Background

Maximilian was born on May 10, 1888 in Vienna, Austria, the son of Gabor Steiner, a theatrical producer and the creator of the theme park "Venice in Vienna" and Vienna's giant Ferris wheel (Riesenrad), and Maria ("Mitzie") Hollman, a restaurateur. He was the only child in a wealthy business and theatrical family of Jewish heritage.

Education

Steiner showed exceptional musical talent at an early age and when he was thirteen entered the Imperial Academy of Music.

Career

At the age of fourteen, Steiner wrote an operetta, The Beautiful Greek Girl, which was produced by Carl Tuschl at the Orpheum Theater in Vienna. From 1904 through 1914, Steiner conducted and arranged operettas and musical comedies, living first in London and then in Paris while participating in tours to Berlin, Moscow, and Johannesburg.

At the outbreak of World War I, Steiner, considered an enemy alien in London, was aided by friends in moving to New York City; he became a naturalized citizen in 1920.

He started as a copyist for Harms Music Publishing, which led to assignments as an orchestrator and conductor of Broadway musicals with Victor Herbert, George Gershwin, and Jerome Kern. Steiner composed little while he was in New York, writing the music for only one show, Peaches.

Steiner's introduction to Hollywood came in 1929, when RKO Radio Pictures bought the rights to the musical Rio Rita. Harry Tierney, for whom he had orchestrated and conducted the stage version, insisted that Steiner be hired to provide the same services for the screen version.

William Le Baron, executive producer of RKO, offered Steiner a one-year contract, but he was not certain how long Steiner's services would be needed. It was at a time when studios were debating whether music was required in dramatic pictures. His first film music for RKO was written to supply cues for English movies dubbed in Spanish.

Films made in the early 1930's gave Steiner the opportunity to begin scoring music that intensified the action on the screen without showing the source of the music. Steiner's first original score was for Cimarron (1930), an Academy Award winner for best picture and the first sound film to have music that was not directly linked to the on-screen action. The first films to use music under dialogue were Symphony of Six Million and Bird of Paradise, both produced by David O. Selznick in 1932 with music composed by Steiner.

At first, film music was simplistic and rather naive, but as films improved, so did the music. Steiner worked for RKO from 1929 to 1936, producing music for nearly 135 films, including King Kong (1933) and The Informer (1935); the latter won Steiner his first Academy Award.

King Kong was unique for its time and illustrates Steiner's style: rich symphonic scoring, quasi-Wagnerian use of leitmotifs, and long sections of nearly continuous music. This style developed into the "classic" Hollywood model of film scoring; Steiner's influence is paramount.

In 1936, Steiner joined Selznick-International, composing music for Little Lord Fauntleroy, The Garden of Allah, and A Star Is Born. Selznick also loaned Steiner to Warner Brothers for the scoring of three films, including The Charge of the Light Brigade.

In 1937, Steiner contracted with Warner Brothers on a full-time basis. Under that contract he composed music for such classics as Casablanca, Saratoga Trunk, Jezebel, They Died with Their Boots On, Since You Went Away, and Now, Voyager and garnered Academy Awards for the last two. The year 1939 was Steiner's most productive.

He provided music for ten Warner Brothers films - The Oklahoma Kid, Dodge City, Confessions of a Nazi Spy, Daughters Courageous, Each Dawn I Die, The Old Maid, Dust Be My Destiny, We Are Not Alone, Four Wives, and Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet - besides working for Selznick on the music for Intermezzo and the epic Gone with the Wind. Steiner's "Tara" theme for the latter became one of the most famous melodies of the century.

In 1953, Steiner left Warner Brothers and began to freelance. He continued to compose for major productions such as The Searchers (1956), The Sins of Rachel Cade (1961). His theme from A Summer Place (1959) became a popular standard in the early 1960's. In the end, poor eyesight and health prevented him from composing. In 1965, he completed his last film, Two on a Guillotine, at the age of seventy-seven.

He died in Hollywood.

