After a decades-long profession in tv — and almost a century on this planet — composer Gerald Fried has died at age 95.
Fried died of pneumonia on Friday, February 17, at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in line with Variety.
After getting his begin within the early Fifties, Fried scored some 40 movies, episodes of 40 TV reveals, and three dozen TV films and miniseries. Fried earned an Emmy Award in 1977 for his music composition for the landmark TV miniseries Roots, 10 hours of which he scored after Quincy Jones offered music for the primary two hours.
His different TV work contains music for Gilligan’s Island, Mission: Impossible, Lost in Space, Gunsmoke, and Dynasty.
Fried additionally scored 5 episodes of the unique Star Trek TV sequence, and his music for the episode “Amok Time” has turned up all over the place from The Simpsons to The Cable Guy.
In a 2013 interview with StarTrek.com, Fried stated he was “shocked, but not altogether surprised” that his music for the sequence took on a lifetime of its personal.
“There were two shows that I did in television that had reverberations far beyond what you’d expect from the venue and the possibilities. One was Star Trek and the other was Roots,” he stated. “There was an atmosphere, doing both shows, that these were a little special and certainly more important than most shows. So I’m not totally surprised, but the enormity of Star Trek is a little bit startling and wonderful. I love it.”
The Bronx native additionally shared on the time how an opportunity encounter began his showbiz profession.
“I was an oboe major at Juilliard, and I used to hang around Greenwich Village trying to pretend I was a smart intellectual, which I was not,” he stated. “One of the nerds down there saved his money and made a little 18-minute short film and said, ‘Gerry, you go to Juilliard. You know how to compose and conduct a film score?’ I said, ‘Suuuuure! Nothing to it.’ But this guy, he actually paid for it. He got a studio and hired the best engineer in New York. So he was serious. And I had about two or three months to learn what the hell to do. … The punchline is that that nerd was Stanley Kubrick.”
Fried ended up scoring 5 of Kubrick’s tasks, the documentary Day of the Fight and the movies Fear and Desire, Killer’s Kiss, The Killing, and Paths of Glory.
He additionally turned the primary and solely composer to earn a Best Original Score Academy Award nomination for a documentary together with his work on 1974’s Birds Do It, Bees Do It.
After the AIDS-related dying of his son Zack at age 5 in 1987, Fried turned a fundraiser for the Pediatric AIDS Foundation.
Fried is survived by his spouse, Anita; 4 youngsters; six grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.