George Edward Bruns (July 3, 1914 – May 23, 1983) was an American composer of music for film and television. His accolades include four Academy Award nominations, and three Grammy Award nominations. He is mainly known for his compositions for numerous Disney films spanning from the 1950s until the 1970s, among them Sleeping Beauty (1959), One Hundred and One Dalmatians, The Absent-Minded Professor (both 1961), The Sword in the Stone (1963), The Jungle Book (1967), The Love Bug (1968), The Aristocats (1970), and Robin Hood (1973). A native of Sandy, Oregon, Bruns began playing piano at age six. After graduating from Oregon State University, he worked as a bandleader at the Multnomah Hotel in Portland before relocating to Los Angeles to further pursue a musical career. In 1953, Bruns was hired as a musical arranger at Walt Disney Studios, eventually going on to become the studio's music director, a role he served from the mid 1950s until his retirement in 1976. Over the course of his career, Bruns was nominated for four Academy Awards for his work on Disney films, including Scoring of a Musical Picture for Sleeping Beauty and Babes in Toyland (1961), and Best Adaptation or Treatment for The Sword in the Stone. He received his fourth, final and only nomination for Best Original Song for the track "Love" from Robin Hood. Bruns spent his later years in his native Oregon, composing music and instructing at Lewis & Clark College. He died in Portland in 1983 of a heart attack. In 2001, he was posthumously inducted as a Disney Legend. Biography Early life George Edward Bruns was born on July 3, 1914, in Sandy, Oregon one of three children born to Augusta (née Weyer) and Edward Bruns. He had one older and one younger sister. His father was a lumber mill proprietor, and built the first lumber mill on Mount Hood, which was eventually relocated to Sandy. Bruns expressed interest in music at an early age: He began playing piano at age six, and subsequently learned how to play the bass tuba. He eventually became proficient in 15 different instruments, and began performing with a high school band while still in elementary school. He attended and graduated from Sandy High School, and went on to study engineering at Oregon State University, where he was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. In the 1930s he worked as a