Achievements

• Maximilian Raoul Walter Steiner became one of the first composers to write music scores for films. He was referred to as "the father of film music". Steiner played a major part in creating the tradition of writing music for films, along with composers Dimitri Tiomkin, Franz Waxman, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alfred Newman, Bernard Herrmann, and Miklós Rózsa. Steiner composed over 300 film scores with RKO Pictures and Warner Bros. , and was nominated for 24 Academy Awards, winning three: The Informer (1935); Now, Voyager (1942); and Since You Went Away (1944). Besides his Oscar-winning scores, some of Steiner's popular works include King Kong (1933), Little Women (1933), Jezebel (1938), Casablanca (1942), The Searchers (1956), A Summer Place (1959), and Gone with the Wind (1939), the film score for which he is best known. He was also the first recipient of the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, which he won for his score for Life with Father. Steiner was a frequent collaborator with some of the most famous film directors in history, including Michael Curtiz, John Ford, and William Wyler, and scored many of the films with Errol Flynn, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, and Fred Astaire. Many of his film scores are available as separate soundtrack recordings.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Max Steiner's Now, Voyager: A Film Score Guide (Film Score Guides)

    ( Max Steiner's contribution to the formulation of early ...)

  • As Time Goes By: Music From Casablanca / Various

    (2CD set feat the Max Steiner score and related material p...)

  • Max Steiner: Composing, Casablanca, and the Golden Age of Film Music

    ( Max Steiner is one of the greatest—not to mention most ...)

  • Hollywood Sound - Music for the Movies / Max Steiner, Franz Waxman, David Raksin

    (With a revived interest in the scores created for Hollywo...)

  • Adventures Of Don Juan

    (Reissue of 1949 soundtrack with special plastic packaging...)

  • Max Steiner: The RKO Years 1929-1936 3 CD Set

    (Tracks Disc 1 1. Main Title (02:10) Cimarron 2. Main Titl...)

  • Vintage Hollywood Classics, Vol. 17: Sunset Boulevard & She (Original Motion Picture Soundtracks)

  • book

  • book

  • Gone With The Wind - Tara's Theme
  • Silver Screen Magic
  • End Title / The Searchers (The Sons of the Pioneers)
  • Steiner & Waxman
  • STEINER: King Kong

Views

Quotations: Steiner stated:

"It is my conviction that familiar music, however popular, does not aid the underlying score of a dramatic picture. I believe that, while the American people are more musically minded than any other nation in the world, they are still not entirely familiar with all the old and new masters’ works . .. Of course there are many in our industry who disagree with my viewpoint. "

He also notes that many composers, contrary to his own technique, would fail to subordinate the music to the film:

"I've always tried to subordinate myself to the picture. A lot of composers make the mistake of thinking of film as a concert platform on which they can show off. This is not the place . .. If you get too decorative, you lose your appeal to the emotions. My theory is that the music should be felt rather than heard. "

Connections

Steiner's first marriage, on September 12, 1912, in London, was to a woman named Beatrice, who had been a soubrette in one of his father's shows. When finances allowed, his wife and her mother joined Steiner in New York, but the marriage did not last. The date of divorce is not certain; however, it is known that Steiner married Audrey van Liew, a singer, on April 12, 1927; this marriage also ended in divorce.

In 1931, Steiner met his third wife, Louise Klos, a harpist who often played in studio orchestras that he conducted. They were married October 31, 1936, and had one child. They were divorced nine years later. In April 1947, Steiner married Leonette Ball; this was his fourth and final marriage.

Mother:

Maria ("Mitzie") Hollman

Wife:

Louise Klos

Wife:

Leonette Ball

Wife:

Audrey van Liew

Wife:

Beatrice Steiner

Grandfather:

Maximilian Steiner

father:

Gabor Steiner

associate:

Hermann Grudener

associate:

Felix Weingartner

References

• Max Steiner: Composing, Casablanca, and the Golden Age of Film Music by Peter Wegele (2014-04-24)
• The Invisible Art of Film Music: A Comprehensive History
• Hollywood Film Score: The Music of the Movies