The name Max Steiner may not be familiar to the general public, but the music he created is recognizable to millions of fans worldwide. Steiner was a pioneering film composer who invented techniques that are still used today to score a motion picture. Through the course of his career, one can see the evolution of the motion picture industry, from the silent era to the widescreen spectacles of the 1950s. The story of Max Steiner is also the story of Hollywood itself.
He was responsible for the music behind some of the most popular movies from Hollywood’s Golden Age: King Kong (1933), Gone with the Wind (1939), Casablanca (1942), Now, Voyager (1942), The Searchers (1956), and countless others. Even the most casual moviegoer has heard the melodies of “Tara’s Theme” or the “Theme to A Summer Place.” And anyone who has ever watched a Warner Bros.
In addition to the trials he faced professionally as an artist, Max Steiner’s personal life was often chaotic and sometimes tragic. Financial mismanagement, four marriages, and a troubled son were the realities he faced when he wasn’t conducting on the studio recording stage. Now, for the first time, that story is brilliantly told in a new biography, Music By Max Steiner: The Epic Life of Hollywood’s Most Influential Composer (2020), by Steven C.
Steven C. Smith is a four-time Emmy-nominated journalist and producer of more than 200 documentaries about music and cinema. A supervising producer of the series A&E Biography, he has worked with George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford, James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow. He is also the author of A Heart at Fire’s Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann (1991).
Gone With The Wind | Soundtrack Suite (Max Steiner)
Early Life and Influences
Maximilian Raoul Walter Steiner was born in Vienna on 10 May 1888, at a time when the Strauss family was still alive and well, but the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the end of its carefree society were already in sight. The Steiner family was more than well off: Maximilian Steiner, Max's grandfather, had directed the famous “Theater an der Wien” and produced the first operettas by Franz von Suppé and Johann Strauss Jr.
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His father, Gabor, controlled five major theatres and an amusement park (for the record: it was he who built the Ferris wheel in the Prater). Marie Hollmann, his mother, had inherited three of Vienna's most fashionable restaurants. The young Maximilian, an only child, had the chance to grow up in a very musical environment (his godfather had been Richard Strauss), and to receive a first-class education.
At the age of 15, he entered the Imperial Academy of Music to study with the likes of Robert Fuchs, Herrmann Graedener, Gustav Mahler* and Felix Weingartner. A child prodigy, like his contemporary Erich Wolfgang Korngold, he was a marvel to his teachers, completing a four-year course in one year. Later, Steiner would recall with irony: "Mahler predicted that I would become one of the greatest composers of all time. He didn't know that I would end up at Warner Bros."
From this time onwards, Steiner embarked on a career in operetta and musical revue. At the age of 16, he wrote an operetta called “The Beautiful Greek Girl”, which, produced by one of his father's competitors, was one of the hits of the season. As a conductor, Max Steiner travelled to Berlin, Moscow and Johannesburg. In 1906, after his father's bankruptcy, he decided to settle in London where he soon made a name for himself in the musical theatre world.
When war broke out, the Austrian Steiner was forced to leave the country. He decided to go to the United States, where he arrived in December 1914 in the port of New York, “with thirty-two dollars in my pocket.” With Broadway a long way from London, Steiner had to start afresh. He accompanied vaudeville performers on the piano and took a job as a copyist at Harms Music Publishing. Before long, he was hired as an orchestrator for musicals.
Over the next few years, Steiner worked as an arranger, orchestrator and conductor with the great names of the American musical, including Victor Herbert, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Vincent Youmans, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and Florenz Ziegfeld.
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When, on 6 October 1927, an enthusiastic audience saw Al Jolson conversing on screen with his “Mammy” and singing a few songs from the popular repertoire, it was also the death knell for silent films. Hollywood panicked: how would the new audience expectations be met? THE JAZZ SINGER and its near sequel THE SINGING FOOL (1928) had set the direction. The new synchronization procedures seemed to benefit mainly musical revues that were largely adapted from Broadway.
With audiences eagerly demanding new 'talkies', Hollywood producers, short on time but also fearful of additional risks, decided to turn to the vast musical heritage of ‘Tin Pan Alley’. Determined not to be left behind in the hunt for audiences, RKO, one of the major companies of the day, acquired the rights to Harry Tierney's ‘Rio Rita’. The composer recommended Max Steiner, who had already orchestrated and conducted the original version, for the musical direction.
