Birthday profile

Maurice Jarre

Maurice Jarre, French composer and conductor (died 2009)

Born
September 13, 1924
Died
March 28, 2009
Zodiac sign
Virgo
Birth year
1924

About Maurice Jarre

Maurice-Alexis Jarre (French pronunciation: [mɔʁis alɛksi ʒaʁ]; 13 September 1924 – 28 March 2009) was a French composer and conductor, mainly of film scores. He was particularly known for his collaborations with film director David Lean, composing the scores to all of his films from 1962 to 1984. He received numerous accolades over the course of his career, including three Academy Awards, three BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globes, and a Grammy Award. Jarre won three Academy Awards for Best Original Score for the David Lean films Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), and A Passage to India (1984). He was Oscar-nominated for Sundays and Cybèle (1962), The Message (1976), Witness (1985), Gorillas in the Mist (1988), and Ghost (1990). Notable scores also include Eyes Without a Face (1959), The Longest Day (1962), The Train (1964), The Collector (1965), Grand Prix (1966), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), Fatal Attraction (1987), and Dead Poets Society (1989). He worked with such directors as Alfred Hitchcock, Elia Kazan, John Huston, Luchino Visconti, John Frankenheimer, and Peter Weir. Three of his compositions spent a total of 42 weeks on the UK singles chart. The biggest hit was "Somewhere My Love" (to his tune "Lara's Theme", with lyrics by Paul Francis Webster) performed by the Mike Sammes Singers, which reached Number 14 in 1966 and spent 38 weeks on the chart. Jarre was the father of musician Jean-Michel Jarre and the adoptive father of screenwriter Kevin Jarre. He became director of the Théâtre National Populaire and recorded his first film score in France in 1951.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Maurice Jarre timeline

  1. He became director of the Théâtre National Populaire and recorded his first film score in France in 1951.
  2. Jarre won three Academy Awards for Best Original Score for the David Lean films Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), and A Passage to India (1984).

The world when Maurice Jarre was born

Maurice Jarre was born in 1924. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1924

  • #1 song"It Had to Be You" – Isham Jones
  • Top movieThe Thief of Bagdad (Douglas Fairbanks)
  • Best-selling bookSo Big – Edna Ferber

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentFirst Winter Olympics held in Chamonix, France
  • Top headlineCalvin Coolidge elected president in a landslide
  • Technology milestoneIBM founded
  • Defining fadMah-jongg craze sweeps America
  • Notable inventionSpiral-bound notebook
  • World population1.95 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderCalvin Coolidge
  • Sports championWashington Senators (World Series)
  • U.S. population114.1M

1924 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Maurice Jarre's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19242026
Gas$0.21$3.45/gal
Average home$5,800$435,000
Average income$3,520$67,500
Movie ticket$0.25$11.95
Postage stamp$0.02$0.73
Population114.1M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, MusicBrainz, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.