Biography for
Max Steiner (I) More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

10 May 1888, Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria)

Date of Death

28 December 1971, Hollywood, California, USA (congestive heart failure)

Birth Name

Maximilian Raoul Walter Steiner

Mini Biography

Austrian composer who achieved legendary status as the creator of hundreds of classic American film scores. As a child he was astonishingly musically gifted, composing complex works as a teenager and completing the course of study at Vienna's Hochschule fuer Musik und Darstellende Kunst in only one year, at the age of sixteen. He studied under Gustav Mahler and, before the age of twenty, made his living as a conductor and as composer of works for the theater, the concert hall, and vaudeville. After a brief sojourn in Britian, Steiner moved to the USA in the same wave as fellow film composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold and quickly became a sought-after orchestrator and conductor on Broadway, bringing the Western classical tradition in which he had been raised to mainstream audiences.

He was soon snatched up by the film studios with the advent of sound and helped the fledgling talkies become musically sophisticated within a brief few years. He was one of the first to fully integrate the musical score with the images on-screen and to score individual scenes for their content and create leitmotifs for individual characters, as opposed to simply providing vaguely appropriate mood music, as evidenced in King Kong (1933), which set the standard for American film music for years to come.

From the 1930s to the 1960s, he was one of the most respected, innovative, and brilliant composers of American film music, creating a truly staggering number of exceptional scores for films of all types. He was nominated for Academy Awards for his scores eighteen times and won three times. Years after his death in 1971, he remains one of the giants of motion picture history, and his music still thrives.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Jim Beaver

Spouse

Aubrey H	(1924 - ?) 1 child
Louise Klos	(? - ?) (divorced)

Trivia

Is entombed in The Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California, near famous film composers Alfred Newman, Isham Jones, Rudolf Friml, Carrie Jacobs Bond, and many of the stars of the films for whom he composed music.

Steiner was awarded the King of Belgium Bronze Medal by the Cinema Exhibitors, Brussels, Belgium, in 1936; the American Exhibitors Laurel Award in 1948; the Golden Globe for Life with Father (1947); the Academy Award for Since You Went Away (1944); the Academy Award again for Now, Voyager (1942); the Academy Award, French government decoration, for The Informer (1935); the Italian Medal for So This Is Paris (1955); and the Statuette Award from the Cinema Exhibitors, Venice, Italy, for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).

A photograph of Steiner's right hand, holding a pen and writing notes on a musical score, appears on one stamp of a sheet of 10 USA 37¢ commemorative postage stamps, issued 25 February 2003, celebrating American Filmmaking: Behind the Scenes. The stamp honors early film composers.

In addition to his familiar theme music for Gone with the Wind (1939) and A Summer Place (1959), Steiner was also the composer of the well-known Warner Bros. Fanfare, originally written for Tovarich (1937) and used to introduce numerous Warner Brothers films ever since. For many years, composers at the studio, instead of writing the music out, would simply write "'Tovarich' Fanfare" at the beginning of their scores, and the musicians would know what they meant.

As a boy, Steiner was given piano instruction by legendary composer Johannes Brahms. Steiner's father was a major theatrical producer in Vienna, who had discovered and promoted Brahms, and the two remained great friends.

He was Bette Davis' favorite film composer.

Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1995.

Studied music at the Imperial Academy of Music, completing the eight year course in one year and graduating at the age of 13. A year later he composed and conducted his first musical. He became a professional conductor at 16 years of age.

Pictured on one of six 33¢ USA commemorative postage stamps in the Legends of American Music series, honoring Hollywood Composers, issued 21 September 1999. Issued in panes of 20 stamps. Others honored in the set were Dimitri Tiomkin, Bernard Herrmann, Franz Waxman, Alfred Newman, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

Salary

The FBI Story (1959)

$15,000

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