William Le Baron, the head of production at RKO, was quick to get Steiner to sign a contract. Steiner accepted, and in December 1929 he arrived in Hollywood, probably unaware that this decision would change his entire life.
Breaking into Hollywood
By the end of 1930, audiences were beginning to grow weary of these filmed musical revues, which ended up looking very similar and often lacking any real narrative. RKO decided to reduce its music department and put Steiner in charge of the day-to-day business. This meant, in practice, only recording overtures and incidental music for dramatic films, based on pre-existing material. This policy was no different from that of other studios.
There were several reasons why music was banned from talking pictures at this time. After 1927, there seems to have been a transitional period, when the soundtrack of some films consisted largely of uninterrupted music. This might give way to one or two dialogue scenes (often added after the fact), earning the film its 'talking picture' label. The musical practice was directly oriented to that of silent films, i.e. compilation and naive musical equivalence prevailed over original composition and the search for specific sound worlds.
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When, following LIGHTS OF NEW YORK (1928), and in parallel with the first wave of musicals, the fashion for ‘all-talkies’ developed, i.e. 100% talking films in which one dialogue scene followed another, music was almost completely abandoned. Once a substitute for a realistic soundtrack, it was thought to be superfluous in the age of the talking picture, which seemed to satisfy the audience's need for naturalism. It was allowed in the credits and chase scenes, but was banned from dialogue scenes.
The mixing of two sound levels seemed unacceptable. "Where would the music come from?" was the usual question from the producers. The only exception was music that was explicitly or implicitly part of the reality of the film, i.e. played by an orchestra, a phonograph, a barrel organ, etc. It should also be remembered that for the first talking films, sound recording was greatly hampered by the fact that the image and the sound (dialogue, noise, music) were recorded at the same time.
In the best of cases, this absence of music benefited the film. But much more often, the mere use of realistic sounds leaves the impression, nowadays at least, of a lack in the cinematographic work, all the more so as the reality of the film is far from the reality of the spectator. Thus, the viewer often cannot identify with the story and is led to criticise the artificial, ‘studio’ atmosphere and the 'incoherent' editing of the film. This was particularly true of the melodramatic and fantasy films that were beginning to flourish in these times of economic depression.
In Hollywood, it was Max Steiner who first discovered the immense psychological potential of music. Or should I say ‘rediscovered’, for music has always been used to overcome the viewer's psychic resistance to making a fabricated reality his own. The habit of accompanying dialogues with music was already characteristic of the romantic and melodramatic theatre of the 19th century. Moreover, the practice of accompanying silent films with music was too recent to have been completely forgotten. In the 1930s, a large number of music directors and composers were veterans of silent films.
Key Contributions to Film Music
The psychological impact of music in film was demonstrated by Gregory LaCava's SYMPHONY OF SIX MILLION (1932), about the emotional problems of a Jewish doctor in New York. After editing, producer David O. Selznick felt that his film was missing something and asked Steiner to write music - on an experimental basis - for a scene in which the doctor's father dies after undergoing surgery. RKO executives were delighted with the new dimension their product was taking on and asked Steiner to complete his work on the entire film.
The score of SYMPHONY OF SIX MILLION may seem rather crude and lacking in subtlety today, but it was a great advance in 1932. While in style and form of its themes it is more akin to silent film music, the judicious placement of the music, which was no longer in continuous use, indicated a new approach. The moral the producers drew from this example was that the composer is a kind of doctor who comes to the patient after all other attempts to save him have failed; with his briefcase full of melodies, he can perform any miracle he wants. "You must save our film” was a phrase that composers would hear more and more often.
Two other films from 1932 allowed Steiner to continue his development; BIRD OF PARADISE, a love story between an American sailor and a Polynesian girl, and THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME. Both films contain almost 100% music, obviously to overcome the gap between the viewer's reality and the ‘reality’ created by the film. Indeed, of those who bought a ticket to immerse themselves in a darkened room and forget the daily grind, who could claim to have ever seen a Polynesian archipelago up close or been chased by a mad count on a desert island, which, respectively, was the point of these films.
