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Golden Globes: It wasn’t always so bright for composer Ennio Morricone

Influential Italian composer Ennio Morricone earned his ninth Golden Globe nomination Thursday for "The Hateful Eight."

Influential Italian composer Ennio Morricone earned his ninth Golden Globe nomination Thursday for “The Hateful Eight.”

(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times )
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Ennio Morricone, 87, is an admired and influential film composer who came to international fame over five decades ago when he collaborated with Sergio Leone on 1964’s seminal spaghetti Western “A Fistful of Dollars.”

He’s written nearly 400 scores and earned his first of five Oscar nominations for 1978’s “Days of Heaven” -- he also won an honorary award in 2007.

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His scores have also been music to the ears of the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn., which presents the Golden Globes. Morricone won the Globe for his haunting 1986 score to “The Mission” and earned his ninth nomination Thursday for his musical work on Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight.”

Probably very few remember his first Golden Globe nomination for the critically lambasted 1982 Pia Zadora melodrama “Butterfly.” He shared the song nomination with Carol Connors for “It’s Wrong for Me to Love You.”

However, the Razzie Awards, which honor the worst achievement in film, thought it was out of tune and gave “It’s Wrong for me to Love You” a worst original song nomination. To add insult to injury, Morricone earned two more Razzie nominations that year -- worst musical score for “Butterfly” and John Carpenter’s “The Thing.”

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