About Jerry Goldsmith:
The Man, The Myth, The Legend


BIOGRAPHY:

Jerrald Goldsmith was born on February 10th, 1929 in Los Angeles, California. His second wife Carol Heather Goldsmith, who is a songwriter, has worked with Jerry on the music for CaboBlanco and has also done some vocals for The Omen from 1976. Jerry also had his fifth child with Carol, a son named Aaron.

Jerry has four children from his first marriage with singer Sharon Hennigan Goldsmith. The eldest daughter Ellen did the vocals on Wild Rovers from 1971. His next oldest daughter Carrie briefly dated the composer James Horner, who's work is claimed to be very much inspired by Jerry's musical talents. Both Ellen and Carrie work as teachers today, and Jerry's youngest daughter, Jennifer, is in the entertainment industry.

Mr. Goldsmith's predominant son Joel (from his first marriage) is also in the composing/conducting business. He assisted his father many times in the 1980's; first credited for Runaway (1984), and the latest father & son project is Star Trek: First Contact. In 1993 Joel wrote the score to the thriller Man's Best Friend single-handedly. Previously Joel had done scores to minor B-Movies before, such as FX and Moon 44, and he worked on the sound effects for Star Trek: The Motion Picture.


HIS CAREER:

Mr. Goldsmith started his career at CBS television - as a clerk typist. He advanced fast, composing music for radio-plays, and later for television shows starting in 1955. Later on he wrote music for some famous television series such as The Twilight Zone in 1959, Dr. Kildare in 1961, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in 1964.

The first motion picture score he did was Don't Bother to Knock from 1952, where Mr. Goldsmith was uncredited. The first credited film that he did was in 1957 for a long forgotten western, titled The Black Patch. Even though he made his first big score in 1957, he was first widely recognized in 1962 for Lonely Are The Brave, starring Kirk Douglas. That same year he got his first Academy Award-nomination for Freud.

Jerry is very versatile, but is a specialist in thrillers and adventure movies of any kind. In the 1980's he made scores to an incredible amount of adventure and action movies. He is probably the busiest composer in Hollywood, at least considering his age. He creates a great deal many more scores in a year then some of his competitors, such as John Barry, John Williams, James Horner, or Danny Elfman (who are all younger than Mr. Goldsmith).

A special documentary video about Jerry Goldsmith was released in 1995, by Fred Karlin Productions in the series Film Music Masters. I am going to try to find a copy to review. Hopefully I can get some more information on this wonderful man to pass on to you, the fans :-)