Music is an integral part of any movie. A good score can elevate a movie from good to great, just as it can elevate a scene from memorable to iconic. Most movie scores sort of fall by the wayside and are generally ignored, as they are merely meant to add extra "oomph" or emotion to a scene. These types of scores blend into the background and remain unmemorable.
But then there are movie scores that take on a life of their own, not only elevating the on-screen material but proving captivating listening in their own rights. These are the composers of that type of music, who are ranked among the best for their collection of Oscar wins.
10 Dimitri Tiomkin - 14
Living between 1894 and 1979, Russian composer Dimitri Tiomkin moved to New York City following the Russian Revolution and again to Hollywood following the stock market crash of 1929. It was here that he became a famous composer of some of the most unique cowboy movies, earning himself 14 Academy Award nominations for Best Original Score.
He won three times, for the movies High Noon, The High and the Mighty, and The Old Man and the Sea. His final nomination came in 1972 for the Soviet film Tchaikovsky.
9 Alex North - 14
American composer Alex North is quite unique in Academy history. Throughout his long and illustrious career, he earned 14 nominations for Best Original Score, yet failed to win a single one.
Despite this, he was the first composer to receive an Honorary Academy Award, which he earned in 1985 "in recognition of his brilliant artistry in the creation of memorable music for a host of distinguished motion pictures." These motion pictures include Spartacus, Cleopatra, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
8 Miklós Rózsa - 16
Born in Budapest, composer Miklós Rózsa became an American citizen in 1946 while working on the score for The Thief of Bagdad. He composed the music for nearly 100 films and earned 16 Academy Award nominations for Best Original Score.
Three of these films earned him the award - 1945's Spellbound, 1947's A Double Life, and the 1959 epic, Ben-Hur, one of the longest American films ever. His win for the latter was one of the movie's 11, helping it set the record for the most Academy Awards won by a single film. It has since been tied by Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
7 Morris Stoloff - 17
Morris Stoloff was one of the first musicians to transfer over from classical music to film scoring, having been a child prodigy of the violin. He worked for both Paramount and Columbia, working closely with the composers of each individual film under the distributors' control.
He earned 17 nominations for Best Original Score throughout his career, winning three times for Cover Girl, The Jolson Story, and Song Without End.
6 Victor Young - 17
Victor Young currently holds the Best Original Score record of earning the most number of nominations before actually winning, earning 17 nominations but failing to win a single award in his lifetime. Unfortunately, Young passed away in 1956 from a cerebral hemorrhage.
It wasn't until 1957 that he posthumously won the award for Around the World in Eighty Days. Young also received eight nominations in two years, earning four nominations each in 1940 and 1941. These were part of a stellar string of 13 consecutive nominations between 1940 and 1944, making him one of the best movie music composers of all time, though not always ranked in the top 10.
5 Jerry Goldsmith - 17
Earning 17 nominations for Best Original Score, Jerry Goldsmith worked with some of the greatest directors of his time, including Steven Spielberg, in some of his best movies, Ridley Scott, Howard Hawks, and Paul Verhoeven. Of those 17 nominations, The Omen proved his only win.
Goldsmith is also one of five composers to have more than one movie on the American Film Institute's 100 Years of Film Scores list, with Planet of the Apes placing at #18 and Chinatown at #9.
4 Ray Heindorf - 17
Another old-school movie composer, Ray Heindorf worked exclusively with Warner Bros. for 40 years. In that time, he earned recognition for employing minority musicians for his scores and hiring them for Warner's music department.
Heindorf is yet another composer who earned 17 nominations for Best Original Score throughout his career, winning three for Yankee Doodle Dandy, This is the Army, and The Music Man. The latter two were consecutive wins, making Heindorf the first film composer to win back-to-back Best Original Score awards.
3 Max Steiner - 24
Conducting his first operetta at just 12 years old, Max Steiner was considered a musical prodigy, and he became one of the first full-time composers in the film industry following his move to Hollywood in 1929. He composed a staggering 300 film scores throughout his career and earned 24 nominations for Best Original Score.
He is perhaps best known for scoring Gone with the Wind, which placed second on AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores list. Three of his nominations resulted in wins - The Informer, Now, Voyager, and Since You Went Away.
2 Alfred Newman - 43
Alfred Newman was yet another child music prodigy, and he composed over 200 film scores throughout four decades of work. He also composed the fanfare that accompanies the 20th Century Fox logo. Newman earned an unbelievable 43 nominations for Best Original Score, winning nine.
This is the third-highest number of Oscars ever won by a single person and the most won by a composer. His score for How the West Was Won is arguably his most famous, placing 25th on AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores list.
1 John Williams - 47
Arguably the most famous film composer of all time, John Williams is a staggering once-in-a-lifetime talent, and his very name has become an integral part of movie history. Even people who don't know any film composers by name know the name of John Williams, such is the degree of his fame and talent.
He is the second-most nominated individual in Oscars history (following Walt Disney), earning 52 nominations. 47 of those were for Best Original Score, and his score for Star Wars was ranked first on AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores list. He was also the first non-actor or director to win the AFI Life Achievement Award.
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June 22, 2021 at 12:08AM
