984), "The 'Burbs" (1988), and "Matinee" (1993), while the composer adapted existing material for "Star Trek, The Motion Picture" (1979), "Psycho 2" (1983), and "Twilight Zone: The Movie" (1983). Oscar nominations followed for his work on "Hoosiers" (1986), "Basic Instinct" (1992), "LA Confidential" (1997), and Disney's "Mulan" (1999), but Goldsmith shockingly remained a one-time Academy honoree. He stuck with the "Star Trek" franchise through several sequels and continued his explorations into genre scoring with "Total Recall" (1990), "The Mummy" (1999), "The Haunting" (1999) and "Hollow Man" (2000). He also enjoyed a continued relationship with the actor Sean Connery, scoring "Outland" (1981), "The Russia House" (1990), and "First Knight" (1995). Additionally, Goldsmith served as a music producer and conductor and conducted his own music in venues around the world, often in partnership with the London Symphony Orchestra. His final credit was for Dante's "Looney Tunes: Back in Action" (2003), for which he received a Saturn Award nomination for Best Original Score. Diagnosed with lung cancer, Goldsmith struggled through a long term of treatment before he succumbed to the disease on July 21, 2004. Posthumously, his music was heard in such films as "Basic Instinct 2" (2006), "The Omen" (2006), "Rambo" (2008), "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" (2012), "Prometheus" (2012), and "Django Unchained" (2012). Since 1998, Goldsmith's composition "Fanfare for Oscar" has been included in every annual presentation of the Academy Awards - a fitting tribute to one of the greatest, most diverse and prolific film composers of all time.

By Richard Harland Smith

CAST: (feature film)