Remembering Bernstein

The death last week of legendary film composer Elmer Bernstein, on August 18^th, coming so close after that of Hollywood maestros Jerry Goldsmith (on July 21^st) and David Raksin (August 9^th), has robbed Hollywood of its last three connections with the film music legacy of the 40s and 50s. Bernstein, who began his film scoring career in the 1950s, was 82 years old when he died after a lengthy illness.

Bernstein's career spanned more than 50 years and included more than 200 films. He was nominated for Oscars 14 times, winning in 1967 for THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE. He also wrote for television, including THE BIG VALLEY in the 1960s and OWEN MARSHALL, COUNSELOR AT LAW in the 1970s, as well as many miniseries and TV documentaries. In 1963, he won an Emmy for THE MAKING OF THE PRESIDENT: 1960.

During [IMG2R]the 1950s, Bernstein seemed relegated to such forgetful low-budget programmers as ROBOT MONSTER and CAT WOMEN OF THE MOON, until he found the opportunity to compose the score for Cecil B. Demille's THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (Bernstein was original hired just to write some songs for the picture; but his work impressed the legendary producer enough to land the scoring assignment). After that, he never had to score the likes of ROBOT MONSTER again.

"Never has anyone reinvented themselves so many times,'' Richard Kraft, Bernstein's former agent and longtime friend, said in an August 19th Reuters/Hollywood Reporter obituary. "And he didn't just compose one film in each genre, he did a few. He would become the go-to guy for completely different genres, and he kept that going for 50 years. From the first Oscar (nomination) to the last is almost a five-decade span.''

A memorable film score depends on a memorable melody, Bernstein explained, reminiscing at a 2003 luncheon for the American Society of Music Arrangers and Composers, recalled by the Hollywood Reporter. Calling melody "the emotional core of a film,'' Bernstein said "a good line will always win.'' Bernstein introduced jazz elements into American film scoring with 1955's THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM, Otto Preminger's groundbreaking drama about heroin addiction, and went further in that direction with 1957's SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS and 1962's WALK ON THE WILD SIDE. At the same time, however, Bernstein crafted magnificent scores with broad, orchestral sweep. 1956's THE TEN COMMANDMENTS achieved a vast, epically biblical sound and fury, while 1962's TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (one of the quietest and most moving of all film scores) [IMG5L]was steeped in gentle Americana and intimate pathos. His indelible theme for 1960's THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, Bernstein became a "Western" composer, with numerous such scores throughout the '60s. He scored John Wayne's last seven films, including TRUE GRIT and THE SHOOTIST, and he scored 1999's big-screen version of WILD, WILD WEST. He also composed the classic and oft-quoted score for THE GREAT ESCAPE in 1962, as well as HAWAII and BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ. He became a "Comedy" composer during the '70s and '80s, frequently sought out by such new generation filmmakers as John Landis and Ivan Reitman, for whom he scores such films as NATIONAL LAMPOON'S ANIMAL HOUSE, AIRPLANE!, TRADING PLACES, and GHOSTBUSTERS, most of which contained sparse underscoring in lieu of much more prevalent pop songs. He composed the familiar theme for the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC television specials. Despite his prolific work for Western films, Bernstein frequently returned to the science fiction roots from whence he came in the '50s. In the '70s and '80s, Bernstein found opportunities to score large-scaled films, such as SATURN-3 and SPACE HUNTER: ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE, and scored some notable animation with 1981's HEAVY METAL and Disney's 1985 animated fantasy, THE BLACK CAULDRON.

Bernstein scored a number of films in association with Martin Scorsese, including Stephen Frears' 1990 [IMG4R]feature THE GRIFTERS, which Scorsese produced, and Scorsese's own CAPE FEAR (adapting the Bernstein Herrmann score from the 1962 original), THE AGE OF INNOCENCE, BRINGING OUT THE DEAD, and GANGS OF NEW YORK [the score, regrettably, was rejected from the film].

