He won the 1968 Golden Globe award for his music to The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968). North's frequent collaborator as orchestrator was the avant-garde composer Henry Brant. Nominated for fifteen Oscars but unsuccessful each time, North is one of only two film composers to receive the Lifetime Achievement Academy Award, the other being Ennio Morricone. One of these became the famous song " Unchained Melody". North managed to integrate his modernism into typical film music leitmotif structure, rich with themes. He also composed music for more than twenty-six documentaries for the War Department while in the service. There, he was responsible for "self-entertainment" programs in mental hospitals. During the Second World War, North served as a captain in the United States Army Special Services division from 1942 to 1946. In the US, Jesse was a blacksmith, and Bessie ran a grocery store. Jesse was from Bila Tserkva and Besie originated from Odessa (both cities are now in Ukraine). North was born Isadore Soifer in Chester, Pennsylvania, to Jewish parents Jesse and Baila (Bessie) who had left the Russian Empire for the US around 1906. He wrote the music for Unchained Melody as the theme for the prison film Unchained (1955), It has become a standard and one of the most recorded songs of the 20th century, with over 1,500 recordings made by more than 670 artists, in multiple languages. Alex North (born Isadore Soifer, December 4, 1910 – September 8, 1991) was an American composer best known for his many film scores, including A Streetcar Named Desire (one of the first jazz-based film scores), Viva Zapata!, Spartacus, Cleopatra, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? He was the first composer to receive an Honorary Academy Award, but never won a competitive Oscar despite fifteen nominations.
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