Any movie buff knows the chords and strings of Elmer Bernstein's music; after all, there is certainly a lot of it. When he died yesterday at the age of 82, he left behind the scores for well over two hundred films and TV shows, including some of the most memorable in movie history.
Who doesn't think of a vast sweep of Western scenery when one hears the theme from The Magnificent Seven? Or walk in step and with a slightly martial air to the music from The Great Escape? (It has become one of the most instantly recognizable theme songs in all of cinema, enough to be parodied on a Simpsons episode some years back.) Or feels just a tiny shudder at the crashing, biblical music of The Ten Commandments?
Bernstein's prolific success is all the more remarkable because his film career was nearly destroyed right at the beginning, in the early 1950s. Like many of his artistic colleagues, he was sympathetic to the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 1940s, but he remained a self-proclaimed Communist even after Josef Stalin's tyranny became evident. (Interestingly, Stalin's relentless persecution of Soviet Jews never seemed to sway this Jewish composer.) Never one to keep his opinions to himself, he continued to champion leftist causes and criticized what he called the excesses of capitalism.
As the House Un-American Activities Committee and other super-patriots relentlessly purged American institutions of political unreliables, Bernstein saw opportunities disappear. But since he was not in front of the cameras like actors, nor high-profile like directors or writers, he was able to find some work, even if it was scoring such notorious clunkers as Robot Monster or Cat-Women of the Moon.
It took Otto Preminger to bring him back from exile, hiring him to write the music for 1955's The Man with the Golden Arm. Cecil B. DeMille also recruited him to score his 1956 Exodus epic, The Ten Commandments. It was not the only way DeMille faced down the blacklist; he also tapped Edward G. Robinson, who made his mark playing tough-guy gangsters in movies like Key Largo before his political views made him untouchable, to play the Hebrew overseer Dathan.
From then on, Bernstein worked constantly, turning out film scores by the bushel. From To Kill a Mockingbird to Birdman of Alcatraz to Devil in a Blue Dress, he composed some of the best movie music of the 20th century. He kept on working right through his 70s, with his last film being 2002's The Rising of the Moon. And yet, with all his work and all his films, he won only one Oscar, for 1967's Thoroughly Modern Millie, out of fourteen nominations.
And now Elmer Bernstein has ridden off into the sunset, doubtless to the strains of The Magnificent Seven. Movie fans everywhere will miss him.
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