Bernstein's last major film score was Todd Haynes' 2002 drama FAR FROM HEAVEN, a lush evocation of '50s melodrama for, for which the composer received the last of his 14 Academy Award nominations. "His last project was a documentary on Cecil B. DeMille for TCM (Turner Classic Movies),'' Jeff Bond, senior editor of Film Score Monthly, told the Hollywood Reporter. "It was a great score that let him revisit his TEN COMMANDMENTS style and adapt some early silent film scores.''

"He liked taking risks with new directors,'' Richard Kraft told the Hollywood Reporter. "He knew what made movies work. He brought new filmmakers his expertise, but he was not stodgy in his expertise. The knowledge and experience he brought to other people and their films can never be replicated.''

While it is his Western and drama scores that have stood out in his canon of work, Bernstein contributed valuably to the legacy of science fiction and thriller film music. He started out in science fiction and never really lost his touch for the genre. Even [IMG3L]his earliest scores for those vastly forgettable sci-fi castaways, ROBOT MONSTER and CAT WOMEN OF THE MOON, Bernstein had fond memories and gave them his all back in 1953, despite their own laughable content and execution. "Those two pictures were written for rather similar orchestras and they were in their own way sort of oddly avant-garde scores," Bernstein told writer John Caps in Soundtrack!, June 1983. "There was a leaning on electronics in both of those.. They were written for instruments like the Novachord and the electronic organ and things of that kind."

"Curiously enough, at the time I did those scores and it seems hard to realize now, but electronics in scores were virtually unknown," Bernstein told me in a 1984 interview. "The use of the electronics and the way I scored those films had a profound effect."

A 1971 score for the thriller SEE NO EVIL (replacing a rejected score from Andre Previn) supported the inherent tension of the film by contrasting a pretty, pastoral theme against a variety of haunting, piano-and-violin motifs that supported the film's spookiness and terror. 1980's SATURN 3 (a forgettable sci-fi story with Kirk Douglas, Farrah Fawcett, Harvey Keitel and a metal robot) [IMG6R]returned to the sensibilities of 1953's Ro-Man, with a heavily avant-garde score for orchestra and overdubbed electronics. A grand and majestic score for 1981's animated anthology, HEAVY METAL, proffered an exhuberant musical composition that pretty much ignored the harsh rock songs embedded into the film. Bernstein versus songs seemed to be the by-word during the 1980s as Bernstein's continued calling to score comedies for Landis and Reitman gave him brief opportunities to score effective music amongst the dominant character of the rock songs. AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981) was a great example, with a few spare, connecting cues creating a beautiful effect on the English countryside until Landis drops the needed on yet another distracting moon-related pop song.SPACEHUNTER: ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE (1983) was one of a fistful of contrived sci-fi films rushed into release in the aftermath of the growing STAR WARS franchise; Bernstein's music was grand and majestic, merging electronics with orchestra to achieve some unusual sound patterns. He skirted the songs of Michael Jackson when he composed the underscore to the pop diva's THRILLER music video. Unfortunately, virtually none of these scores has received a commercial release outside of celluloid.

One of Bernstein's best scores of this period was for Reitman's GHOSTBUSTERS (1984), which, despite the obnoxious presence of pop tunes (including Ray Parker's title song, the riff of which is stolen completely from Huey Lewis & the News' "I Want A New Drug") gave Elmer the opportunity to compose some grandly magnificent music for the rampaging ghosts and the threat of the demons. "The hardest thing I had to do was to come up with a theme for the three guys," Bernstein told me in 1984. "The interesting thing about GHOSTBUSTERS as a film, is that it walks a very fine line... Part of it is comedy, and yet you have to take the ghost business quite seriously. You have to believe, along with these guys, that the ghosts really do exist. Therefore, the score also had to walk a very fine line. What I did with the main theme for the guys was to get a kind of 'antic' theme it's kind of cute, without being really way out. That was one element. The other element was the last part of the film, all; that stuff with the possession and the climax on the top of the building. I treated that in an awesome and mystical way, and that was much easier to do, conceptually."

Off screen, Bernstein was a fierce advocate for composers and musicians. In the 1950s, he led the extremely difficult fight for composers in Hollywood to retain the rights to their own works, recalled Vertlieb.  "The studios fought him bitterly and, for a time, he was blacklisted by studio heads, jealously guarding their ownership of music written for the screen," Vertlieb said. "In the end, however, the battle was won and every composer today owes a debt of gratitude to Elmer Bernstein for leading the fight on their behalf."

