Alex North was an American composer best known for his many film scores, including A Streetcar Named Desire (one of the first jazz-based film scores), Viva Zapata!, Spartacus, Cleopatra, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. He was the first composer to receive an Honorary Academy Award but never won a competitive Oscar despite fifteen nominations.

North was born Isadore Soifer in Chester, Pennsylvania to Jewish parents Jessa and Baile (Bessie) Soifer. Bessie was born in Odessa, but Jessa in Bela Cerkva, near Kiev, they immigrated to USA in 1906, due "pogroms" made live in former Russian Empire unsafe.

Family had 4 sons.

His blacksmith father at his 31 died from apendicitis in 1915, but saved enough money to send two of his brothers to college. Mother- Bessie managed to start her own business, and thus family managed to give education for sons.

North's extraordinary musical talent earned him scholarships to Philadelphia's Curtis Institute, where he studied piano with George Boyle, and New York's Juilliard School, where he took courses in composition with Bernard Wagenaar from 1929 to 1932.

While there he worked nights as a telegrapher, which ruined his health. But his fascination with new Russian music, especially that of Prokofiev, made him interested in going to Russia.

The Soviets needed telegraphers. And so North applied, was accepted, and went to USSR (Russia) where he studied composition on scholarship at the Moscow Conservatory—he was its first American pupil—with Anton Weprik and Victor Biely, from 1932 to 1935.

While he was in USSR North served as music director of the Latvian Theater, (03/02/1938 all staff of Latvian Theatre among 286 other Latvians was shot by Communists during Stalins "Great non-russian Purges", Famous silent film star Maria Leiko was also shot)

He returned to New York in 1936, where he continued his studies with Aaron Copland (1936-39), and Ernst Toch (1938-39)—who would soon move to Hollywood to score films.

One of North's first film scores—he started in 1936—was for Elia Kazan's documentary short People of the Cumberland (1937).

The US Army drafted him in 1942 and noticed his flair for film scoring. And so he ended up writing music for over 25 Office of War Information documentaries like A Million Children (1944), and Library of Congress (1945)

North managed to integrate his modernism into typical film music leitmotif structure, rich with themes. One of these became the famous song, "Unchained Melody".

Nominated for fifteen Oscars but unsuccessful each time, North is one of only two film composers to receive the Lifetime Achievement Academy Award, the other being Ennio Morricone. North's frequent collaborator as orchestrator was the avant-garde composer Henry Brant. He won the 1968 Golden Globe award for his music to The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968).

His best-known film scores include A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, Viva Zapata!, The Rainmaker, Spartacus, The Misfits, Cleopatra, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Dragonslayer and Under the Volcano. His music for The Wonderful Country makes use of Mexican and American motifs.

His commissioned score for 2001: A Space Odyssey is notorious for having been discarded by director Stanley Kubrick. Although North later incorporated motifs from the rejected score for The Shoes of the Fisherman, Shanks and Dragonslayer, the score itself remained unheard until composer Jerry Goldsmith rerecorded it for Varèse Sarabande in 1993. In 2007, Intrada Records released the 1968 recording sessions on CD from North's personal archives.

North was also commissioned to write a jazz score for Nero Wolfe, a 1959 CBS-TV series based on Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe characters, starring William Shatner as Archie Goodwin and Kurt Kasznar as Nero Wolfe.

A pilot and two or three episodes were filmed, but the designated time slot was, in the end, given to another series. North's unheard score for Nero Wolfe and six recorded tracks on digital audio tape are in the UCLA Music Library Special Collections.

Though North is best known for his work in Hollywood, he spent years in New York writing music for the stage; he composed the score, by turns plaintive and jarring, for the original Broadway production of Death of a Salesman. It was in New York that he met Elia Kazan (director of Salesman), who brought him to Hollywood in the '50s. North was one of several composers who brought the influence of contemporary concert music into film, in part marked by an increased use of dissonance and complex rhythms. But there is also a lyrical quality to much of his work which may be connected to the influence of Aaron Copland, with whom he studied.

His classical works include two symphonies and a Rhapsody for Piano, Trumpet obbligato and Orchestra. He was nominated for a Grammy Award for his score for the 1976 television miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man, and went on to score the sequel Rich Man, Poor Man Book II and the 1978 miniseries The Word. North is also known for his opening to the CBS television anthology series Playhouse 90 and the 1965 ABC television miniseries FDR.

In 2016, the Library of Congress added North's 1951 recording of his score to "A Streetcar Named Desire" to its National Recording Registry.

Awards

The American Film Institute ranked North's score for A Streetcar Named Desire #19 on their list of the greatest film scores. His scores for the following films were also nominated for the list:

• Cleopatra (1963)
• The Misfits (1961)
• Spartacus (1960)
• Viva Zapata! (1952)
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

North was nominated for fifteen Academy Awards throughout his career, one for Best Original Song, the rest in the Best Original Score category, making him the most-nominated composer to have never won. He was however awarded an Honorary Academy Award in 1986; he was the first composer to receive it.

• Winner - Honorary Oscar for memorable achievement in a host of distinguished motion pictures (1986)
• Nominated - Under the Volcano (1984)
• Nominated - Dragonslayer (1981)
• Nominated - Bite the Bullet (1975)
• Nominated - Shanks (1974)
• Nominated - The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968)
• Nominated - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
• Nominated - The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965)
• Nominated - Cleopatra (1963)
• Nominated - Spartacus (1960)
• Nominated - The Rainmaker (1956)
• Nominated - Best Original Song (with Hy Zaret) Unchained Melody (1955)
• Nominated - The Rose Tattoo (1955)
• Nominated - Viva Zapata! (1952)
• Nominated - Death of a Salesman (1951)
• Nominated - A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

Golden Globe Awards for Original Score:

• Winner - The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968)
• Nominated - Spartacus (1960)

ASCAP Award for Original Score:

• Winner - Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)
• Winner - Lifetime Achievement (1986)

Grammy Awards for Original Score:

• Nominated - Rich Man, Poor Man (1976)
• Nominated - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
• Nominated - Cleopatra (1963)

Selected filmography

• A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
• Death of a Salesman (1951)
• Viva Zapata! (1952)
• Les Misérables (1952)
• Désirée (1954)
• Unchained (1955)
• The Rose Tattoo (1955)
• I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955)
• The Bad Seed (1956)
• The Rainmaker (1956)
• The King and Four Queens (1956)
• The Long, Hot Summer (1958)
• Stage Struck (1958)
• Hot Spell (1958)
• The Sound and the Fury (1959)
• The Wonderful Country (1959)
• Spartacus (1960)
• The Misfits (1961)
• Sanctuary (1961)
• The Children's Hour (1961)
• All Fall Down (1962)
• Cleopatra (1963)
• Cheyenne Autumn (1964)
• The Outrage (1964)
• The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965)
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
• The Devil's Brigade (1968)
• The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968)
• Hard Contract (1969)
• A Dream of Kings (1969)
• Willard (1971)
• Pocket Money (1972)
• Shanks (1974)
• Bite the Bullet (1975)
• Journey into Fear (1975)
• Somebody Killed Her Husband (1978)
• Wise Blood (1979)
• Carny (1980)
• Dragonslayer (1981)
• Under the Volcano (1984)
• Prizzi's Honor (1985)
• The Dead (1987)

http://www.alexnorthmusic.com/biography.html