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16 Facts About Alex North

1.

Alex North wrote the music for the Oscar-nominated song "Unchained Melody", which was used in the 1955 prison film Unchained.

2.

Alex North composed music for more than twenty-six documentary films for the Office of War Information.

3.

Alex North managed to integrate his modernism into typical film music leitmotif structure, rich with themes.

4.

Alex North won the 1968 Golden Globe award for his music to The Shoes of the Fisherman.

5.

Alex North's commissioned score for 2001: A Space Odyssey is notorious for having been discarded by director Stanley Kubrick late in the production process.

6.

Alex North was 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.

7.

Alex North was one of several composers who merged the sound of contemporary concert music into film, in part marked by an increased use of dissonance and complex rhythms.

8.

Alex North's music for the 1976 television miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man was a Grammy Award nominee and an Emmy Award winner.

9.

Alex North went on to score the sequel Rich Man, Poor Man Book II as well as the 1978 miniseries The Word.

10.

Alex North is known for his opening to the CBS television anthology series Playhouse 90 and the 1965 ABC television miniseries FDR.

11.

Alex North was recognized for his lifetime achievement in 2004 from the Sammy Film Music Awards.

12.

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

13.

Alex North died on September 8,1991, in Los Angeles, California.

14.

Alex North was cremated and his ashes were scattered at sea.

15.

Alex 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.

16.

Alex North was however awarded an Honorary Academy Award in 1986; he was the first composer to receive it.