Compiled from the following sources: Jerry Goldsmith Online, A Tribute to Jerry Goldsmith, IMDb.com: Biography for Jerry Goldsmith, mfiles: Jerry Goldsmith - prolific and versatile film composer
Born February 10, 1929, in Los Angeles, California. Birth name: Jerrald Goldsmith. Studied piano with Jacob Gimpel and composition, theory and counterpoint with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Attended classes in film composition given by Miklos Rozsa at the University of Southern California. Received an Honorary Doctorate from Berklee College of Music in Boston.
Married twice. Four children from his first marriage with singer Sharon Hennigan Goldsmith. One son with his second wife, Carol Heather Goldsmith, who is also a songwriter. His son, Joel (from his first marriage), is also a composer and has worked with him on several projects, most notably "Star Trek: First Contact".
In 1950, he was employed as a clerk typist in the music department at CBS. While at CBS, he composed music for radio shows such as "Romance" and "CBS Radio Workshop." Also 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. In 1960, he was hired by Revue Studios to score their "Thriller" series. At the same time, he met and became acquainted with the influential film composer Alfred Newman. Newman later helped him to get a job scoring the film "Lonely Are The Brave", which starred Kirk Douglas - the first film for which Jerry was widely recognized.
With nearly 280 credits for his music in film and television, Jerry has been nominated for Academy Awards for 17 different films, winning the Oscar for Best Original Score for "The Omen" in 1976. He has also been nominated six times for Emmys, winning five. Others of his most widely regarded scores include the music for "Planet of the Apes", "Lilies of the Field", "Patton", "Chinatown", "Star Trek the Motion Picture", "Hoosiers", "Rudy", "First Knight" and "Mulan". It is interesting to note that Alexander Courage, who wrote the theme music for the original Star Trek series often is the orchestrator for Jerry's films, which is especially fitting, since Jerry has been a major contributor of music to the Star Trek motion pictures and television series.
Jerry was awarded a Regents Residency at UCLA in 1998 and has taught film scoring at both UCLA and USC.
