From The Associated Press… Italian movie composer Ennio Morricone, famed for his work on such “spaghetti westerns” as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and A Fistful of Dollars will receive an honorary Oscar during the Academy Awards ceremony next February, organizers said on Wednesday.

Morricone, 78, has composed more than 300 motion picture scores during his 45-year career, but had never won an Oscar. He was nominated five times, for Days of Heaven (1978), The Mission (1986), The Untouchables (1987), Bugsy (1991) and Malena (2000).

The honorary Oscar, determined by the board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, went this year to director Robert Altman, who died last month.

“The board was responding not just to the remarkable number of scores that Mr. Morricone has produced,” said Academy president Sid Ganis, “but to the fact that so many of them are beloved and popular masterpieces.”

The 79th annual Academy Awards will be held in Hollywood on February 25.