American composer Alex North hardly needed films to enhance his reputation. A graduate of Julliard and the pupil of such musical heavyweights as Ernst Toch and Aaron Copland, North was responsible for the incidental music in several major Broadway productions of the 1940s, notably Death of a Salesman. He also composed for the ballet, for symphony orchestra, and even for Benny Goodman. North's earliest film work consisted of the scores for documentary films, an activity he engaged in from 1937 through the early 1950s. His first feature-film score was for 20th Century-Fox's The 13th Letter; he followed this with a steady parade of scores for such memorable pictures as Viva Zapata (1952), The Rose Tattoo (1955), The Bad Seed (1956), Spartacus (1960), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1967), Under the Volcano (1984) and Prizzi's Honor (1985). His most popular composition, "Unchained Melody" (for the 1955 prison picture Unchanged), received a whole new lease on life in 1990 thanks to the runaway hit film Ghost. Yet despite so impressive a resume, Alex North never received an Oscar in any of his 15 nominations. Finally, in 1986, the Academy threw him that guilt-absolving bone, the "Lifetime Achievement Award." Perhaps Alex North's most ambitious film score was the one nobody heard -- he was engaged by Stanley Kubrick to write the music for 2001: A Space Odyssey, only to have Kubrick rudely pull the rug from under him by substituting such classical pieces as "Thus Spake Zarathustra" and "The Blue Danube Waltz." With teeth clenched, Alex North wrote a terse article describing his frustration for Jerome Agel's 1969 compendium The Making of Kubrick's 2001. ~ Hal Erickson, All Music Guide
Died: Sep 08, 1991 in Pacific Palisades, California
Active: '50s-'80s
Major Genres: Drama, Western
Career Highlights: GoodFellas, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Streetcar Named Desire
First Major Screen Credit: Young Man With a Horn (1950)
Biography
American composer Alex North hardly needed films to enhance his reputation. A graduate of Juilliard and the pupil of such musical heavyweights as Ernst Toch and Aaron Copland, North was responsible for the incidental music in several major Broadway productions of the 1940s, notably Death of a Salesman. He also composed for the ballet, for symphony orchestra, and even for Benny Goodman. North's earliest film work consisted of the scores for documentary films, an activity he engaged in from 1937 through the early 1950s. His first feature-film score was for 20th Century-Fox's The 13th Letter; he followed this with a steady parade of scores for such memorable pictures as Viva Zapata (1952), The Rose Tattoo (1955), The Bad Seed (1956), Spartacus (1960), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1967), Under the Volcano (1984) and Prizzi's Honor (1985). His most popular composition, "Unchained Melody" (for the 1955 prison picture Unchanged), received a whole new lease on life in 1990 thanks to the runaway hit film Ghost. Yet despite so impressive a resume, Alex North never received an Oscar in any of his 15 nominations. Finally, in 1986, the Academy threw him that guilt-absolving bone, the "Lifetime Achievement Award." Perhaps Alex North's most ambitious film score was the one nobody heard -- he was engaged by Stanley Kubrick to write the music for 2001: A Space Odyssey, only to have Kubrick rudely pull the rug from under him by substituting such classical pieces as "Thus Spake Zarathustra" and "The Blue Danube Waltz." With teeth clenched, Alex North wrote a terse article describing his frustration for Jerome Agel's 1969 compendium The Making of Kubrick's 2001. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
(b Chester, pa, 4 Dec 1910; d Los Angeles, 8 Sept 1991). American composer. He studied at the Juilliard School and in Moscow and was a pupil of Copland and Toch. In the 1950s he became a leading Hollywood composer after the success of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951); he also wrote music for dance.
(born Dec. 4, 1910, Chester, Pa., U.S. — died Sept. 8, 1991, Pacific Palisades, Calif.) U.S. film composer and conductor. North studied at the Curtis Institute and Juilliard. In the early 1930s he traveled to Moscow and became the sole American member of the Union of Soviet Composers. He composed ballet scores for Martha Graham and others and later studied and conducted in Mexico City. North's score for A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), the first jazz-based film score, brought him to prominence. His dozens of films over 30 years include Spartacus (1960), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), and Prizzi's Honor (1985).
Born Isadore Soifer in Chester, Pennsylvania, North was an original composer probably even by the classical music standards of the day. However, he managed to integrate his modernism into typical film music leitmotif structure, rich with themes. One of these became the famous song, "Unchained Melody". Nominated for 14 Oscars but unsuccessful each time, North and Ennio Morricone are the only film composers to receive the Lifetime Achievement Academy Award. North's frequent collaborator as orchestrator was the avant-garde composer Henry Brant. He won the 1968 Golden Globe award for his music to The Shoes of the Fisherman.
Though North is best known for his work in Hollywood, he spent years in New York writing music for the stage. It was in New York that he met director Elia Kazan, who brought him to Hollywood in the '50s. North was one of several composers who brought the influence of contemporary concert music into film, in part marked by an increased use of dissonance and complex rhythms. But there is also a lyrical quality to much of his work which may be connected to the influence of Aaron Copland, with whom he studied.
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