Jerry Goldsmith page

'Writing music is a very lonely profession, a very insecure one. When you finally perform this music, you're really performing it for an audience who really knows nothing about music, that's the producer and director.'

Personal quote

The name Jerry Goldsmith will forever be linked with success. We are not speaking of Academy success but more of its success with the fans of film music. No one can compare this master with the other film god John Williams because Jerry didn't score movies for Lucas of Spielberg. No, he scored some of the worst or least inspiring movies but still with the dignity and talent that they became classic scores. It wasn't all bad of movies and some were actually very good, Chinatown, Papillon, First Knight, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Patton, Total Recall, Poltergeist, The Omen to name a few. This shows that Jerry Goldsmith actually could score supreme movie music when he received a script that still was worthy of the attention when the end result was shown on screen. This movie maestro left too early for many this world of the living and he retired without returning from the one hobby and gift he had. He blessed the film music with a brilliance of class that isn't heard much today. But he delivered probably the biggest and best time of movie fun and he remains a true Legend in my eyes.

Biography

Jerrald Goldsmith was born on February 10, 1929 and studied piano at an early age. He studied film composition at the University of Southern California under the guidance of legendary film composer Miklos Rozsa and started working as a typist for the American TV studio CBS. It wasn't long before Goldsmith got noticed while writing short pieces for TV series and radio shows. One of the first and best were The Twilight Zone and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. Already then Jerry started to score larger pictures and this resulted in several well known classics. Lonely are the Brave, A Patch of Blue, The Agony and the Ecstasy, The Sand Pebbles and The Blue Max, most of them being war related films. In 1968 he wrote what many people call revolutionary film music, Planet of the Apes wasn't exactly high melodic stuff but it dazzled many people nonetheless. This equally counted twice for War epics as Tora!Tora!Tora! and Patton. It is impossible not to keep mentioning one classic film score after another, since it was the only thing Goldsmith kept doing. Papillon with legendary director Franklin J. Schaffner, Chinatown with Jack Nicholson, The Wind and the Lion and The Omen, which resulted in his first yet only Oscar of his career. But Goldsmith's high string of movie projects kept going on, MacArthur, The Boys from Brazil, Alien and Star Trek: The Motion Picture are just some of his old classic works.

From the '80, many believed that Goldsmith was at the peak of his career, writing great scores for sometimes unmemorable films and even if some were outstanding in their own right, Goldsmith created almost each time a masterpiece to enjoy; The Final Conflict, Poltergeist, First Blood, Under Fire, Gremlins, King Solomon's Mines, Supergirl, Hoosiers, Lionheart, Rambo II and III, The 'Burbs and Total Recall. Goldsmith kept scoring pictures for Joe Dante and Paul Verhoeven and while not as stirring as Schaffner or others, it were the two directors he mostly appreciated. From the '90 Goldsmith's scores weren't weakening strength but mostly it was the film that didn't turn out to be that good. Examples of great scores for average to stupid films are everywhere, including Medicine Man, Bad Girls, Congo yet some films turned out to inspire the man more then we imagined, Powder, First Knight, Small Soldiers, Mulan, The Mummy and The 13th Warrior. His latest realm of works hasn't really delivered much new but The Last Castle and The Sum of all Fears were appreciated for what they were. Star Trek X could have been a big finisher but was considered somewhat normal for all standards. Timeline was his last epic quest and luckily Jerry Goldsmith got the chance to work again with Joe Dante on Looney Tunes: Back in Action. Sadly on 21 July, 2004, he lost his fight against cancer and died peacefully in his sleep. Jerry Goldsmith remains simply a legendary composer, scoring god know how many films yet circling around 200 (TV productions included) and is a one time Oscar winner and 17 time nominee for the Oscars, 7 time nominee for the Golden Globes. With other words, he should have gotten at least five times the amount of Oscars and nominations.

July 15, 1982

We wanted a childlike theme for the little girl; Spielberg felt that much of the action in the closet should have a quasi-religious atmosphere to it. There was something definitely non-human about it, yet it was not evil all the way.
(on Poltergeist)

July 15, 1982

Certain composers are doing the same thing over and over again, which I feel is sort of uninteresting. I don't find that you grow very much in that way. I like to keep changing, trying to do new things.
(overall impression)

January 16, 1986

It was the work of a composer named Philip Lambro. I heard a little of his score bleeding over the end credits. I couldn't believe it -- it was Chinese sounding!
(on rescoring Chinatown)

August 19, 1989

If one complains about the quality of film music today it isn't the people who claim to be composers that are writing this crap. It's the film makers who allow it in their films in the first place. Some don't realize what difference a good piece of music can make to their film.
(overall impression)

August 19, 1989

I've always said the relationship between the composer and director for the first time is like a boy and a girl going on a first date. Everyone is very polite with one another, don't want to make any waves, so I sometimes wonder if you don't get the best results that way. Pull hair and scream and yell a little to get what you want.
(on the relationship between director and composer)

August 19, 1989

There was certain music I had just written for the album. the reason for that was, the whole score had a large, large sum of money advanced by Warner Brothers to produce the record for me to use Pat Methany who may or may not mean anything to you. So I had to write some things for the album for him. That's why that thing that opens the album is sort of a virtuoso piece for him.
(on Under Fire)

May, 1992

The audience needs that subconscious musical unity, and it satisfies them without interfering with the movie's story.
(on themes)