Max Steiner

Austrian classical and film-score composer

  • Born: May 10, 1888
  • Birthplace: Vienna, Austria
  • Died: December 28, 1971
  • Place of death: Hollywood, California

Steiner has been called the father of film music, having scored one of the first motion pictures using an extensive musical sound track, the original King Kong (1933).

The Life

Maximilian Raoul Walter Steiner (STIN-ur) was born for music, based on his ancestry and early teachers. His paternal grandfather, Maximilian Steiner, managed Vienna’s Theater an der Wien. His father, Gabor Steiner, was a Viennese impresario who managed carnivals and expositions. His godfather was Richard Strauss, the German conductor who was the last of the great Romantic composers. In addition, Steiner received early piano instruction from Johannes Brahms, the German Romantic composer.

When he was only fifteen, Steiner, a child prodigy, enrolled in the Imperial Academy of Music (now the University of Music and Performing Arts) in Vienna. His instructors there included Austrian composer Gustav Mahler. He studied violin, trumpet, organ, and piano, taking only a single year to meet the requirements for the academy’s four-year degree. He conducted concerts from the age of twelve, and when he was sixteen, he wrote and conducted an operetta, The Beautiful Greek Girl.

Steiner began working in England at age eighteen and was living in London when World War I broke out. Because of his country of origin, he found himself classified as an enemy alien. Largely through the influence of the Duke of Westminster, he obtained exit papers and sailed to the United States. When he reached New York near the end of 1914, he was carrying a little more than thirty dollars with which to begin his new life in America.

It did not take him long, however, to find work as an arranger, orchestrator, and conductor of other people’s music, including that of such prominent Broadway composers as George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, and Sigmund Romberg, in operettas and musicals. He continued these pursuits for some fifteen years. He moved to Hollywood in 1929 when he received an assignment to orchestrate Rio Rita, which was being adapted as a film with few changes from the original Florenz Ziegfeld play. It would become the first big hit for the young Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) Pictures.

His assignment as composer for the 1933 motion picture King Kong established his reputation. This action-oriented, early special-effects film was one of the first sound films in the United States to be made with an extensive musical score.

Steiner moved from RKO to Warner Bros. Studios, where he did the bulk of his work, including the studio’s distinctive fanfare (originally composed for Tovarich in 1937) opening each of its movies. He was Warner Bros. Studios’s most prominent composer and produced diverse and popular scores for hundreds of its pictures. He stayed at Warner Bros. Studios through the mid-1960’s, also producing music for television series. He died of congestive heart failure in 1971 after years of battling cancer.

The Music

Motion pictures had not been accompanied by sound before 1929, when Steiner scored Rio Rita. That was only two years after The Jazz Singer (1927), a mostly silent film with snatches of sound and singing, had become the first motion picture released with any sound at all. Its effect was to force studios to incorporate sound into their films. The early silent movies had, however, generally been accompanied by music, traditionally produced by a single talented organ player working in a theater who used music to illustrate the nature of the scene being shown on the screen at the moment.

It was a natural development for music to accompany sound motion pictures, highlighting the drama or comedy or action, only now it could be performed and recorded by an entire orchestra. Steiner was one of the composers who created music for all varieties of these early sound films, from dashing adventures starring actors such as Errol Flynn (The Charge of the Light Brigade and They Died with Their Boots On, for example) and sparkling musicals with singers and dancers such as the team of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (Top Hat) to Bette Davis dramas (Jezebel and Dark Victory, both of which received Academy Award nominations for Best Musical Score).

King Kong. This film set a trend for all beast and dinosaur epics that followed, even those with computerized special effects. It did have a silent-movie predecessor, 1925’s The Lost World, where explorers found surviving dinosaurs on an isolated plateau. Giant ape Kong and the other creatures in the 1933 movie were animated by Willis O’Brien, who had used the same stop-motion technique—moving and filming small models a bit at a time—in the silent film eight years earlier. Both motion pictures had a similar climax, with a prehistoric beast running rampant in a city, but only King Kong had an advanced musical score. Steiner’s music for this pioneering motion picture went from the mysterious, as during the approach to Kong’s Skull Island and Kong’s heard but momentarily unseen approach through the jungle, to the frenzied, as when the island’s natives perform their sacrificial dance at an ever-increasing tempo, to the melancholy in Kong’s death scene. The score was a trend-setting tour de force.

