Jerry Goldsmith

His scores for "Planet of the Apes" (1968), "The Omen" (1976), "Star Trek, the Motion Picture" (1979), "Alien" (1979), and "Poltergeist" (1982) made him the king of science fiction and horror movie music, but veteran film composer Jerry Goldsmith had more to offer than mere thrills and chills. A one-time student of acclaimed composer Miklós Rózsa, Goldsmith channeled his passion for classical composition into his work on such prestige pictures as "Lonely Are the Brave" (1962), "Lilies of the Field" (1963), and "Patton" (1970), the latter of which garnered him one of many Academy Award nominations for Best Original Score. During his journeyman years as an in-house composer for the Columbia Broadcasting System, Goldsmith was an indispensable component of such long-running television series as "Playhouse 90," "Dr. Kildare," "The Twilight Zone" and "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." but his stock in the film industry rose via his associations with such A-list directors as John Huston, Otto Preminger, John Sturges, and Franklin J. Schaffner. In the bell lap of his long and distinguished career, Goldsmith became the composer of choice for such new talents as Ridley Scott, Paul Verhoeven, Joe Dante and Curtis Hanson, while his scoring for the revived "Star Trek" franchise won him a new generation of followers. Cut down by cancer in 2004, Goldsmith had long since attained enshrinement as a top-flight Hollywood composer, able to bridge the distant past and the unforeseeable future with an infectious measure of wonder and optimism.