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IMDbPro

Max Steiner(1888-1971)

  • Music Department
  • Composer
  • Actor
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Max Steiner
Austrian composer Max Steiner achieved legendary status as the creator of hundreds of classic American film scores. He was born Maximilian Raoul Walter Steiner in Vienna, Austria, the son of Marie Mizzi (Hasiba) and Gabor Steiner, an impresario, and the grandson of actor and theater director and manager Maximilian Steiner. His family was Jewish. 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.
BornMay 10, 1888
DiedDecember 28, 1971(83)
BornMay 10, 1888
DiedDecember 28, 1971(83)
IMDbProStarmeter
See rank
  • Won 3 Oscars

Photos

Max Steiner and Adolph Deutsch

Known for

Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind (1939)
Gone with the Wind
8.2
  • Music Department(uncredited)
  • 1939
Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, Paul Henreid, and Conrad Veidt in Casablanca (1942)
Casablanca
8.5
  • Composer
  • 1942
Humphrey Bogart, Tim Holt, and Walter Huston in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
8.2
  • Music Department(uncredited)
  • 1948
Cary Grant and Priscilla Lane in Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
Arsenic and Old Lace
7.9
  • Composer
  • 1944

Credits

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IMDbPro

Music Department

  • Michael X. in Death Knocked 3 Times (2021)
    Death Knocked 3 Times
  • Lawrence Jones and the Command Conquer
  • Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in The Making of a Legend: Gone with the Wind (1988)
    The Making of a Legend: Gone with the Wind
  • The Letter (1982)
    The Letter
  • Those Calloways (1965)
    Those Calloways
    • (uncredited)
  • PT 109 (1963)
    PT 109
    • (uncredited)
  • Edd Byrnes, Roger Smith, and Efrem Zimbalist Jr. in 77 Sunset Strip (1958)
    77 Sunset Strip
    • (uncredited)
  • Jane Fonda, Shelley Winters, Claire Bloom, and Glynis Johns in The Chapman Report (1962)
    The Chapman Report
    • (uncredited)
  • Philip Carey, Diane McBain, and Fay Spain in Black Gold (1962)
    Black Gold
    • (uncredited)
  • Maverick (1957)
    Maverick
    • (uncredited)
  • House of Women (1962)
    House of Women
    • (uncredited)
  • Gardner McKay in Adventures in Paradise (1959)
    Adventures in Paradise
    • (uncredited)
  • Merrill's Marauders (1962)
    Merrill's Marauders
    • (uncredited)
  • James Gregory in The Lawless Years (1959)
    The Lawless Years
    • (uncredited)
  • Assignment: Underwater (1960)
    Assignment: Underwater
    • (uncredited)

Composer

  • Vacation Playhouse (1963)
    Vacation Playhouse
  • Those Calloways (1965)
    Those Calloways
  • Two on a Guillotine (1965)
    Two on a Guillotine
  • Youngblood Hawke (1964)
    Youngblood Hawke
  • Troy Donahue, Diane McBain, and Suzanne Pleshette in A Distant Trumpet (1964)
    A Distant Trumpet
  • Henry Fonda, Maureen O'Hara, Mimsy Farmer, and James MacArthur in Spencer's Mountain (1963)
    Spencer's Mountain
  • Robert Conrad, Anthony Eisley, Poncie Ponce, and Connie Stevens in Hawaiian Eye (1959)
    Hawaiian Eye
  • Insert
    FBI Code 98
  • Rome Adventure (1962)
    Rome Adventure
  • A Majority of One (1961)
    A Majority of One
  • Susan Slade (1961)
    Susan Slade
  • Troy Donahue, Sharon Hugueny, Diane McBain, and Connie Stevens in Parrish (1961)
    Parrish
  • Portrait of a Mobster (1961)
    Portrait of a Mobster
  • The Sins of Rachel Cade (1961)
    The Sins of Rachel Cade
  • Eve Arden, Angela Lansbury, Shirley Knight, Lee Kinsolving, Dorothy McGuire, and Robert Preston in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960)
    The Dark at the Top of the Stairs

Actor

  • Lee Tracy and Lupe Velez in The Half-Naked Truth (1932)
    The Half-Naked Truth
    • (uncredited)
  • Mitzi Green, Dorothy Lee, Eddie Quillan, Bert Wheeler, and Robert Woolsey in Girl Crazy (1932)
    Girl Crazy
    • (uncredited)

Personal details

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  • Official sites
    • Facebook
    • Last.fm
    • May 10, 1888
    • Vienna, Austria-Hungary [now Austria]
    • December 28, 1971
    • Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA(congestive heart failure)
    • April 1, 1947 - December 28, 1971 (his death)
  • Other works
    Composed the familiar Warner Brothers fanfare, which is rarely heard in its entirety - it modulates into the opening theme of the film it precedes.
  • Publicity listings
    • 2 Print Biographies
    • 1 Portrayal
    • 1 Interview
    • 3 Articles

Did you know

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  • Trivia
    Was regarded as the quintessential pioneer of American film composition, noted especially for his ability to integrate his music with the action on screen.
  • Quotes
    I never run out of tunes. Music is always in my mind. Sometimes I wake up at three in the morning and begin tossing. My wife will say, 'Daddy, why don't you write it down?' So I get up, put it on a paper, and go back to sleep.
    • Cash McCall
      (1960)
      $10,000

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