INFORMATION FROM IMDb
Date of birth
10 May 1888
Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria)
Date of death
28 December 1971
Hollywood, California, USA.
Sometimes Credited As:
Max R. Steiner
Birth name
Maximilian Raoul Walter Steiner
Spouse
Louise Klos (? - ?) (divorced after 10 years)
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.
Salary
The FBI Story (1959) $15,000
Rio Rita (1929) $450/week
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
Filmography
Composer
2011 Hollywood in Vienna (TV movie)
1982 The Letter (TV movie)
1965 Those Calloways
1965 Two on a Guillotine
1964 Youngblood Hawke
1964 A Distant Trumpet
1963 Spencer's Mountain
1959-1963 Hawaiian Eye (TV series)
– Passport (1963) (uncredited)
– The Sisters (1963) (uncredited)
– Gift of Love (1963) (uncredited)
– Blow Low, Blow Blue (1963) (uncredited)
– Two Million Too Much (1963) (uncredited)
all 121 episodes »
1963 FBI Code 98
1962 Rome Adventure
1961 A Majority of One
1961 Susan Slade
1961 Parrish
1961 Portrait of a Mobster
1961 The Sins of Rachel Cade
1960 The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
1960 Cash McCall
1960 Ice Palace
1959 The FBI Story
1959 A Summer Place
1959 John Paul Jones
1959 The Hanging Tree
1958 Tenderfoot (TV series)– Ring of Sand (1958)
1958 Marjorie Morningstar
1958 Fort Dobbs
1958 The Young Invaders
1957 Escapade in Japan
1957 Band of Angels
1957 China Gate
1957 The Day They Gave Babies Away
1956 Death of a Scoundrel
1956 Bandido
1956 The Searchers
1956 Come Next Spring
1956 Helen of Troy
1955 Hell on Frisco Bay
1955 Illegal
1955 Tiger in the Sky
1955 The Last Command
1955 Battle Cry
1955 Rough Company
1954 King Richard and the Crusaders
1954 The Caine Mutiny
1954 The Boy from Oklahoma
1953 So Big
1953 The Grace Moore Story (uncredited)
1953 The Charge at Feather River
1953 The Desert Song
1953 Trouble Along the Way
1952 The Jazz Singer (uncredited)
1952 The Iron Mistress
1952 Springfield Rifle
1952 This Is Cinerama (documentary) (uncredited)
1952 Miracle of Fatima
1952 The Lion and the Horse
1952 Mara Maru
1952 Room for One More
1951 Distant Drums
1951 Man of Bronze
1951 Force of Arms
1951 On Moonlight Bay (uncredited)
1951 I Was a Communist for the FBI (uncredited)
1951 Lightning Strikes Twice
1951 Canyon Pass
1951 Sugarfoot
1951 Operation Pacific
1951 Close to My Heart
1950 Dallas
1950 Rocky Mountain
1950 The Breaking Point (uncredited)
1950 The Glass Menagerie
1950 The Flame and the Arrow
1950 Caged
1949 Mrs. Mike (uncredited)
1949 The Lady Takes a Sailor
1949 Without Honor
1949 Beyond the Forest
1949 White Heat
1949 The Fountainhead
1949 Flamingo Road
1949 A Kiss in the Dark
1949 South of St. Louis
1948 The Decision of Christopher Blake
1948 The New Adventures of Don Juan
1948 Fighter Squadron
1948 Johnny Belinda
1948 Key Largo
1948 Silver River
1948 The Woman in White
1948 Winter Meeting
1948 April Showers (uncredited)
1948 My Girl Tisa
1948 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
1947 The Voice of the Turtle
1947 Life with Father
1947 Deep Valley
1947 Cheyenne
1947 The Unfaithful
1947 Love and Learn
1947 Pursued
1946 The Beast with Five Fingers
1946 Cloak and Dagger
1946 The Big Sleep
1946 A Stolen Life
1946 One More Tomorrow
1946 My Reputation
1946 Tomorrow Is Forever
1945 San Antonio
1945 Saratoga Trunk
1945 Mildred Pierce
1945 The Corn Is Green
1945 Roughly Speaking
1944 The Conspirators
1944 Arsenic and Old Lace
1944 Since You Went Away
1944 The Adventures of Mark Twain
1944 Up in Arms (uncredited)
1944 Passage to Marseille
1943 Watch on the Rhine
1943 Mission to Moscow
