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.
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..
In Music by Max Steiner , the first full biography of Steiner, author Steven C.
Selznick, Bette Davis, Frank Sinatra, and Frank Capra.
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.
But he was also constantly in debt--the inevitable result of gambling, financial mismanagement, four marriages, and the actions of his emotionally troubled son.
Born into a legendary Austrian theatrical dynasty, he became one of Hollywood\'s top-paid composers.
And Steiner\'s private Life was a drama all its own.
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.
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