In the 1970s Bernstein became an outspoken proponent of film music preservation, creating the Film Music Collection, which was one of the first private labels to issue classic Hollywood film scores on record. Later Bernstein became the President of The Society for the Preservation of Film Music (now the Film Music Society), and in 1996, was honored with a star on Hollywood Boulevard. In 2003 and 2004, Bernstein worked with young composers as he served as mentor and spokesperson for the Turner Classic Movies Young Film Composers Competition.

"He was the consummate composer. He was classically trained and could do it all," Marilyn Bergman, president of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, said in an August 19^th obituary, written by Claudia Luther, for the Los Angeles Times. Bergman went on to say that Bernstein "was among a group of composers who stood in the pantheon of film composing." His scores for THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM and THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN are considered classics, she said, and his credit sequence work for TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD "stands as one of the best main titles, visually and musically. The art of really scoring a film dramatically, where the composer is almost an extension of the screenplay - that's very rare today, and it makes it all the sadder," Bergman told The LA Times.

"From my earliest memories, Elmer Bernstein was a towering presence and momentous force in my life," remarked film journalist Steve Vertlieb.  "I guess my first conscious experience of Mr. Bernstein was in 1956 when my parents took my brother, Erwin, and I to the old Randolph Theatre in Philadelphia to see Cecil B. DeMille's THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.  I can still recall the excitement I felt as the first notes of that still majestic score filled the cavernous theatre and my ears.  Some fifty years later, I still find the music for that film one of the most inspirational and momentous scores I've ever been fortunate enough to hear."

"With his scores, one never has the feeling that the music is working too hard," said composer James Newton Howard, in the LA Times Obit. "Somehow, he has always been able to achieve gigantic effect with the most gentle and graceful gestures."

In "so many countless more scores of power, exhilaration and beauty, the work of Elmer Bernstein is virtually unmatched in its rapturous sensitivity and power," said Steve Vertlieb.  "Even his works for the small screen were memorable.  He always lavished the same degree of caring and professionalism on his work for television as for the big screen."

At age 79, still with no plans to retire, Bernstein told The LA Times: "I can't think of anything else that I'd have rather done with my life. I think I made a difference. It is an amazing human privilege to look back at your life and simply be able to say that you had some part in making millions and millions of people feel better, two hours at a time."

Elmer Bernstein is survived by his wife, Eve; sons Peter [also a film composer] and Gregory; daughters Emilie and Elizabeth; and five grandchildren.

For more information on Elmer Bernstein, see: http://www.homestead.com/filmmusic/elmer.html

Sony Classical has released Tan Dun's evocative score for HERO, Zhang Yimou's new historical epic, starring Jet Li, Donnie Yen, Tony Leung, and Chiu-Wai. The outstanding score, not unlike Dun's music for CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, features Itzhak Perlman on violin and the Kodo drummers of Japan. The soundtrack was issued by Sony Soundtrax in Japan in 2002; the American edition includes the same content except for the end title song, performed by Faye Wong.

Musicfromthemovies.com reports that Theodore Shapiro (STARSKY AND HUTCH), has been hired to score the live action film, AEON FLUX. The film stars Charlize Theron and is based on the futuristic MTV animated series created by Peter Chung. The film is directed by Karyn Kusama, with whom Shapiro worked before on GIRLFIGHT. Shapiro has also been hired to compose the music for the next film from director Mike Judge (of BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD fame). Yet untitled, but sometimes referred to as 3001, this film is a sci-fi comedy where Luke Wilson is hibernated for a thousand years, waking up in a society where the average IQ among human beings has been dramatically reduced. The film will premiere some time next year. Apart from these two projects, Shapiro is also scoring THE BAXTER, a film that is inspired by the classic Howard Hawks comedies of the Golden Age. Michael Showalter directs. www.musicfromthemovies.com

Next Week in Soundtrax: Resident Evil: An Interview with Jeff Danna.