1943 The Battle of Britain (documentary) (uncredited)
1942 Casablanca
1942 Now, Voyager
1942 Desperate Journey
1942 The Gay Sisters
1942 In This Our Life
1942 Captains of the Clouds
1941 They Died with Their Boots On
1941 One Foot in Heaven
1941 Dive Bomber
1941 The Bride Came C.O.D.
1941 Sergeant York
1941 Shining Victory
1941 The Great Lie
1940 Santa Fe Trail
1940 The Letter
1940 This Man Reuter
1940 City for Conquest
1940 All This, and Heaven Too
1940 Virginia City
1940 The Story of Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet
1939 Four Wives
1939 Gone with the Wind
1939 We Are Not Alone
1939 Escape to Happiness (uncredited)
1939 Dust Be My Destiny
1939 The Old Maid
1939 Each Dawn I Die (uncredited)
1939 Daughters Courageous
1939 Confessions of a Nazi Spy (uncredited)
1939 Dark Victory
1939 Dodge City
1939 The Oklahoma Kid
1939 They Made Me a Criminal
1938 The Dawn Patrol
1938 Angels with Dirty Faces
1938 The Sisters
1938 Four Daughters
1938 The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (uncredited)
1938 Crime School
1938 Jezebel
1938 Gold Is Where You Find It
1938 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (uncredited)
1938 White Banners
1937 Tovarich
1937 First Lady
1937 Submarine D-1
1937 That Certain Woman
1937 The Life of Emile Zola
1937 Slim (uncredited)
1937 Kid Galahad (uncredited)
1937 A Star Is Born
1937 Green Light
1937 God's Country and the Woman
1936 The Charge of the Light Brigade
1936 The Garden of Allah
1936 Little Lord Fauntleroy
1936 Follow the Fleet (uncredited)
1935 I Dream Too Much (uncredited)
1935 The Three Musketeers
1935 She
1935 Break of Hearts (uncredited)
1935 The Informer
1935 Star of Midnight (uncredited)
1934 The Little Minister (music by)
1934 The Gay Divorce (uncredited)
1934 The Age of Innocence (uncredited)
1934 The Fountain
1934 Of Human Bondage
1934 Murder on the Blackboard (uncredited)
1934 The Life of Vergie Winters
1934 Stingaree (uncredited)
1934 The Lost Patrol
1933 The Son of Kong
1933 The Right to Romance (uncredited)
1933 Little Women
1933 Morning Glory
1933 Melody Cruise (uncredited)
1933 The Silver Cord
1933 Diplomaniacs
1933 Sweepings
1933 Christopher Strong (uncredited)
1933 King Kong
1933 Lucky Devils (uncredited)
1933 The Cheyenne Kid (uncredited)
1933 The Monkey's Paw (uncredited)
1932 The Woman in His House (uncredited)
1932 The Half Naked Truth (uncredited)
1932 The Conquerors
1932 A Bill of Divorcement (uncredited)
1932 Thirteen Women
1932 Hounds of Zaroff
1932 Bird of Paradise
1932 Roar of the Dragon (music director)
1932 What Price Hollywood? (uncredited)
1932 Is My Face Red? (uncredited)
1932 Cardigan's Last Case (uncredited)
1932 Symphony of Six Million
1932 The Lost Squadron (uncredited)
1932 Girl of the Rio
1931 Men of Chance (uncredited)
1931 Peach-O-Reno (uncredited)
1931 Secret Service (uncredited)
1931 Old Greatheart (uncredited)
1931 Are These Our Children
1931 Consolation Marriage (uncredited)
1931 Top of the Bill (uncredited)
1931 Friends and Lovers
1931 The Gay Diplomat (uncredited)
1931 Waiting for the Bride (uncredited)
1931 High Stakes (uncredited)
1931 The Public Defender (uncredited)
1931 Transgression (uncredited)
1931 Bachelor Apartment (uncredited)
1931 Cracked Nuts (uncredited)
1931 Kept Husbands (uncredited)
1931 Cimarron (uncredited)
1931 Beau Ideal (uncredited)
1930 Dixiana (uncredited)
1929 The Delightful Rogue (silent foreign version - uncredited)
1929 The Three Brothers (silent foreign version - uncredited)
1916 The Bondman
Actor
1. The Half Naked Truth (1932) (uncredited) .... Conductor
2. Girl Crazy (1932) (uncredited) .... Orchestra Leader
