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Gerald Fried, the Oscar-nominated, oboe-playing composer who created iconic gladiatorial fight music for the original Star Trek series and collaborated with Quincy Jones to win an Emmy for their theme to the landmark miniseries Roots, has died. He was 95.

Fried died Friday of pneumonia at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Bridgeport, Connecticut, his wife, Anita Hall, told The Hollywood Reporter.

After meeting Stanley Kubrick on a baseball field in the Bronx in the early 1950s, Fried wound up scoring the filmmaker’s first four features: Fear and Desire (1953), Killer’s Kiss (1955), The Killing (1956) and Paths of Glory (1957).

Fried also supplied the music for such cult Roger Corman classics as Machine-Gun Kelly (1958), The Cry Baby Killer (1958) and I Mobster (1959). He also worked with directors Larry Peerce on One Potato Two Potato (1964) and The Bell Jar (1979), as well as with Robert Aldrich on The Killing of Sister George (1968), What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?...

Composer Gerald Fried, who won an Emmy for the landmark miniseries “Roots” and whose 1960s scores, from “Star Trek” to “Gilligan’s Island,” left an indelible impression on a generation of TV watchers, died of pneumonia Friday at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Bridgeport, Ct. He was 95.

His wide-ranging career included scoring five early Stanley Kubrick films, including “Paths of Glory” and “The Killing”; receiving the only Oscar nomination ever given for a documentary score, 1975’s “Birds Do It, Bees Do It”; and earning five other Emmy nominations for music in specials, TV movies and miniseries.

The prolific Fried scored approximately 40 films, some three dozen TV-movies and miniseries, and episodes of another 40 TV series during a career that spanned more than six decades.

Among his most famous TV series music was from the original “Star Trek.” He scored five episodes of the series, most famously the Spock-in-heat episode “Amok Time,” which...

Burbank, CA – Warner Bros. Home Entertainment announced today that the perennial family classic Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory will be released on Ultra HD Blu-ray Combo Pack and Digital on June 29. Called a “genuine work of imagination” by Roger Ebert, the film stars Gene Wilder in one of his most famous roles.

Directed by Mel Stuart from a screenplay by Roald Dahl, Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory was produced by Stan Margulies and David L. Wolper. The film is an adaptation of Dahl’s 1964 novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory stars Gene Wilder as Wily Wonka, Jack Albertson as Grandpa Joe, Peter Ostrum as Charlie Bucket, Roy Kinnear as Mr. Salt, Julie Dawn Cole as Veruca Salt, Leonard Stone as Mr. Beauregarde, Denise Nickerson as Violet Beauregarde, Dodo Denney as Mrs. Teevee, and Paris Themmen as Mike Teevee.

Ultra HD* showcases 4K resolution...

It’s no mystery to the cast of The Thorn Birds why the 1983 miniseries was — and remains — the second-highest-rated miniseries ever (after Roots). "The attraction of doing, or thinking of doing, something forbidden appealed to the audience," Piper Laurie, who played Anne Mueller, tells Closer. "It was powerful!" The 10-hour drama, based on Colleen McCullough’s best-selling novel, followed a half-century in the life of the Cleary family in Australia: sheep rancher and matriarch Mary (Barbara Stanwyck), her lust for conflicted priest Ralph De Bricassart (Richard Chamberlain), and his forbidden love for Mary’s niece Meggie (Rachel Ward). With its family drama, scorching love scenes, and sprawling scale, The Thorn Birds "really was a watercooler show," Sydney Penny, who played young Meggie, tells Closer. "I didn’t appreciate how big it was at the time until I was watching the Emmys and I saw all these people I knew who were nominated.

Warner Bros. has become the first major TV studio to launch a comprehensive, studio-branded exhibit at the Paley Center for Media. The presentation, which will run for the next three years at the center’s Beverly Hills location, features props, costumes, original animation art and more from over 60 Warner Bros.-produced series during the studio’s almost 60-year history. That includes a replica of the Central Perk set from Friends, a Monk’s Diner booth from Seinfeld (Warner Bros. owns Seinfeld producer Castle Rock), Daisy Duke’s actual daisy dukes, the President’s podium from The West Wing, the badges of the doctors from ER, a Roots script with handwritten suggestions from author Alex Haley to producer Stan Margulies and Tony Soprano’s robe from The Sopranos (HBO is a Warner Bros. corporate sibling). Talent and producers from former and current Warner Bros. series as well as former and current top Warner Bros.

The unruly Veruca Salt may have been more than a handful for her overly permissive parents in "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," but the actress who played her, Julie Dawn Cole, could not control an unexpected real-life development during filming as she, well, developed.

When NextMovie chatted with the cast over dinner at Rue 57 in New York City to celebrate the film's 40th anniversary, Cole revealed a never-told story, especially since director Mel Stuart was sitting right across from her.

"When we were filming I was 12, almost 13, and different things happen physically to a young girl at that age," explained Cole. "So I started as a very flat-chested 12-year-old, but I was quite proud, as any 12-year-old would be, about what was happening up top. Of course they filmed out of sequence, so we did the factory gates first of all, then something else. We finally did my finding...