Biography

Max Steiner

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Overview

Born
May 10, 1888 · Vienna, Austria-Hungary [now Austria]
Died
December 28, 1971 · Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA (congestive heart failure)
Birth name
Maximilian Raoul Walter Steiner
Height
5′ 4″ (1.63 m)

Mini bio

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 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 <jumblejim@prodigy.net>

Family

Spouses
Parents

Trademarks

Often worked for Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia

Worked on 36 films in 1934 and 37 the next year. It is doubtful anyone will ever approach that record again.
When he was 15 he won a medal for completing an eight-year music course in one year at the Imperial Academy of Music in Vienna. His teacher of conducting was Gustav Mahler.
Was regarded as the quintessential pioneer of American film composition, noted especially for his ability to integrate his music with the action on screen.
Was extremely prodigious, composing 111 scores for RKO alone during his tenure as musical director between 1929-35. From 1936-65 he worked under contract at Warner Brothers, except for brief periods on loan to David O. Selznick.
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.

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.