20 Facts About Ernest Gold

Ernst Sigmund Goldner, known professionally as Ernest Gold, was an Austrian-born American composer.

Ernest Gold is most noted for his work on the film Exodus produced in 1960.

Ernest Gold's father played the violin, and his mother sang.

Ernest Gold said he learned to read music before he learned to read words.

Ernest Gold studied violin and piano when he was six and began composing music at eight.

Ernest Gold would go to movie theaters as a teenager, not only to watch the films but to listen to the musical score.

In 1938, Ernest Gold attended the Viennese Akademie fur Musik und darstellende Kunst, but he and his family moved to the US after the Nazi Anschluss in Austria, because his family was Jewish.

In New York City, Ernest Gold earned money by working as an accompanist and writing popular songs.

Ernest Gold studied with Otto Cesana and Leon Barzin at the National Orchestra Association.

Ernest Gold moved to Hollywood in the same year to work with Columbia Pictures, his first significant role being the score for the melodrama Girl of the Limberlost.

In 1955, Stanley Kramer asked Ernest Gold to orchestrate Not as a Stranger for which George Antheil had composed the music.

Ernest Gold worked on almost every film Kramer made, including A Child Is Waiting and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Ernest Gold produced his first original film score in 1958 for Too Much, Too Soon.

Ernest Gold is most widely recognized for composing the score of Exodus.

Ernest Gold was contracted by Otto Preminger and, atypically, was able to watch the movie being filmed.

In 1968, Ernest Gold wrote a Broadway musical called I'm Solomon.

Moby sampled Ernest Gold's "Fight for Survival" from Exodus for his song "Porcelain".

Ernest Gold was married to singer and actress Marni Nixon from 1950 to 1969.

Ernest Gold was married to Jan Keller Ernest Gold from 1975 until his death.

Ernest Gold died March 17,1999, in Santa Monica, California, at 77 from complications following a stroke.