Gone with the Wind. Steiner’s work in this 1939 epic was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score, as was his Dark Victory in the same year, but both lost to Herbert Stothart for The Wizard of Oz. Nevertheless, the music from this grand-scale motion picture adapted from Margaret Mitchell’s novel remains arguably Steiner’s most recognized work, from the “Tara’s Theme” surrounding the Southern plantation home of Scarlett O’Hara in the years before, during, and after the Civil War, to the burning of Atlanta and dramatizing the tempestuous romance between Scarlett and Rhett Butler. Recordings of it have been released many times.

Sergeant York. This account of World War I hero Alvin York, as played by Gary Cooper, also got an Academy Award nomination (Steiner was nominated eighteen times during his career and won three times). The 1941 score highlighted York’s conflict: between his newly acquired religion, which told him it was wrong to kill, and the trench warfare that forced young soldiers to decide whether to kill to save other soldiers in his group. Steiner used the religious hymn “Give Me That Old Time Religion” to underpin the conflict York struggled to resolve. The musical score added impact to the war scenes as well as the character’s triumphant return for a tour followed by his arrival at his mountain home and the surprises that awaited him there.

Now, Voyager. A 1942 adaptation of Olive Prouty’s novel about a shy and plain young woman blossoming through psychotherapy—with Steiner’s music underscoring the transition—won an Academy Award. That is probably one of the reasons its star, Bette Davis, declared Steiner her favorite composer. Like other segments of Steiner’s music, parts of the Now, Voyager sound track have been recorded on their own for fans of the movie or those who enjoy the music on its own merits.

Casablanca. Music plays an integral role in this World War II drama of a cynical nightclub owner (Humphrey Bogart) who comes face to face with the woman (Ingrid Bergman) he thinks abandoned him when the Nazis swarmed into Paris. Using the dueling German martial music and French national anthem in the club is not original with Steiner, but the dramatic arrangement is. “As Time Goes By” accents the doomed relationship between the former lovers, as Bogart mutters to the piano player the memorable line, “Play it, Sam.” The surprises in the final scene gain dramatic tension from Steiner’s music. The film has long since achieved classic status, part of which derives from the music.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. A different Bogart joins Walter Huston and Tim Holt as three misfits prospecting for gold in the desert who become altered by the experience as trust among them erodes and greed grows. The musical score tracks all of these moods, right up to the scene of gold dust blowing away in the desert wind.

The Searchers. In this 1956 John Ford-directed western, based on Alan LeMay’s novel, Steiner’s musical score evokes the atmosphere of post-Civil War Texas—the heat of battle, the quiet of a pioneer’s cabin at sunset, the heartiness of a wedding dance, and the Sons of the Pioneers musical group singing a fitting closing to the story.

Spencer’s Mountain. Based on a novel by Earl Hamner, Jr., and later inspiring the television series The Waltons, this saga of a mountain family’s triumphs and tragedies is underscored effectively by Steiner. The music soars when the camera shows the majesty of the mountains.

Musical Legacy

Musical historians credit Steiner as an originator of the kind of film music movie audiences hear today, along with Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Waxman, and Dimitri Tiomkin. Steiner’s legacy echoes in the sweeping dramatic music by such later composers as Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams.

Besides his Oscars for The Informer, Since You Went Away, and Now, Voyager, Steiner received the King of Belgium Bronze Medal by the Cinema Exhibitors in 1936, the Golden Globe (for Life with Father) in 1947, the Statuette Award from the Cinema Exhibitors, Venice, Italy (for The Treasure of Sierra Madre) in 1948, the American Exhibitors Laurel Award in 1948, and the Italian Medal for So This Is Paris in 1955. A photograph of his right hand, shown writing notes on a sheet of music, was used on a U.S. commemorative postage stamp in 2003 celebrating American filmmaking. He was inducted, posthumously, into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1995. His work is recognized with a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

His music from movies such as Gone with the Wind and Now, Voyager has been remastered for play on compact discs. Decades after his last composition, his music continues to be heard by new generations.

