- Born
- Died
- Bernard was born in India, the son of a British army officer, but was moved to England as a small child for his health. He was educated at Wellington College, where the future actor Christopher Lee was a classmate. Fortuitously, because Lee was to star in scores of horror films for Hammer Studios, for which James Bernard wrote the scores. Bernard's first major break as a composer was at the age of 17 when he met Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, for whom Bernard later wrote a song cycle.
- IMDb mini biography by: Anonymous
- Began his career composing music for BBC radio plays.
- Served in the RAF during World War II.
- Accepted into the Royal College of Music in 1946.
- He collaborated with the film critic Paul Dehn on the original story for "Seven Days To Noon" (for which they won an Oscar) and composed music for stage revues and songs which Dehn was involved in writing. The two men lived together until Dehn's death in 1976.
- The emphatic title-music for the 1958 "Dracula" film features a musical rendering of the title as three ominous notes ("Drac-u-la"). He used this idea for some of his other Hammer themes, too. The idea came from his partner, the film critic Paul Dehn.
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