Jerry Goldsmith was born on February 10, 1929. Goldsmith was a film and television composer who scored almost 200 films in his 50-year career.
Goldsmith was born in Los Angeles and began playing the piano when he was six. He said that it wasn’t until he was 11, though, that he “got serious” about music. By 13, he was studying with concert pianist Jakob Gimpel. In addition to his concert career, Gimpel frequently worked in the 1940s and 1950s as a studio musician when a film score required a pianist. Goldsmith eventually had the opportunity to hire Gimpel for one of his own movies, The Mephisto Waltz, a horror movie about a former pianist.
When he first began thinking of a career in music, Goldsmith wanted to write music for the concert hall, but he feared that it would be difficult to get enough commissions to support himself as a classical composer. When he was 16, he was inspired by Miklós Rózsa’s score for Spellbound to pursue a career in film music.
He began his college music studies at the University of Southern California, where he briefly took classes with Rózsa. But Goldsmith soon transferred to Los Angeles City College, where he found he was able to get more hands-on experience in the music department, accompanying the chorus and serving as an assistant conductor.
In 1950, Goldsmith began working at CBS Radio as a clerk in the music department. That gave him the opportunity to score episodes of radio dramas. Within a few years, he’d moved to television, writing episode scores for a variety of television shows, including Playhouse 90 and The Twilight Zone.
More than most film composers, Goldsmith continued to write for television throughout his career, composing the main title themes for (among others) The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Waltons, and Barnaby Jones. His theme for the medical drama Dr. Kildare, with lyrics added, became a top ten pop hit for the show’s star, Richard Chamberlain, as “Three Stars Will Shine Tonight.”
Goldsmith scored his first theatrical film in 1957, the little-known Western Black Patch. He quickly became one of Hollywood’s busiest composers; by the mid-1960s, he was scoring six or seven movies every year. Goldsmith got his first Academy Award nomination in 1962 for Freud, an unconventional biography directed by John Huston.
He proved to be a versatile composer, capable of writing in a wide range of styles and genres. He got a great deal of attention (and another Academy Award nomination) for his 1968 score for Planet of the Apes, an avant-garde score which asked the musicians to grunt like apes. Brass players played their instruments with no mouthpieces, woodwind players made clacking sounds by fingering the keys without blowing into their instruments, and Goldsmith used tape delay technology—still a novelty at the time—to get unusual sounds.
The director of Planet of the Apes was Franklin J. Schaffner, with whom Goldsmith had a successful working relationship; Goldsmith was Oscar-nominated for three more scores written for Schaffner movies—Patton, Papillon, and The Boys from Brazil.
In 1974, Goldsmith took on a formidable challenge, and earned another Oscar nomination, when he was given only ten days to write a score for Chinatown. Goldsmith wrote for a small, eccentric ensemble—a string section, two percussionists, four pianos, four harps, and a solo trumpet. Trumpeter Uan Rasey said that Goldsmith told him to “play it sexy—but like it’s not good sex.”
After eight nominations, Goldsmith finally won the Academy Award in 1976 for The Omen. The score featured a chorus, chanting in Latin, with a refrain of “Ave Satani” (“Hail Satan”).
Goldsmith had a difficult experience on the 1979 film Alien. Director Ridley Scott and editor Terry Rawlings heavily edited his score during the final assembly of the movie. Goldsmith’s end credits music was replaced with excerpts from Howard Hanson’s Second Symphony, and Scott and Rawlings replaced some of Goldsmith’s new music with his music from 1962’s Freud without his consent.
Also in 1979, Goldsmith began his association with the world of Star Trek, scoring Star Trek: The Motion Picture. He went on to score four more Star Trek movies. His main title theme from The Motion Picture was re-used as the theme for the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Goldsmith won one of his five Emmy Awards for his original theme for the series Star Trek: Voyager.
Throughout the 1980s, Goldsmith adapted his sound to the increasing use of synthesizers and electronic instruments. His 1986 Oscar-nominated score for Hoosiers was notable in that regard, using the digitally altered sound of a basketball bouncing off a gym floor as a percussion instrument.
Goldsmith received the last of his 18 Academy Award nominations for the 1998 Disney movie Mulan, a nomination shared with Matthew Wilder & David Zippel, who wrote the songs for the movie. The last film to be released with a Goldsmith score was the 2003 live-action/animation hybrid Looney Tunes: Back in Action. He did complete one more score, for the science fiction movie Timeline, but he had composed it to an early edit, and after final edits were complete, his cues no longer fit the scenes. Goldsmith’s poor health meant that he was unable to revise his score, and a new composer was brought in. Goldsmith’s Timeline score was not used in the film, but it was recorded.
Goldsmith died on July 21, 2004, of colon cancer. His large body of work was marked by innovative techniques and a willingness to explore. He frequently used unusual instruments, often drawing on local folk instruments from wherever the movie was set. From project to project, Goldsmith rarely repeated himself, and found new musical textures and sounds to help tell each story.
In 2005, the American Film Institute released its list of the 25 best American film scores; Goldsmith placed two scores on that list, Chinatown and Planet of the Apes, and nine more of his scores were among the 250 titles considered for the list.
Much more of Jerry Goldsmith’s music is available for streaming at Hoopla and Freegal.