*From L to R: Marilyn Bergman, Rachel Portman, Anne Dudley, and Hildur Guðnadóttir*

Since the inaugural Academy Awards in 1929, there have only been seven women nominated in the categories for best musical score. The categories are fluid, sometimes separating out comedies from dramas, and musicals from both. The only women to actually win the award are Marilyn Bergman for Yentl (1983), Rachel Portman for Emma (1996), Anne Dudley for The Full Monty (1997), and now Hildur Guðnadóttir for her work on Joker (2019).

The first time a woman was nominated in 1974, Angela Morley was recognized for the film The Little Prince. She never took home the award, despite being nominated again three years later for The Slipper and the Rose. Morley still broke barriers as the first woman nominated in the category, and the first openly transgender person nominated for any Oscar®. She continued to compose, working with Malcolm Williamson on Watership Down and the legendary John Williams, helping with orchestration for Star Wars, E.T., and Schindler’s List.

Six years after Morley’s loss for The Slipper and the Rose, Marilyn Bergman, along with Michael Legrand and Alan Bergman, received the Oscar® for their work on the Barbra Streisand film Yentl. Marilyn has been writing songs with her husband Alan since 1958, when they collaborated on an album for the popular singer Dean Martin. In 1961 they made their first foray into writing songs for film with the largely forgotten The Right Approach, but made a much bigger impact with the song “In the Heat of the Night” a collaboration with Quincy Jones for the film of the same name. In 1984, their work on Yentl with Legrand cemented Marilyn’s legacy as the first woman to win a film score Oscar®. Marilyn and Alan went on to contribute dozens of more songs to the Great American Songbook, and are still working today.

For the ceremony honoring films of 1996, there were categories for Best Original Dramatic Score, and Best Original Musical or Comedy Score. English composer Rachel Portman became the first solo woman to win either category with her lively composition for Emma. It was her first nomination and only win, although she was recognized again for The Cider House Rules (1999) and Chocolat (2000). Among Portman’s numerous other projects, she has composed music for a children’s opera, The Little Prince, based on the same story that Angela Morley was nominated for scoring years earlier.

Only a year after Rachel Portman’s win for Emma, another British composer, Anne Dudley, took home the gold in the musical or comedy score category for her work on The Full Monty. Dudley’s win was somewhat controversial, as there is only about 20 minutes of original music in the film, most of the music in the film being well-known classic hits. However, the fact that the underscore compliments the needle-drops so well is part of what actually creates a brilliant soundscape for a movie. The Full Monty was enormously popular in Britain, and while Titanic swept most of the Academy Awards that year, the BAFTA Awards were hugely successful for The Full Monty, winning best picture and actor along with best score. Dudley is still working today, writing scores for film and TV, and working extensively as a session musician, arranger and producer.

That same year also had Lynn Ahrens nominated for best Comedy/Musical Score for her work with Stephen Flaherty and David Newman on the animated film Anastasia. Primarily a lyricist for Broadway musicals, Ahrens eventually adapted her work in the film Anastasia for the stage, which is currently touring internationally. Ahrens is part of a long tradition of Broadway composers working in film, a list that includes the legends Irving Berlin, Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, and Lin Manuel Miranda.

*Stephen Flaherty (L) & Lynn Ahrens (R)*

Since the 1970s, electronic music has found a place in Oscar-worthy movies, allowing composers to be more adventurous while writing film scores. One of the newest voices in electronic music, Mica Levi, also known as Micachu, has already cemented her legacy as a fascinating composer to watch. Levi started her music career as a DJ, releasing mixtapes on her Myspace page, but her talents did not only extend to club music, she actually composed a piece commissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and performed at Royal Festival Hall. She formed a band with Raisa Khan and Marc Pell, and they toured around the world as Micachu and the Shapes, eventually changing their name to Good Sad Happy Bad. Levi’s musical virtuosity eventually lead to her first film score, the boundary-pushing electronic score for 2014’s Under the Skin. Her work so impressed her peers, that she was nominated for a BAFTA for her very first film. Her second major composition for a movie was the 2016 Pablo Larrain film Jackie, which netted Levi her first Oscar® nomination. With her most recent film Zola wowing audiences at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, there is no reason to think Levi won’t be a major presence in film scoring, with her unique electronic sounds.

In 1999, The Academy dropped Original Musical or Comedy Score as a category, creating a much more competitive race, with only five spots for all genres of film music. The woman most recently nominated for the Best Score Oscar® is Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir and her win for Todd Phillips’ Joker caps off a historic year for the relative Hollywood newcomer. For her work in 2019, she won an Emmy® and a Grammy® for HBO’s Chernobyl and the Golden Globe, Oscar® and BAFTA Award for Joker. Her win makes her the first woman to triumph in the category in its current iteration. Guðnadóttir received a standing ovation at the awards ceremony on February 9, 2020, and used her time at the podium to say “To the girls, to the women, to the mothers, to the daughters, who hear the music bubbling within, please speak up. We need to hear your voices.”

Women Composers Nominated for "Best Score" Academy Awards®