Music by Max Steiner: The Epic Life of Hollywood’s Most Influential Composer (Cultural Biographies)

Product Description

During a seven-decade career that spanned from 19th century Vienna to 1920s Broadway to the golden age of Hollywood, three-time Academy Award winner Max Steiner did more than any other composer to introduce and establish the language of film music. Indeed, revered contemporary film composers
like John Williams and Danny Elfman use the same techniques that Steiner himself perfected in his iconic work for such classics as
Casablanca,
King Kong,
Gone with the Wind,
The Searchers,
Now, Voyager, the Astaire-Rogers musicals, and over 200 other titles. And Steiner’s private life was a drama
all its own. Born into a legendary Austrian theatrical dynasty, he became one of Hollywood’s top-paid composers. But he was also constantly in debt–the inevitable result of gambling, financial mismanagement, four marriages, and the actions of his emotionally troubled son.

Throughout his chaotic life, Steiner was buoyed by an innate optimism, a quick wit, and an instinctive gift for melody, all of which would come to the fore as he met and worked with luminaries like Richard Strauss, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, the Warner Bros., David O. Selznick, Bette Davis,
Frank Sinatra, and Frank Capra. In
Music by Max Steiner, the first full biography of Steiner, author Steven C. Smith interweaves the dramatic incidents of Steiner’s personal life with an accessible exploration of his composing methods and experiences, bringing to life the previously untold story of
a musical pioneer and master dramatist who helped create a vital new art with some of the greatest film scores in cinema history.

Review

“Movie lovers and film music aficionados will forever be in Steven C. Smith’s debt for telling the full story of Max Steiner’s life and career. Gracefully written, this sympathetic portrait captures the prodigious composer’s personality and documents his many milestone achievements, from
King Kong
to
Gone With The Wind and
Casablanca. I loved reading it.”-Leonard Maltin, Film Critic and Historian

“Smith’s life of Max Steiner moves like an express train, every page crammed with interest and scrupulous research, both historical and musical. This is genuine biography in which a fascinating subject has met his authorial match. Smith has granted Steiner the long overdue biography he richly
deserves.”-Nicholas Meyer, Author and Filmmaker

“The world owes Steven C. Smith an enormous debt of gratitude for this book. Here, finally, is the life of a man whose influence is felt every day in the unbroken line from Wagner, Mahler, and Strauss into the scores of everyone who attempts to compose orchestral music for the movies today. Years of
ignorance have been washed away to reveal this great composer’s story, and the history of Vienna in Hollywood-the very creation of the Hollywood Sound itself-will never be the same. Smith tells this extraordinary story to the world-and for the first time.” -John Mauceri, Founding Director, Hollywood
Bowl Orchestra, and author of
For the Love of Music-A Conductor’s Guide to the Art of Listening

“Smith brilliantly captures in rich and colorful detail the life and work of composer Max Steiner, whose contributions to the film industry were nothing short of extraordinary. Steiner’s music set the template for all film composers who followed. Whenever I see
King Kong in which my mother Fay Wray
starred, it’s the music that stirs in me feelings of terror and tenderness and which were integral to the film becoming a classic. Now finally, we have the story of the genius behind that music.” -Victoria Riskin, author, Fay Wray and Robert Riskin: A Hollywood Memoir, and Former President, Writers
Guild of America West

“Steven Smith has mined the vast source material and unearthed an array of evocative period photos, weaving these core elements into a definitive account of Hollywood’s most prolific and widely celebrated film composer. This marvelous chronicle of Max Steiner’s life, from his Viennese origins to his
spect