Born in Oregon in 1914, George Bruns was the son of a sawmill worker.
He took music lessons as a child, becoming proficient on the piano,
tuba and trombone. He attended Oregon State Agricultural College, and
in order to pay tuition he played in the ROTC band. Deciding on a
musical career, he left college to be a full-time musician, and was
soon playing with the likes of
Jack Teagarden.
After World War II, he began playing with various swing and jazz bands,
then formed his own group (among whom was a trumpet player named
Doc Severinsen). In addition to having
his own band, he was also musical director at several Portland (OR)
radio stations. In 1948 he left Portland for Los Angeles, where he
played for orchestras such as the
Turk Murphy Band. In 1953 he was hired
by UPA Studios as the composer for a cartoon called
Little Boy with a Big Horn (1953).
The award-winning short launched his career, and over the next few
years he composed music for a dozen more pictures.
He was hired by Walt Disney Studios in 1953 to compose the score for
Dornröschen und der Prinz (1959). While
working on that, he was asked to come up with a song to fill a
3.5-minute gap in a multi-part TV series the studio was shooting. He
got together with lyricist
Thomas W. Blackburn, and they came
up with what would become a landmark song and series of the 1950s: "The
Ballad of Davy Crockett" from
Davy Crockett, König der Trapper (1955).
Bruns was then assigned by Disney to write songs for its upcoming
childrens show,
The Mickey Mouse Club (1955).
He spent nearly 20 years at the studio, working on the scores of nearly
40 films and several TV series and specials. He received an Academy
Award nomination for his scores for "Sleeping Beauty",
Aufruhr im Spielzeugland (1961) and
Die Hexe und der Zauberer (1963),
and another nomination for the song "Love" from
Robin Hood (1973).
He retired in 1976, moved back to Oregon, and died of a heart attack in
Portland on May 23, 1983.