The result is certainly striking if one compares THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME to a film like ISLAND OF LOST SOULS, made in the same year, which, despite its artistic qualities, seems much more artificial and ‘implausible’, most likely due to the lack of a musical score. Steiner wrote restless music for the hunting scenes, foreshadowing in places the music he would write the following year for KING KONG.
KING KONG (1933) is arguably the first masterpiece of American film music and also did much to put the composer's name on the map in Europe. Steiner even received an offer to teach his film music technique in Moscow. Here, too, the studio (RKO) initially thought they could do without music; President Kahane, believing that too much had already been spent on the silly story of a giant ape falling in love with a white girl, asked Steiner not to add to the production costs and to use pre-existing music from the studio archives.
Merian C. Cooper, the film's producer, also felt the weaknesses of the story and the frame-by-frame animation, but came to the opposite conclusion: he asked Steiner to do his best and even offered to pay all the extra costs. The composer did not hesitate to hire a 46-piece orchestra (RKO's regular orchestra consisted of only 10), adding $50,000 to the budget. The result was an incredibly modern and daring film score for its time; the wild rhythm and frequent use of dissonance reminded one more of Stravinsky than of Tchaikovsky.
Max Steiner's score was based on the use of short ‘leitmotifs’ as used by Richard Wagner in his operas, whose function was to unify the performance and to establish relationships between characters, situations or ideas that were not otherwise obvious. An essential characteristic of these motifs is their brevity, which contrasts with longer and generally less flexible themes. The ‘leitmotifs’ of KING KONG fit this definition well; for example, Kong's motif, three descending chromatic notes, can be adapted to any situation and can be accelerated, slowed down, reversed or combined with other motifs.
Steiner has often been criticised for the excessive use of these ‘leitmotifs’, which only reflect the superficial content of the images. However, as early as KING KONG, the composer used these motifs to indicate what was not immediately contained in the visual perception. By using a theme already clearly associated with a character or a situation, for a scene with apparently very different or difficult-to-decipher content, the composer can bring out the deeper meaning or even suggest a new idea.
In 1935, THE INFORMER was released, a film that made Max Steiner a household name in the United States and elsewhere. However, his score also provoked violent controversy, particularly from the French composer Maurice Jaubert, who severely condemned the technique of musical synchronism, taken to its extreme in THE INFORMER. This underlining of material effects (called ‘mickey-mousing’ because of its use in cartoons) was one of the most frequent criticisms aimed at Max Steiner.
While Stokowski found the composer's idea of translating Leslie Howard's limp in OF HUMAN BONDAGE (1934) into music brilliant, Aaron Copland called the effect ‘too obvious’ and ‘vulgar’. Whatever one may think, the musical approach of THE INFORMER was the result of a deliberate stylization, by the director and musician, of natural sounds, which were not used much in the film.
At the time, the result seemed convincing to many people, as evidenced by the numerous awards Steiner received: Oscar, medal of the King of the Belgians, Officer's medal of the French Academy, prize at the Venice Festival, etc. Max Steiner had become the most prominent composer in Hollywood. “Ask Steiner”, “We absolutely must have Steiner” were exclamations that could be heard more and more often in the executive offices of the big studios.
Two years later, Frank Capra, directing LOST HORIZON at Columbia, decided to hire Steiner to supervise and conduct the music composed by the “novice” Dimitri Tiomkin. In 1936 Steiner left RKO to join David O. Selznick, who had just formed an independent production company to make “quality” work, as opposed to the mass production of the major studios. Selznick was a great admirer of the composer, although his musical taste was somewhat simplistic, and the two men often had differences of opinion.
Steiner was to stay with Selznick for only a year, composing the music for LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY (1936), THE GARDEN OF ALLAH (1936) and A STAR IS BORN (1937). In the meantime, he was “rented” (such was the legal situation for artists under contract with a studio) to Warner Bros. for CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE (1936) and two other films.
