
JERRY GOLDSMITH
The Hollywood Chamber of
Commerce is proud to announce that
the late composer Jerry Goldsmith
will be honored with the 2,611th
star posthumously on the Hollywood
Walk of Fame on Tuesday, May 9, 2017
at 11:30 a.m. PDT. Goldsmith's star
will be dedicated in the category of
Recording at 6752 Hollywood
Boulevard in front of the Musicians
Institute.
Helping Emcee and
Hollywood Chamber President/CEO
Leron Gubler to unveil the star will
be Carol Goldsmith, wife of Jerry
Goldsmith, and their son Aaron
Goldsmith who celebrates his
birthday on the same day along with
guest speakers David Newman, Charles
(Charlie) Fox and Paul Williams.
The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce,
which administers the popular star
ceremonies, encourages people who
are unable to attend and fans around
the world to watch the event live
exclusively on www.walkoffame.com.
Oscar and Emmy winning composer
Jerry Goldsmith was considered one
of Hollywood's most respected and
admired creators of music for motion
pictures and television. The
composer of such classic scores as
Chinatown, Patton, Planet of the
Apes, The Sand Pebbles, A Patch of
Blue, Poltergeist, Basic Instinct,
Papillon, Rudy, Gremlins, Mulan,
L.A. Confidential. Goldsmith was
sought-after by filmmakers,
acclaimed by critics, and adored by
the Hollywood music community.
He received a total of 18
Academy Award nominations, and won
the Oscar in 1976 for Best Music,
Original Score for his powerful
orchestral and choral score for The
Omen. Two of the American Film
Institute's top 25 film scores of
all time are by Goldsmith: Chinatown
and Planet of the Apes.
Goldsmith was nominated seven times
for an Emmy and won five Emmys for
his television music, including the
landmark miniseries QB VII (1975)
and Masada (1981), the TV-movies The
Red Pony (1973) and Babe (1975) and
the theme for Star Trek: Voyager
(1995). He also received nine Golden
Globe nominations for his film
scores and seven Grammy nominations
for the soundtracks of his various
TV and movie scores.
Goldsmith's music is played
virtually every hour of every day
around the world. This is in part
due to his many contributions to big
and small screen incarnations of the
legendary Star Trek. He scored five
of the movies for the franchise, and
his heraldic theme for Star Trek:
The Motion Picture (1979) became the
well-known signature for the long
running TV series, Star Trek: The
Next Generation.
During his
career which spanned more than 50
years, Goldsmith composed the music
for nearly 200 films, over a dozen
iconic TV themes, and another 20 TV
movies and miniseries. No composer
was more respected by fellow
practitioners of the craft as much
as Goldsmith was for his unerring
dramatic instincts and his
innovative and even groundbreaking
application of many different
musical sounds and styles.
Goldsmith was born February 10, 1929
in Los Angeles, California.
Classically trained, he studied
piano and composition from a young
age and was, from the time he was a
teenager, determined to write music
for movies. After studying at both
USC and Los Angeles City College, he
went to work at CBS, which employed
him as a composer for radio and TV
throughout the 1950s. He wrote his
first score for a feature length
film, "Black Patch," in 1957.
However, he continued to work in TV
through the 1960s and early 1970s,
and composed scores and familiar
themes including Dr. Kildare, The
Man From U.N.C.L.E., Hollywood
Television Theater (PBS) and The
Waltons, as well as scoring episodes
of classic series including The
Twilight Zone and Gunsmoke.
In addition to his busy film and TV
schedule, Goldsmith also composed
for concert halls. His symphonic
works include a cantata, Christus
Apollo (1969) with words by Ray
Bradbury, narrated by Charlton
Heston and later by Sir Anthony
Hopkins; Music for Orchestra (1971),
commissioned by the St. Louis
Symphony and Fireworks: A
Celebration of Los Angeles (1999),
commissioned by the Los Angeles
Philharmonic. Following the attack
of 9/11, Goldsmith composed an in
memoriam. The elegy, September 11,
2001, which was performed at the
Hollywood Bowl days after the
tragedy.
Notably, in 1998, he
was commissioned by the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to
create an anthem for its annual
awards ceremony. Goldsmith's Fanfare
for Oscar debuted at the 70th annual
Academy Awards.
Worldwide,
Goldsmith conducted major
orchestras, performing concerts of
his music. In the United States,
some of the orchestras he conducted
included the Los Angeles
Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony
Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony
Orchestra, the National Symphony
Orchestra of Washington D.C., and
the New York Filmharmonic Orchestra
at Carnegie Hall. Internationally,
Goldsmith conducted the London
Symphony Orchestra, the Royal
Scottish National Orchestra, the
Madrid Symphony Orchestra, the Royal
Seville Orchestra and Japan's
Kanagawa Philharmonic Orchestra.
Goldsmith received many honors
during his lifetime, including
Variety's first American Music
Legend Award (1995); an honorary
doctorate from Boston's Berklee
College of Music (1990); lifetime
achievement awards from the American
Society of Music Arrangers and
Composers (ASMAC 1990), and the
Society for the Preservation of Film
Music (1993); two governors' awards
from the National Academy of
Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS
1994, 1999); and an honorary
membership in London's Royal Academy
of Music (2003). In addition to
these accolades, Goldsmith is
immortalized with a statuette in his
likeness awarded at Spain's
International Film Music Festival.
Each year for the past decade, the
festival's highest honor, "the
Jerry" is awarded to an individual
for excellence in the art of film
music.
Giving back to the
community that nurtured him and
launched his career, Goldsmith began
teaching in the 1990s: as the
instructor of the Scoring for Motion
Pictures and Television course at
the University of Southern
California, and then also as a
Regents Lecturer in the Department
of Music at the University of
California at Los Angeles. He became
a Visiting Professor at UCLA,
teaching a yearly composition class.
Additionally, in a mentoring
capacity, he conducted the Young
Musicians Foundation Orchestra, the
Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra,
and the Disney Young Musicians
Symphony Orchestra.
Several
college scholarship funds bear his
name, including the Jerry & Carol
Goldsmith Music Scholarship at Los
Angeles City College, and two fully
endowed scholarships for composition
at UCLA: the BMI / Jerry Goldsmith
Film Scoring Scholarship and the
Jerry Goldsmith Scholarship Fund for
Film Music Composition. There is
also a Jerry Goldsmith Memorial Fund
for Cancer Research at the Tower
Cancer Research Foundation in Los
Angeles.
In the days
following his death in 2004, the
beloved composer was eulogized on
the floor of the U.S. House of
Representatives with the following
tribute: "Jerry Goldsmith leaves
behind a distinguished repertoire of
outstanding and memorable film
scores and television themes that
are as recognizable as they are
innovative." "His versatility and
genius" were cited and Jerry
Goldsmith was declared a national
treasure!