Biography
Bert Shefter (1902–1999) was a Russian-born American composer, pianist and conductor who worked primarily in film and television. Born in Poltava, then part of the Russian Empire, he trained at the Curtis Institute of Music and the Damrosch Institute after emigrating to the United States. He first gained recognition as one half of the piano duo Shefter & Gould with Morton Gould, performing and recording classical and popular music in the 1930s, and later led his own orchestra.
Shefter entered film scoring in the early 1950s, initially with Lippert Pictures. He is best known for his long collaboration with composer Paul Sawtell from 1956 to 1971, providing original music for numerous low-budget science-fiction and horror films, including It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958), Return of the Fly (1959), The Lost World (1960), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961), Jack the Giant Killer (1962), The Last Man on Earth (1964) and Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965). He also contributed to several Russ Meyer exploitation pictures and served as music supervisor on television series such as Hawaiian Eye (1959–1963). Shefter retired in the mid-1970s.