Principal Works

film scores:Rio Rita, 1929; Cimarron, 1930; A Bill of Divorcement, 1932; Bird of Paradise, 1932; The Most Dangerous Game, 1932; Symphony of Six Million, 1932; Christopher Strong, 1933; King Kong, 1933; Little Women, 1933; Rafter Romance, 1933; The Gay Divorcée, 1934; The Lost Patrol, 1934; Of Human Bondage, 1934; The Informer, 1935; The Three Musketeers, 1935; Top Hat, 1935 (with Irving Berlin); The Charge of the Light Brigade, 1936; The Garden of Allah, 1936; Little Lord Fauntleroy, 1936; The Life of Emile Zola, 1937; A Star Is Born, 1937; Tovarich, 1937; Angels with Dirty Faces, 1938; Jezebel, 1938; Confessions of a Nazi Spy, 1939; Dark Victory, 1939; Dodge City, 1939; Gone with the Wind, 1939; All This and Heaven Too, 1940; The Letter, 1940; Santa Fe Trail, 1940; Sergeant York, 1941; Shining Victory, 1941; They Died with Their Boots On, 1941; Casablanca, 1942; In This Our Life, 1942; Now, Voyager, 1942; The Adventures of Mark Twain, 1944; Arsenic and Old Lace, 1944; The Conspirators, 1944; Passage to Marseilles, 1944; Since You Went Away, 1944; The Corn Is Green, 1945; Mildred Pierce, 1945; Rhapsody in Blue, 1945; The Big Sleep, 1946; Night and Day, 1946; Saratoga Trunk, 1946; Life with Father, 1947; My Wild Irish Rose, 1947; Johnny Belinda, 1948; Key Largo, 1948; The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, 1948; Adventures of Don Juan, 1949; Beyond the Forest, 1949; The Fountainhead, 1949; The Flame and the Arrow, 1950; The Glass Menagerie, 1950; Operation Pacific, 1951; The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima, 1952; Room for One More, 1952; The Charge at Feather River, 1953; The Jazz Singer, 1953; This Is Cinerama, 1953; The Caine Mutiny, 1954; King Richard and the Crusaders, 1954; Battle Cry, 1955; Come Next Spring, 1955; Helen of Troy, 1956; The Searchers, 1956; Band of Angels, 1957; The FBI Story, 1959; John Paul Jones, 1959; A Summer Place, 1959; The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, 1960; Parrish, 1961; The Sins of Rachel Cade, 1961; Lovers Must Learn (Rome Adventure), 1962; Spencer’s Mountain, 1963; Youngblood Hawke, 1964; Two on a Guillotine, 1965.

Bibliography

Burt, George. The Art of Film Music. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1995. Burt, a music professor who has had experience in scoring film music, provides case studies on how professionals score motion pictures.

Daubney, Kate. Max Steiner’s “Now, Voyager": A Film Score Guide. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000. Although the book concentrates on a particular movie, it provides an overall look at Steiner’s techniques and general contribution to filmmaking.

Davis, Richard. Complete Guide to Film Scoring. Boston: Berklee Press, 2000. Nineteen film-scoring professionals are interviewed in this guide to the business of and approaches to film and television music.

Morgan, David. Knowing the Score: Film Composers Talk About the Art, Craft, Blood, Sweat, and Tears of Writing for Cinema. New York: Harper Paperbacks, 2000. Sixteen film composers give their ideas about the process of creating a musical score for a movie.

Rona, Jeff. The Reel World: Scoring for Pictures. San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books, 2000. A how-to-do-it guide on the various ramifications of film scoring, with examples from specific composers.