Leonard Rosenman, 83
Film composer
Leonard Rosenman, an Oscar-winning film composer who helped introduce avant-garde music to Hollywood movie scores, died Tuesday in the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles.
The cause was a heart attack, his family said.
Mr. Rosenman, who could also write lushly traditional film scores, composed the original music for dozens of well-known pictures. Among them were East of Eden (1955), Rebel Without a Cause (1955), The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960), Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) and the 1978 version of The Lord of the Rings.
He earned two Oscars for musical adaptation: for Barry Lyndon (1975), which drew on music by Handel, Schubert and others; and Bound for Glory (1976), based on Woody Guthrie songs.
Besides his film work, Mr. Rosenman composed extensively for television. He won two Emmy awards: for Sybil (1976), with Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman) and for Friendly Fire (1979).
He was born in Brooklyn on Sept. 7, 1924. After service in the Pacific with the Army Air Forces in World War II, he earned a bachelor's degree in music from the University of California, Berkeley.