[4] North was born Isadore Soifer in Chester, Pennsylvania, to Jewish parents Jesse and Beila (Bessie).
[7] In the late 1920s, Isadore's older brother Jacob began writing articles for radical labor publications.
[11] North managed to integrate his modernism into typical film music leitmotif structure, rich with themes.
[1] Nominated for fifteen Oscars but unsuccessful each time, North is one of only two film composers to receive the Lifetime Achievement Academy Award, the other being Ennio Morricone.
His best-known film scores include A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, Viva Zapata!, The Rainmaker, Spartacus, The Misfits, Cleopatra, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Dragonslayer and Under the Volcano.
His commissioned score for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is notorious for having been discarded by director Stanley Kubrick late in the production process.
[13][14] North's unheard score for Nero Wolfe and six recorded tracks on digital audio tape are in the UCLA Music Library Special Collections.
[1] Though North is best known for his work in Hollywood, he spent years in New York writing music for the stage; he composed the score for the original Broadway production of Death of a Salesman.
North was one of several composers who merged the sound of contemporary concert music into film, in part marked by an increased use of dissonance and complex rhythms.