People
Elmer Bernstein
Sound · follow into films and chains
Biography
Elmer Bernstein (April 4, 1922 – August 18, 2004) was an American composer and conductor best known for his many film scores. In a career which spanned fifty years, he composed music for hundreds of film and television productions. His most popular works include the scores to The Magnificent Seven, The Ten Commandments, The Great Escape, To Kill a Mockingbird, Ghostbusters, The Black Cauldron, Airplane!, and The Rookies. Bernstein won an Oscar for his score to Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) and was nominated for fourteen Oscars in total. He also won two Golden Globes and was nominated for two Grammy Awards. Bernstein wrote the theme songs or other music for more than 200 films and TV shows, including The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, The Ten Commandments (1956), The Man with the Golden Arm, To Kill a Mockingbird, Robot Monster, and the fanfare used in the National Geographic television specials. His theme for The Magnificent Seven is also familiar to television viewers, as it was used in commercials for Marlboro cigarettes. Bernstein also provided the score to many of the short films of Ray and Charles Eames. In 1961 Bernstein co-founded Äva Records an American record label based in Los Angeles together with Fred Astaire, Jackie Mills and Tommy Wolf.
Notable films
Where to start
Highlights from credits and KinoChain journeys.
Cape Fear
Music
An American Werewolf in London
Appears in a KinoChain journey
The Shootist
Appears in a KinoChain journey
Far from Heaven
Appears in a KinoChain journey
Ghostbusters
Original Music Composer
The Ten Commandments
Original Music Composer
Airplane!
Original Music Composer
Trading Places
Original Music Composer
Chains
KinoChain journeys
Public chains that pass through their films — or name them as a bridge.
The Melodrama They Never Let Us Keep
Rachel Morrison's Love of Your Life arrives as a reminder: the woman's picture was never a lesser form. It was grief, desire and colour, and the Europeans knew...
8 films
Metamorphosis: Bodies in Flux
From Kafka's insect to Cronenberg's flesh, a journey through cinema's most profound transformations, where identity itself is the shape-shifter.
7 films
Fur and Fangs
From the eerie moors of England to the neon streets of Tokyo, this chain of eight films reveals the werewolf as a creature of endless reinvention, embodying hor...
8 films
The Long Goodbye: Twilight of Heroes and Outlaws
There is a moment in Richard Lester's Robin and Marian (1976) that cuts deeper than any broadsword. Sean Connery, sporting grey in his beard and exhaustion in h...
8 films
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Related people
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Acted
Music
Far from Heaven
2002
Bringing Out the Dead
1999
Wild Wild West
1999
The Rainmaker
1997
Devil in a Blue Dress
1995
A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies
1995
The Age of Innocence
1993
Mad Dog and Glory
1993
Cape Fear
1991
Oscar
1991
The Grifters
1990
My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown
1989
Funny Farm
1988
Amazing Grace and Chuck
1987
¡Three Amigos!
1986
Spies Like Us
1985
Ghostbusters
1984
Trading Places
1983
An American Werewolf in London
1981
Stripes
1981
Airplane!
1980
The Blues Brothers
1980
Meatballs
1979
Zulu Dawn
1979
Animal House
1978
The Shootist
1976
McQ
1974
Cahill: United States Marshal
1973
The Liberation of L.B. Jones
1970
Hud
1963
To Kill a Mockingbird
1962
The Magnificent Seven
1960
The Ten Commandments
1956
The Man with the Golden Arm
1955
Sudden Fear
1952