Ernest Gold

Ernest Gold, born Ernst Sigmund Goldner on July 13, 1921, in Vienna, Austria, was a composer who worked across film, television, concert music, and Broadway. He died on March 17, 1999, in Santa Monica, California, at the age of 77, from complications following a stroke.

Gold came from a musical household in Vienna. His father, Gustav Goldner, played violin and had studied under Richard Heuberger, while his mother, Elisabeth, née Stransky, was a singer. Gold learned to read music before he could read words, took up violin and piano at age six, and began composing at eight. By thirteen he had completed a full opera. As a teenager he frequented movie theaters as much to absorb the musical scores as to watch the films, and he counted Max Steiner among the film composers he most admired. In 1938 he enrolled at the Akademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna, but the Nazi Anschluss that same year prompted his Jewish family to emigrate to the United States. In New York City he supported himself as an accompanist and songwriter while studying with Otto Cesana and Léon Barzin at the National Orchestra Association.

His American career began quickly. Just one year after arriving in the country, the NBC Symphony Orchestra performed his first symphony in 1939. He composed a second symphony in 1941, which received a Carnegie Hall performance in 1945. That same year he relocated to Hollywood to work with Columbia Pictures, scoring the melodrama Girl of the Limberlost as his first significant film assignment. For the following decade he concentrated largely on B movies, orchestrating and arranging music for westerns and melodramas.

A turning point came in 1955 when director Stanley Kramer engaged Gold to orchestrate Not as a Stranger, for which George Antheil had written the score. The collaboration led to further work with Antheil and drew Gold into Kramer's broader circle of productions, including A Child Is Waiting and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Gold delivered his first wholly original film score in 1958 for Too Much, Too Soon. The following year, when Antheil fell ill while preparing to score On the Beach, he recommended Gold as his replacement. Gold completed the score, and the film earned a Golden Globe for Best Original Score in 1960 as well as an Academy Award nomination for Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.

Gold's most celebrated work came with Exodus in 1960, scored under contract with director Otto Preminger. Unusually, Gold was permitted to observe the film being shot and spent time in Israel while composing the music. The score won an Academy Award for Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture and a Grammy Award for Best Soundtrack Album or Recording of Music Score from Motion Picture or Television, and it received a Golden Globe nomination in the Best Original Score category. The musician Moby later sampled Gold's cue "Fight for Survival" from the Exodus score for his song "Porcelain." In recognition of his contributions to film music, Gold received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, becoming the first composer to be granted that honor.

In 1968, Gold brought his work to the Broadway stage, writing the music for the musical I'm Solomon. Beyond film and theater, he composed concert works including a piano concerto, a string quartet, and a piano sonata, and he also wrote music for television. Later in his career he served as musical director of the Santa Barbara Symphony Orchestra and founded the Los Angeles Senior Citizens Orchestra.

Gold was married to singer and actress Marni Nixon from 1950 to 1969. Their three children are musician Andrew Gold, known for the songs "Lonely Boy" and "Thank You for Being a Friend"; Martha Carr; and Melani Gold. Gold and Jan Keller Gold were married from 1975 until his death in 1999.