Danny Elfman

What two things do the movies Batman, The Corpse Bride, Edward Scissorhands, Mars Attacks!, Sleepy Hollow, and Beetle Juice have in common? You might have guessed that they all were directed by Tim Burton, and you’d be half right.

The other half is that all of these movies were scored by Danny Elfman! The same team also did the remakes of Planet of the Apes and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and now Alice in Wonderland.

Danny is one of the best and most popular film composers ever. You can hear his music in the everything from new Terminator and Hellboy films, to the bio-pics Notorious and Milk, to the kids’ moves Meet the Robinsons and Charlotte’s Web… to the Simpsons’ TV theme (which is now stuck in your head! As Nelson would say: Ha-ha!)

As you can see, Danny is mostly known for scoring movies that are dark sci-fi or fantasy. Some others along these lines include 9, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Mission: Impossible, Spy Kids, and the Men in Black movies. They also include movies based on comic books, like Spider-Man 1 and 2, Hulk, Darkman, and even Dick Tracy.

But as you can also see, Danny has scored goofy comedies like Taking Woodstock,  Nacho Libre, Flubber, Scrooged, and Summer School. His dramas include Good Will Hunting, Black Beauty, Midnight Run … and the musical Chicago, which of course had a lot of its own music too!

All this, though, is Danny’s second career! For 20 years, he was the leader of a rock band called Oingo Boingo. No, really! They have a cameo in a movie called Back to School, starring Jewish comedy legend Rodney Dangerfield (see this Bonus).

His first film score was for Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, based on a kid-show host played by Jewish comic actor Paul Rubens. And... Tim Burton directed that, too, back in 1985, halfway through Oingo Boingo’s career.

Danny was born in LA and grew up loving film scores, especially the ones by great Jewish film composer Bernard Hermann (see the Bonus below). He really started noticing film music in the original version of The Day the Earth Stood Still, a sci-fi classic they just remade.

Then he did something really adventurous. Taking his violin, Danny went to France with his brother, Rick, where he played on the street. But he kept going… through several countries in Africa! There, he picked up some of the influences that would inform his rock and film sounds.

He met up with his brother again back in America, where he was forming the band that would become Oingo Boingo. And then his brother made a movie, Forbidden Zone, and so Danny did the music for it! So he really started both careers almost at the same time. Go figure! (Rick moved on to writing movies out of their mom's novels, and is now editing a magazine, Buzzine.)

By the way… people always ask if Danny is related to Jenna Elfman, the star of TV’s Dharma and Greg. The answer is yes, she’s his niece. (But no, she’s not Jewish.)

Bonus:

Here are some other great classic Jewish film composers and their most famous movies:

Bernard Herrmann: Hitchcock films like Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and The Trouble with Harry… Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons… Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth and Mysterious Island… other sci-fi and fantasy greats like Fahrenheit 451, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Jason and the Argonauts, and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad… the romances Anna and the King of Siam, Jane Eyre, and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir… and issue movies like Taxi Driver, Cape Fear, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, and The Snows of Kilimanjaro.

Robert and Richard Sherman: Disney classics like: The Fox and the Hound, The Rescuers, Winnie the Pooh, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, The Artistocats, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Jungle Book, Mary Poppins, and The Sword in the Stone… plus An American Tail and Charlotte’s Web (the original movie).

Elmer Bernstein: Jewish favorites like Keeping the Faith, Lost in Yonkers, The Cemetery Club, Genocide, The Chosen, Cast a Giant Shadow, and The Ten Commandments… Comedy faves like Three Amigos!, Ghost Busters, Trading Places, Stripes, Airplane!, and Animal House…  Westerns like Wild Wild West, The Shootist, True Grit, and The Sons of Katie Elder… dramas like My Left Foot, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Santini, The Babe, Hud, Desire Under the Elms, and Sweet Smell of Success… plus An American Werewolf in London, Heavy Metal, and The Great Escape. 

Jerry Goldsmith: The Star Trek movies: Nemesis, Insurrection, First Contact, Final Frontier, and The Motion Picture… actioners like The Mummy, Air Force One, The Ghost and the Darkness, Total Recall, First Blood and Rambo, Alien, Planet of the Apes, Logan’s Run, Seven Days in May, Tora! Tora! Tora! and Patton… scary movies like The Omen and Poltergeist… kid moves like Gremlins, Small Soldiers, The Secret of NIMH, and Mulan… suspense flicks like L.A. Confidential, Chinatown, Basic Instinct, Sleeping with the Enemy, Hoosiers, The Boys from Brazil, Lilies of the Field, and A Patch of Blue… and fun things like Innerspace, The Lonely Guy, and Stagecoach.

Max Steiner: Humphrey Bogart films like Casablanca, The Big Sleep, Angels with Dirty Faces, Key Largo, and Dark Victory… tough-guy and war classics like The Searchers, White Heat, Sergeant York, The Caine Mutiny, The Three Musketeers, The Charge of the Light Brigade, and The Most Dangerous Game… movies about women and their families like Marjorie Morningstar, Mildred Pierce, The Glass Menagerie, Now, Voyager, Life with Father, Little Women, and Gone with the Wind… the bio-pics The Life of Emile Zola and Jim Thorpe -- All-American… plus The Fountainhead, Arsenic and Old Lace, A Star Is Born… and King Kong!

Dimitri Tiomkin: Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Meet John Doe… classic Westerns like High Noon, Rio Bravo, The Alamo, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and Giant… the war films The Guns of Navarone and The Bridge of San Luis Rey… works based on classic sources like The Old Man and the Sea, Cyrano de Bergerac, and Black Beauty… Mysteries like Dial M for Murder, Strangers on a Train, and D.O.A... and the comedy classic You Can't Take It with You.

Alfred Newman: Marilyn Monroe's like: The Seven Year Itch, Bus Stop, and How to Marry a Millionaire… movies based on classic novels like Wuthering Heights, The Count of Monte Cristo, Les Misérables, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Song of Bernadette, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn… Jewish movies like The Diary of Anne Frank and Gentleman's Agreement… historical actioners like The Mark of Zorro, Beau Geste, Gunga Din, The Prisoner of Zenda, and Young Mr. Lincoln… Musicals like Alexander's Ragtime Band and Hallelujah, I'm a Bum… the romances Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing and Heaven Can Wait… family films How Green Was My Valley and My Friend Flicka… everything from Street Scene to Airport.

Leonard Rosenman: Sci-fi favorites like Fantastic Voyage, Star Trek IV, and two of the Planet of the Apes movies... two of James Dean's movies, East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause... and the score of Neil Diamond's remake of The Jazz Singer (Neil wrote the songs).

Bonus Bonus:

These are mostly older movies, but don't think Jews have stopped writing great film scores.

Just the opposite-- there were so many, we ran out of room and had to put the newer ones somewhere else!