Ernst Sigmund Goldner (July 13, 1921 – March 17, 1999), known professionally as Ernest Gold, was an Austrian-born American composer. He is most noted for his work on the film Exodus produced in 1960.
Gold was born in 1921 in Vienna, the son of Elisabeth (Stransky) and Gustav Goldner.
Gold's father's mother (Jaiteles) had ancestry from Szeged, Hungary[1][2] and mother's mother (Therese Sprung) from
Temesvár[3] and Budapest (Spitzer).[4][5] Gold came from a musical family. His father played the violin, and his mother sang.[6] His father also studied under Richard Heuberger.[7] Gold said he learned to read music before he learned to read words.[7] He studied violin and piano when he was six and began composing music at eight. By 13, he had written an entire opera.[4] As a child, he said he wanted to go to Hollywood and be a composer.[8]: 24 Gold would go to movie theaters as a teenager, not only to watch the films but to listen to the musical score. Among prominent film composers of the time, he admired Max Steiner.[7]
In 1938, Gold attended the Viennese Akademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst, but he and his family moved to the U.S. after the NaziAnschluss in Austria, because of the family's Jewish heritage.[4]InNew York City, Gold earned money by working as an accompanist and writing popular songs. He also studied with Otto Cesana and Léon Barzin at the National Orchestra Association.[7]
NBC Orchestra performed Gold's first symphony in 1939, only a year after he moved to the United States.[4] In 1941, he composed a symphony that was later played at Carnegie Hall in 1945.[7] Gold moved to Hollywood in the same year to work with Columbia Pictures, his first significant role being the score for the melodrama Girl of the Limberlost (1945). After this, Gold wrote scores for other minor films.[4] For the next ten years, he worked on B movies, mainly orchestrating and arranging music for western movies and melodramas.[6]
In 1955, Stanley Kramer asked Gold to orchestrate Not as a Stranger for which George Antheil had composed the music. This production opened the door for Gold to work with other scores by Antheil and to orchestrate more of Kramer's films.[4] Gold worked on almost every film Kramer made, including A Child Is Waiting and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.[6] Gold produced his first original film score in 1958 for Too Much, Too Soon. His big break came in 1959, when he was asked to score On the Beach after Antheil became ill and recommended Gold for the job.[7]
Gold is most widely recognized for composing the scoreofExodus (1960).[4] He was contracted by Otto Preminger and, atypically, was able to watch the movie being filmed.[6] Gold spent time in Israel while writing the score.[8]: 26
In 1968, Gold wrote a Broadway musical[4] called I'm Solomon.[9] He also wrote music for television.[6] In his later life, Gold was musical director of the Santa Barbara Symphony Orchestra and founded the Los Angeles Senior Citizens Orchestra.[4] His concert works include a piano concerto, a string quartet, and a piano sonata. Moby sampled Gold's "Fight for Survival" from Exodus for his song Porcelain.[10]
1960: Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Score for 1959's On the Beach. The film was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.
1960: Exodus was nominated for a Golden Globe in the Best Original Score category.[11] The film also won an Academy Award for Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture and a Grammy for Best Soundtrack Album.[12]
For his contributions, Gold had his name engraved in the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He was the first composer to receive this honor.[13]
