An interesting overview of a Hollywood composer
Elmer Bernstein was a renowned and prolific composer of movie and television scores, having written over 200 during nearly 50 years. He began with writing for some decent movies, and when work dried up during the Hollywood Blacklist (he was never officially blacklisted, but his phone stopped ringing), he scored such movies as Cat-Women of the Moon and Robot Monster (which often turns up on worst movies of all time lists) in order to pay the bills. His career turned around and really took off when he was hired to write the music for Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments. Some of his most-celebrated scores were for The Man with the Golden Arm, The Magnificent Seven, To Kill a Mockingbird, The World of Henry Orient, and Thoroughly Modern Millie (for which he won his only Academy Award, although he was nominated 13 other times). When demand for his work began slowing in the late-1970s, he had a career resurgence when he wrote the music for Animal House. This led to writing the scores for many comedies, including Airplane!, Stripes, and Ghostbusters. Pearl Bernstein Gardner was his wife for 20 years, from their days struggling as they taught music lessons in New York, to the late 1960s, when his extramarital affair ended their marriage. Ms. Gardner writes in a breezy, humorous, conversational style, which is like hearing stories told by an old friend. She shares many amusing stories about what is was like to work for the Hollywood studios and for various directors and with various performers. After their divorce, she went to law school and became a marital and intellectual property attorney. This book was written with her current husband, who is a movie and television writer. Lorna Raver, the narrator, was an excellent choice. She sounds like an older woman, and has the accent and cadence of a well-educated and cultured woman with a sense of humor who would have grown up in Philadelphia in the 1930s and 1940s.