By Elmer Bernstein, 2007

Elmer Bernstein (April 4, 1922 – August 18, 2004) was an American film score composer known for The Ten Commandments, The Man with the Golden Arm, The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven, Meatballs, To Kill a Mockingbird, Ghostbusters, and Airplane!. Early life : Bernstein was born in New York City, the son of Selma (née Feinstein) and Edward Bernstein.[1] Although not related to the celebrated composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, the two were friends.[2] Within the world of professional music, they were distinguished from each other by the use of the nicknames Bernstein West (Elmer) and Bernstein East (Leonard).[3] During his childhood, Bernstein performed professionally as a dancer and an actor, in the latter case playing the part of Caliban in The Tempest on Broadway, and he also won several prizes for his painting. He gravitated toward music at the age of twelve, at which time he was given a scholarship in piano by Henriette Michelson, a Juilliard teacher who guided him throughout his entire career as a pianist.

She took him to play some of his improvisations for composer Aaron Copland, who was encouraging and selected Israel Citkowitz as a teacher for the young boy.[4] Bernstein's music has some stylistic similarities to Copland's music, most notably in his western scores and in his spirited score for the 1958 film adaptation of Erskine Caldwell's novel God's Little Acre. Throughout his life, Bernstein demonstrated an enthusiasm for an even wider spectrum of the arts than his childhood interests would imply and, in 1959, when he was scoring The Story on Page One, he considered becoming a novelist and asked the film's screenwriter, Clifford Odets, to give him lessons in writing fiction. Bernstein died of cancer in his sleep at his home in Ojai, California, on August 18, 2004.</.

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