The Jerry Goldsmith music sketches span the years 1957-1996 and encompass 90 linear feet. The material consists of Goldsmith's original handwritten music sketches for more than a hundred motion pictures from 1957 through 2003. The music of these highly detailed pencil sketches is on multistaved paper complete with instrumentation, music timings, and cue titles. In addition, full scores orchestrated by Goldsmith can be found for BLACK PATCH (1957), CITY OF FEAR (1959), FACE OF A FUGITIVE (1959), and STUDS LONIGAN (1960). Full scores for isolated cues are featured in the orchestrator's hand (often Arthur Morton's) for PATTON (1970), SHOCK TREATMENT (1964), STAGECOACH (1966), THE WIND AND THE LION (1975), and others. Goldsmith's Academy Award-winning score for THE OMEN is represented, as are the nominated scores for THE SAND PEBBLES (1966), PLANET OF THE APES (1968), PATTON (1970), THE WIND AND THE LION (1975), STAR TREK—THE MOTION PICTURE (1979), POLTERGEIST (1982), UNDER FIRE (1983), HOOSIERS (1986), and BASIC INSTINCT (1992). The material covers Goldsmith's film work through 1996, from BLACK PATCH (1957), his first score, through 2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY (1996). Other notable scores in the collection encompass a variety of genres, including the science fiction films ALIEN (1979), STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER (1989), and TOTAL RECALL (1990); the dramas STUDS LONIGAN (1960), SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION (1993), and FIRST KNIGHT (1995); the war spectacles IN HARM'S WAY (1965) and TORA! TORA! TORA! (1970); the comedies THE FLIM-FLAM MAN (1967) and DENNIS THE MENACE (1993); the westerns RIO CONCHOS (1964) and THE CULPEPPER CATTLE CO. (1972); the action thriller VON RYAN'S EXPRESS (1965); and the espionage drama THE RUSSIA HOUSE (1990). Nearly all sketches are in the hand of Jerry Goldsmith, with a few noted exceptions. A small amount of production material, including instrumental breakdown sheets and music timing notes, is among the non-music manuscript material.

Jerry Goldsmith (1929-2004) was born and educated in Los Angeles. He studied piano with Jakob Gimpel, music composition with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Ernst Krenek, and film scoring with Miklós Rózsa (at the University of Southern California). In the 1950s, the CBS Radio Workshop provided Goldsmith with practical experience early in his career. Composing for television followed in the mid-1950s, first with CBS and later with Universal. Since 1957 Goldsmith has scored more than 150 feature films, most notably with longtime collaborator and director Franklin J. Schaffner. John Huston, John Frankenheimer, Delbert Mann, Roman Polanski, Arthur Hiller, Sam Peckinpah, Robert Wise, Joe Dante, and Paul Verhoeven are among the other directors he has worked with. Goldsmith received an Oscar for original score for THE OMEN (1976) and has 17 Academy Award nominations to date. For the 70th Annual Academy Award show in 1998, Goldsmith composed a "Fanfare for Oscar."