George Bruns

George Edward Bruns (July 3, 1914 – May 23, 1983) was an American composer of music for film and television. His accolades include four Academy Award nominations and three Grammy Award nominations. He is mainly known for his compositions for numerous Disney films from the 1950s to the 1970s, among them Sleeping Beauty (1959), One Hundred and One Dalmatians, The Absent-Minded Professor (both 1961), The Sword in the Stone (1963), The Jungle Book (1967), The Love Bug (1968), The Aristocats (1970), and Robin Hood (1973). A native of Sandy, Oregon, Bruns began playing piano at age six. After graduating from Oregon State University, he worked as a bandleader at the Multnomah Hotel in Portland before relocating to Los Angeles to further pursue a musical career. In 1953, Bruns was hired as a musical arranger at Walt Disney Studios, eventually going on to become the studio's music director, a role he served from the mid 1950s until his retirement in 1976. Over the course of his career, Bruns was nominated for four Academy Awards for his work on Disney films, including Scoring of a Musical Picture for Sleeping Beauty and Babes in Toyland (1961), and Best Adaptation or Treatment for The Sword in the Stone. He received his final nomination for Best Original Song for the track "Love" from Robin Hood. Bruns spent his later years in his native Oregon, composing music and instructing at Lewis & Clark College. He died in Portland in 1983 of a heart attack. In 2001, he was posthumously inducted as a Disney Legend.