July 3, 1914 – Disney Legend and Composer George Bruns is Born
“George was big and easy-going, but he worked very hard and produced a seemingly endless string of fresh melodies and haunting scores.” – Animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson.
On July 3, 1914, George Bruns was born in Sandy, Oregon. He was taking piano lessons by age six; by high school he could play the tuba and trombone proficiently, and he later was able to play 12 more instruments well. Bruns attended Oregon State University, and moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1950. There, he began his conducting career for Capitol Records and UPA Studios. Bruns got his big break in 1953, when Walt Disney hired him personally to score the feature Sleeping Beauty, which would earn him his first of four Academy Award nominations while at the Disney Studios. Bruns was then asked to compose a piece for the upcoming television series about Davy Crockett. This piece would become Bruns’ most well known composition, skyrocketing to the top of the Hit Parade for six months and selling more than eight million records.
Bruns continued to score Disney films for 22 years, with films including The Absent-Minded Professor, 101 Dalmatians, The Jungle Book, Robin Hood, and The Love Bug. He would earn three other Academy Award nominations for the first live-action musical for the studio, Babes in Toyland; for the 1963 animated film The Sword in the Stone; and for the song “Love” from Robin Hood. Bruns continued to score pieces for the Disney television serials; the theme for Zorro gave him another hit, selling a million records. After contributing to more than 200 projects, Bruns retired from Disney in 1975 and returned to Oregon to continue to compose and to teach at Lewis and Clark College. Bruns passed away on May 23, 1983, in Portland, Oregon. In 2001, he was honored as a Disney Legend.
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