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His Teenage Years
John Williams was born in Queens, New York and started taking piano lessons early on in his life because his father was a musician. By the 1940's he had moved to Los Angeles to attend the University of California. He went to this school until 1951 when he was drafted into the U.S. Air Force. -
His Teenage years
In the early 1940's John Williams started taking piano lessens which lead into him getting accepted into the University of California. Although he didn't spend much time there because shortly after he was accepted he was drafted to the U.S Air Force in 1951. -
After the U.S. Air Force
John spent 3 years in the military before moving back to queens and attending the Juilliard school while getting money on the side from being a jazz pianist, until he changed his dreams and wanted to be a composer instead of a pianist. So he moved back to California. -
After the Air Force
John served three years in the Air Force, after that he moved back to NYC where he went to the Juilliard School and worked part time as a jazz pianist. At the Juilliard School, John thought about what he really wanted to do with his career, and decided to change his dream from wanting to be a pianist to wanting to be a composer. -
The Start of His Career
In Los Angeles, John started working as a pianist on movies, his first one being Daddy-O. But then started working on big budget films like To Kill a Mockingbird still relatively early on in his career. This is when he started to get more and more popular because in 1967 he was nominated for an Academy Award. -
His Early Career
In the late 50's and early 60's, John left the Juilliard and moved back to LA to chase his dreams to be a composer. Unsurprisingly, it didn't take long for him to work on big movies, because in 1962 he helped in the making of To Kill a Mockingbird and had his first Academy Award nomination in 1967 for his work in Valley of the Dolls. -
The Skyrocket
John won his first Academy Award in 1972 for the work he did on Fiddler on the Roof and he got an Oscar nomination for The Poseidon Adventure in the same year! He also got to work on the first Superman movie in 1978. -
The Blow Up
In the 70's, Williams started gaining a lot of attention for what he was doing for the film making business, he was nominated for an Oscar in 1972 for what he did in The Poseidon Adventure. He was also made very famous for his work in Jaws (1975), which I'm sure everyone knows the theme of 60 years later. And He worked on the first Superman movie in 1978. -
The Boston Pops'
John was commended as the president conductor for The Boston Pops', which he would do until the day of his retirement in 1993.