Monday
Apr042022
What's your favourite Elmer Bernstein score?
Monday, April 4, 2022 at 10:00PM 
Happy Centennial to the composer Elmer Bernstein. Bernstein was born 100 years ago today in NYC to Ukrainian immigrant parents. As a teenager he hoped to become a concert pianist. Fate had different plans; He became a legendary film composer instead. His A list breakthrough came in the mid 50s with the back-to-back success of The Man with the Golden Arm (his first Oscar nomination) and Cecil B DeMille's The Ten Commandments. A year before his death in 2004 he was Oscar nominated for a 14th time for Far From Heaven (2002). So many classic films on his resume. Consider...
- Sudden Fear (1952)
- The Man With the Golden Arm (1955)
- The Ten Commandments (1956)
- The Magnificent Seven (1960)
- To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
- Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) - Oscar win
- An American Werewolf in London (1981)
- The Grifters (1991)
- The Age of Innocence (1993)
- Far From Heaven (2002)
Do you have a favourite score from his work?
tagged 10|25|50|75|100, Elmer Bernstein, composers
10|25|50|75|100, Elmer Bernstein, composers
Reader Comments (12)
I love The Grifters score. It fits the tone of that film so well and it’s one of those pieces of music that comes into my head anytime someone is doing something sneaky.
I would have said The Magnificent Seven, but I saw another film scored by Bernstein from earlier, and the score sounded disquiteingly similar to The Magnificent Seven score (still love it). But I've always loved the delicate scoring of To Kill a Mockingbird, so I'm going with that one.
He should have won Oscars for The Man with the Golden Arm, The Magnificent Seven, To Kill a Mockingbird and Far from Heaven.
Bernstein was at his best in the '60s. I love the swell of his score at the end of True Grit as the aging Rooster Cogburn jumps his horse over a four foot high rail fence.
Certainly his most popular work was the Oscar snubbed score to the Steve McQueen war drama The Great Escape. That militaristic theme was true ear candy and became an iconic piece of music.
My favorite though is the haunting score for To Kill a Mockingbird, a truly magnificent movie theme. It is interesting to note that the piano solo that opens the theme was played by a young John Williams who would go on to compose a number of great scores
Oh yeah, I should have added his score to Hawaii to his "should have wons".
While his name more often brings to mind the likes of The Ten Commandments and Thoroughly Modern Millie, The Grifters is by far my favorite. It definitely fits with what Joe G. describes.
My favorite is The man with the golden arm, such a unique score! Then I would pick To kill a mockingbird.
I'm partial to The Grifters,Far from Heaven and The Age of Innocence
I really liked that score from Far from Heaven. It captured a lot of the lushness of the film as the score definitely harkened back to the days of Douglas Sirk.
I love the score for Ten Commandments. This is what an epic movie should sound like!
The score for THE GREAT ESCAPE always got my heart racing as a kid, whenever it came on TV, which seemed like a lot back in the 70s, though it couldn't have been more often than once a year.
Probably The Age of Innocence. 1993 was insane: The Piano, Schindler's List, Jurassic Park, Remains of the Day, Bleu, Much Ado About Nothing, The Firm...
I know I got a copy of the original soundtrack of Legal Eagles somewhere.
The music for The Grifters is brilliant. So perfect for the movie, and it really is exciting as a crucial part of the film. The score for The Ten Commandments is iconic. He was a remarkable talent.