Chris asked if The Ten Commandments was nominated. Not
sure. I remember seeing a list of Bernstein nominations and being
surprised that while To Kill A Mockingbird and Magnificent Seven
were nominated, neither won; however, he did win for Thoroughly
Modern Millie. That is hard to believe. I think he has been robbed
about as often as Goldsmith.

It would be great to see such lists for comparisons, but my Web search
hasn’t yielded much. I was hoping some of you Intelligent-Internet-
Web-Whizzes could help. Thanks, Joan

When you get there, click on "Academy Awards Database" over on the left side of the page.
Select "Music (Scoring)" for the Award Category, pick whatever year or years you're interested in, and it'll bring up all the nominees, and the winners.

It doesn't always work this way: Bernstein was relatively young to the business (relative to how old he is now! and still working!), but anyway, here's the score he DID take home Oscar for: THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE, a movie I've never seen. Among the scores he beat out were PLANET OF THE APES. (Something probably way too esoteric to ever have appealed to the voters.)

Bernstein was a more established composer than Goldsmith at that time -- I think they'd been working for roughly the same number of years, but Goldsmith hadn't quite yet become JERRY GOLDSMITH -- that he was ever nominated throughout the 1960s was more a vote of confidence than anything else. I dare say more people knew Bernstein at the time, and remembered such works as MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, TEN COMMANDMENTS and TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. I mean, we still listen to those today, and does ANYONE remember THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE? (Okay, for all I know it's the prettiest thing in existence, but I still suspect the voters were voting for the name.)

This is perhaps a convoluted argument, but one I haven't really tried to express before. Apologies in advance.

NP: THE THREE MUSKETEERS (Michael Kamen) (I hated this movie, but the album is lovely; if you liked Kamen's ROBIN HOOD or BARON MUNCHAUSEN, you owe it to yourself to get this one)

This may be heresy, but sometimes I think they should use
more ties and award several for outstanding performances. It
is hard to compare apples and oranges. Hepburn/Streisand
tie is an example. How does one compare Funny Girl to
A Lion in Winter?

Andy, what a great site. I didn’t know that during some years
only 4 scores were nominated and other years had 14 scores.
Notice l939 for music filmscores. I definitely would have
awarded three or four Oscars to several music composers.
How does one compare Newman’s Wuthering Heights to
Steiner’s Gone With the Wind to the winner, Wizard of Oz?