Jerrald King "Jerry" Goldsmith (February 10, 1929 – July 21, 2004) was an American composer and conductor most known for his work in film and television scoring. He composed scores for such noteworthy films as The Sand Pebbles, Logan's Run, Planet of the Apes, Patton, Papillon, Chinatown, The Wind and the Lion, The Omen, The Boys from Brazil, Alien, Poltergeist, The Secret of NIMH, Gremlins, Hoosiers, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Rudy, Air Force One, L.A. Confidential, Mulan, The Mummy, three Rambo films, and five Star Trek films. He collaborated with some of film history's most prolific directors, including Robert Wise, Howard Hawks, Otto Preminger, Joe Dante, Roman Polanski, Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg, Paul Verhoeven, and Franklin J. Schaffner. Goldsmith was nominated for six Grammy Awards, five Primetime Emmy Awards, nine Golden Globe Awards, four British Academy Film Awards, and eighteen Academy Awards. In 1976, he was awarded an Academy Award for The Omen.
L.A. Confidential (1990) is neo-noir novel by James Ellroy, and the third of his L.A. Quartet series. James Ellroy dedicated L.A. Confidential "to Mary Doherty Ellroy". The epigraph is "A glory that costs everything and means nothing—Steve Erickson."
The story revolves around a group of LAPD officers in the early 1950s who become embroiled in a mix of sex, corruption, and murder following a mass murder at the Nite Owl coffee shop. The story eventually encompasses organized crime, political corruption, heroin trafficking, pornography, prostitution, and Hollywood. The title refers to the scandal magazine Confidential, which is fictionalized as Hush-Hush. It also deals with the real-life "Bloody Christmas" scandal.
The three protagonists are LAPD officers. Edmund Exley, the son of legendary detective Preston Exley, is a "straight arrow" who informs on other officers in a police brutality scandal. He is first and foremost a politician and a ladder climber. This earns the enmity of Wendell "Bud" White, an intimidating enforcer with a personal fixation on men who abuse women. Between the two of them is Jack Vincennes, who acts as more of a celebrity than a cop, who is a technical advisor on a police television show called Badge of Honor (similar to the real life show Dragnet) and provides tips to a scandal magazine. The three of them must set their differences aside to unravel the conspiracy linking the novel's events.
L.A. Confidential is either the original soundtrack, on the Restless Records label featuring mainly songs and source music, or the original film score, on Varèse Sarabande Records, of the 1997 Academy Award- and Golden Globe Award-winning film L.A. Confidential starring Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell, Danny DeVito, and Kim Basinger (who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for this film). The original score was composed by Jerry Goldsmith.
Jerry Goldsmith's score was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Dramatic Score, the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score (lost both times to the score of Titanic), and the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music (lost to the music of Romeo + Juliet). It is based on a musical motif from Leonard Bernstein's Academy Award-nominated score for On the Waterfront.
L.A. Confidential is a 1997 American neo-noir crime film directed, produced, and co-written by Curtis Hanson. The screenplay by Hanson and Brian Helgeland is loosely based on James Ellroy's 1990 novel of the same name, the third book in his L.A. Quartet series. Like the book, the film tells the story of a group of Los Angeles Police Department (L.A.P.D.) officers in 1953, and the intersection of police corruption and Hollywood celebrity. The title refers to the 1950s scandal magazine Confidential, portrayed in the film as Hush-Hush.
At the time, Australian actors Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe were relatively unknown in North America, and one of the film's backers, Peter Dennett, was worried about the lack of established stars in the lead roles. However, he supported Hanson's casting decisions and this gave the director the confidence to approach Kevin Spacey, Kim Basinger and Danny DeVito.
Critically acclaimed, the film holds a 99% rating at Rotten Tomatoes, as well as an aggregated rating of 90 on Metacritic. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards, winning two: Basinger for Best Supporting Actress and Hanson and Helgeland for Best Adapted Screenplay; it lost every other category to Titanic. In 2015, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry, finding it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
We gave our hearts
We gave it all
Flame in the fire
Burns forevermore
The sorrow in believing
Honor and truth
Gray spires climbing
Wrapped around our youth
CHORUS:
Peace in our life
Remember the call
Oh, a cheer for my brothers
Think of them all
Home of the brave
We'll never fall
The strength of our nation
Belongs to us all.
Time is the healing
of souls laid to rest
Peace is the virtue
Never forget
Tomorrow's an angel
Watching us all
Telling the people
she wraps around our hearts
CHORUS (x3)