Maximilian Raoul Steiner (10 May 1888 – 28 December 1971) was an Austrian composer and conductor who emigrated to America and became one of Hollywood's greatest musical composers.
Steiner was a child prodigy who conducted his first operetta when he was twelve and became a full-time professional, proficient at composing, arranging, and conducting, by the time he was fifteen. Threatened with internment in England during World War I, he fled to Broadway; and in 1929 he moved to Hollywood, where he became one of the first composers to write music scores for films. He is often referred to as "the father of film music", as Steiner played a major part in creating the tradition of writing music for films, along with composers Dimitri Tiomkin, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Waxman, Alfred Newman, Bernard Herrmann, and Miklós Rózsa.
Steiner composed over 300 film scores with RKO Pictures and Warner Bros., and was nominated for 24 Academy Awards, winning three: The Informer (1935); Now, Voyager (1942); and Since You Went Away (1944). Besides his Oscar-winning scores, some of Steiner's popular works include King Kong (1933), Little Women (1933), Jezebel (1938), and Casablanca (1942), though he did not compose its love theme, "As Time Goes By". In addition, Steiner scored The Searchers (1956), A Summer Place (1959), and Gone with the Wind (1939), which ranked second on the AFI's list of best American film scores, and is the film score for which he is best known.
He was also the first recipient of the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, which he won for his score for Life with Father. Steiner was a frequent collaborator with some of the best known film directors in history, including Michael Curtiz, John Ford, and William Wyler, and scored many of the films with Errol Flynn, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, and Fred Astaire. Many of his film scores are available as separate soundtrack recordings.
Max Steiner was born on 10 May 1888, in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, as the only child in a wealthy business and theatrical family of Jewish heritage. He was named after his paternal grandfather, Maximilian Steiner (1839–1880), who was credited with first persuading Johann Strauss II to write for the theater, and was the influential manager of Vienna's historic Theater an der Wien. His parents were Marie Josefine/Mirjam (Hasiba) and Hungarian-Jewish Gábor Steiner (1858–1944, born in Temesvár, Kingdom of Hungary, Austrian Empire), a Viennese impresario, carnival exposition manager, and inventor, responsible for building the Wiener Riesenrad. His father encouraged Steiner's musical talent, and allowed him to conduct an American operetta at the age of twelve, The Belle of New York, which allowed Steiner to gain early recognition by the operetta's author, Gustave Kerker. Steiner's mother Marie was a dancer in stage productions put on by his grandfather when she was young, but later became involved in the restaurant business. Richard Strauss strongly influenced Steiner's future work. Steiner often credited his family for inspiring his early musical abilities. As early as six years old, Steiner was taking three or four piano lessons a week from Johannes Brahms but often became bored with the lessons. Because of this, he would practice improvising on his own, his father encouraging him to write his music down. Steiner cited his early improvisation as an influence of his taste in music, particularly his interest in the music of Claude Debussy which was "avant garde" for the time. In his youth, he began his composing career through his work on marches for regimental bands and hit songs for a show put on by his father.
Steiner's parents sent him to the Vienna University of Technology, but he expressed little interest in scholastic subjects. He enrolled in the Imperial Academy of Music in 1904, where, due to his precocious musical talents and private tutoring by Robert Fuchs, and Gustav Mahler, he completed a four-year course in only one year, winning himself a gold medal from the academy at the age of fifteen. He studied various instruments including violin, double bass, organ, and trumpet. His preferred and best instrument was the piano, but he acknowledged the importance of being familiar with what the other instruments could do. He also had courses in harmony, counterpoint, and composition. Along with Mahler and Fuchs, he cited his teachers as Felix Weingartner and Edmund Eysler.
Beginning music career (1907–1914)
The music of Edmund Eysler was an early influence in the pieces of Max Steiner; however, one of his first introductions to operettas was by Franz Lehár who worked for a time as a military bandmaster for Steiner's father's theatre. Steiner paid tribute to Lehár through an operetta modeled after Lehár's Die lustige Witwe which Steiner staged in 1907 in Vienna. Eysler was well known for his operettas though as critiqued by Richard Traubner, the libretti were poor, with a fairly simple style, the music often relying too heavily on the Viennese waltz style. As a result, when Steiner started writing pieces for the theater, he was interested in writing libretto as his teacher had, but had minimal success. However, many of his future film scores such as Dark Victory (1939), In This Our Life (1941), and Now, Voyager (1942) had frequent waltz melodies as influenced by Eysler. According to author of Max Steiner's "Now, Voyager" Kate Daubney, Steiner may also have been influenced by Felix Weingartner who conducted the Vienna Opera from 1908 to 1911. Although he took composition classes from Weingartner, as a young boy, Steiner always wanted to be a great conductor.
Between 1907 and 1914, Steiner traveled between Britain and Europe to work on theatrical productions. Steiner first entered the world of professional music when he was fifteen. He wrote and conducted the operetta The Beautiful Greek Girl, but his father refused to stage it saying it was not good enough. Steiner took the composition to competing impresario Carl Tuschl who offered to produce it. Much to Steiner's pleasure, it ran in the Orpheum Theatre for a year. This led to opportunities to conduct other shows in various cities around the world, including Moscow and Hamburg. Upon returning to Vienna, Steiner found his father in bankruptcy. Having difficulties finding work, he moved to London (in part to follow an English showgirl he had met in Vienna). In London, he was invited to conduct Lehar's The Merry Widow. He stayed in London for eight years conducting musicals at Daly's Theatre, the Adelphi, the Hippodrome, the London Pavilion, and the Blackpool Winter Gardens. Steiner married Beatrice Tilt on September 12, 1912. The exact date of their divorce is unknown.
In England, Steiner wrote and conducted theater productions and symphonies. But the beginning of World War I in 1914 led him to be interned as an enemy alien. Fortunately, he was befriended by the Duke of Westminster, who was a fan of his work, and was given exit papers to go to America, although his money was impounded. He arrived in New York City in December 1914, with only $32. Unable to find work, he resorted to menial jobs such as a copyist for Harms Music Publishing, which quickly led him to jobs orchestrating stage musicals.
In New York, Max Steiner quickly acquired employment and worked for fifteen years as a musical director, arranger, orchestrator, and conductor of Broadway productions. These productions include operettas and musicals written by Victor Herbert, Jerome Kern, Vincent Youmans, and George Gershwin, among others. Steiner's credits include: George White's Scandals (1922) (director), Peaches (1923) (composer), and Lady, Be Good (1924) (conductor and orchestrator). At twenty-seven years old, Steiner became Fox Film's musical director in 1915. At the time, there was no specially written music for films and Steiner told studio founder William Fox his idea to write an original score for The Bondman (1916). Fox agreed and they put together a 110-piece orchestra to accompany the screenings. During his time working on Broadway, he married Audree van Lieu on 27 April 1927. They divorced on 14 December 1933. In 1927, Steiner orchestrated and conducted Harry Tierney's Rio Rita. Tierney himself later requested RKO Pictures in Hollywood hire Steiner to work in their music production departments. William LeBaron, RKO's head of production, traveled to New York to watch Steiner conduct and was impressed by Steiner and his musicians, who each played several instruments. Eventually, Steiner became a Hollywood asset. Steiner's final production on Broadway was Sons O' Guns in 1929.