In 1937, Steiner signed a long-term contract with the studio, which proved to be of great importance to both parties. The head of Warner's music department, Leo F. Forbstein, a mediocre musician but a shrewd technocrat, was determined to give his studio the best music department in Hollywood. To this end, he had already succeeded in getting Erich Wolfgang Korngold, a compatriot of Steiner's and one of the most famous musicians of the inter-war period, to sign a contract.
As the first internationally renowned composer to come to Hollywood, Korngold had managed to obtain absolutely exceptional conditions; for example, he had the right to choose the films he was interested in and the copyright remained in his possession instead of becoming the property of the studio, which was an absolutely unique case.
Around the two star composers Korngold and Steiner, there was a team of secondary composers (who sometimes had a speciality, such as cartoons), orchestrators (such as Hugo Friedhofer), songwriters (such as Harry Warren), lyricists, arrangers and various supervisors. Division of labour was the rule in the big studios and the music departments were no exception. "We were all wheels in a well-oiled machine", Hugo Friedhofer later recalled.
Thanks to means such as the ‘cue sheet’ (cutting a sequence into seconds and fractions of a second) and the ‘click track’ (a sort of metronome synchronised with the film), the technique of film music had reached perfection. The age of improvisation was definitely over. Steiner had played a decisive role in the development of these techniques, the aim of which was to achieve absolute synchronization.
The style of music was generally that of German Romanticism and Post-Romanticism; Wagner, Mahler and Rich...
"Theme From A Summer Place"
In addition to his symphonic film scores, Max Steiner wrote a song that became a number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100-the “Theme From A Summer Place.” The Grammy Award-winning song literally turned Steiner’s fortunes around. But beyond its commercial success, the song seemed to have struck a nostalgic chord with that generation of the early 1960s. Listening to it now, it certainly evokes a special time and place, and that comes through in your description of it.
Yes, “Theme from A Summer Place” is a good example of how Max kept listening to the music of his time, even if it wasn’t music he particularly enjoyed. “Theme from A Summer Place” holds a very important place in Steiner’s life, because for decades, Max had been trying to write a hit popular song. Then, in 1959, he scored A Summer Place; and for the young lovers Johnny and Molly, he wrote basically a pastiche of a simple rock’n’roll ballad, complete with repeating triplets a la “Blueberry Hill.”
Well, for once Max did not expect that theme to have a commercial life. But it was recorded by easy listening conductor Percy Faith, and it became what Billboard Magazine named the best-selling instrumental in the history of early rock’n’roll.
Legacy
The general public is probably most familiar with Steiner’s score for Gone with the Wind, notably his “Tara’s Theme.” Many of his film scores are available on cd or on YouTube now.
One of the joys of writing this book was discovering, or re-discovering, so many Steiner scores that are tuneful, moving, and often invigorating. Listening to the main title of Adventures of Don Juan starring Errol Flynn is like drinking three cups of strong coffee! And as I researched his life, I came to appreciate that Max was successful as a dramatic composer partly because he loved people, he loved life, he loved being in love.
As for scores I’d recommend, I suggest watching the following movies, then listening to the CDs of them: Johnny Belinda (one of Max’s favorites), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Key Largo, Of Human Bondage (1934 version), The Big Sleep, Mildred Pierce, Dark Victory, Jezebel, and The Letter.
I began studying piano and music theory when I was ten, and kept taking music classes through college. I had vague hopes of being a professional pianist, until I arrived at USC and realized that I was nowhere in the league of the musicians I met! Instead, I decided to try to write something about Bernard Herrmann, after learning that there was no book about his life.
Currently I’m enjoying the promotional phase of the Steiner book-and it’s very different from what I had imagined, due to Covid. Instead of showing up at book stores and libraries, I’ve been giving webinars about Max. And that’s actually been a bright spot in this miserable, tragic year of 2020: the webinars are being viewed by people around the world, and that’s enabled me to connect with individuals I never would have known otherwise.
Park Ridge Classic Film would like to express its gratitude to Steven Smith for this virtual interview.
| Year | Film Title | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1933 | King Kong | Pioneering score with extensive use of leitmotifs |
| 1939 | Gone with the Wind | Features the iconic "Tara's Theme" |
| 1942 | Casablanca | Classic film score |
| 1942 | Now, Voyager | Known for its romantic themes |
| 1956 | The Searchers | Western film score |