Music By Max Steiner: The Epic Life Of Hollywood's Most Influential Composer, Smith - B+

      Steiner was born in 1888 into a famous Viennese family. His grandfather managed the 'Theater an der Wien' and produced operettas with Johann Strauss. His father, Gabor, conceived of and opened an amusement park, 'Venice in Vienna'. Gabor was ambitious, extremely hard working and creative. He opened Vienna's first moving picture theater. Max was encouraged to take up the piano by Strauss, and at nine composed his first song. He also met an extraordinary cast of talented people who performed for his father including Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, W.C. Fields and John Philip Sousa. Gabor was honored by the Emperor Franz Joseph for his contributions to the arts. Max graduated from Imperial Academy music school and began writing operettas in his teens. When Gabor went bankrupt in 1907, Max moved to London. His new career involved scoring music and traveling with shows and he even composed a ballet. He became musical director of the London Opera House. The outbreak of WWI cast him as an enemy alien and he immediately left for America. In New York, he made a great many friends and developed his skills as a composer, conductor and manager working for different producers on varied musical projects. He became an American citizen in 1921. He had the good fortune to collaborate with George Gershwin, Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein. In 1929 as Hollywood was switching to talkies and focusing on musicals, RKO signed 41 year old Max and he was off to Hollywood.

       Within a year he was Musical Director, but RKO was losing a great deal of money as the Depression wore on. David O. Selznick was put in charge to save the studio. Selznick believed in the role of music and authorized a film to be scored from beginning to end. 'Symphony For Six Million' was Hollywood's and Steiner's first film accompanied by, and enhanced by, music. Max had created a new art form; the techniques are followed to this day. With RKO facing bankruptcy as 5,000 movie theaters were shuttered in the early 30's, Selznick left for MGM, and Merian Cooper came to RKO  to produce one of the most important and successful movies of all time. 'King Kong' saved RKO and made Steiner famous. It was released in March 1933 and the music fit the film perfectly. The score is considered a masterpiece, the foundation of all that followed. Decades later, Cooper credited it with the movie's enduring success. Soon thereafter, with 'Flying Down To Rio', Steiner began his collaboration with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. In 1935, he received his first Oscar for the score of a John Ford film, 'The Informer'. A year later, he left RKO to join Selznick International Pictures.  Their first and very successful outing was 'Little Lord Fauntelroy'. Selznick paid Max well, but couldn't keep him busy, so he loaned him to Warner Bros. The score for 'Charge of the Light Brigade' was a success and Max  moved to Warner's full time. 'The Life of Emile Zola' won the Oscar for best picture and according to Jack Warner, Max's nominated score was the key. He scored 'Jezebel', the first of fifteen films for Bette Davis. Steiner worked constantly and often at an unimaginable pace. It was not unusual for him to score over a dozen films in a year. The beginning of 1939 saw him score 'Stagecoach' and 'Dodge City', while waiting for a highly anticipated phone call. Selznick had obtained the rights to and, in December of 1938 began filming, 'Gone With The Wind'. At the end of March, Selznick asked, Warner agreed, and Max went to work on what is considered one of, if not the greatest films ever made, and the most memorable music score of all time.

        The filming of GWTW was total chaos. Selznick used three different directors. Almost the entire cast was unhappy, particularly with the producer. Leslie Howard, Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable alternated their frustrations between the producer and director. For Max, the problem was time. Selznick did not provide enough time for Max to score a three hour film and constantly interfered with Steiner's work. Against a December 15th premier, Max announced in early November, he could not finish. Working frantically, the score was completed nine days prior to the 15th. Awards mattered to Max and he was crushed when the Oscar went to 'The Wizard of Oz'. He, de Havilland and Gable were Oscar losers amongst GWTW's eight wins. Notwithstanding his disappointment, the score brought him lasting fame. Max was pleased with his work on 'Sergeant York' which Warner's had set up to prepare America for war. Max's obsession with work and his disastrous lack of attention to his finances led to his third wife leaving him in 1941 as his personal life began a spiral downward that would continue for the rest of his life. Just before Pearl Harbor, he finished up a splendid job on 'They Died With Their Boots On'. He followed up with 'Stella Dallas', 'Arsenic And Old Lace' and won his second Oscar for 'Now, Voyager'.

         In the summer of 1942, he began his work on 'Casablanca'. 'Everyone Comes To Rick's' was a never- produced play that Hal Wallis acquired for Warner Brothers.  Wallis loved the song 'As Time Goes By', from a 1931 Broadway production, and insisted that Max utilize it.  Since the filming was almost over before Max started and the song was an integral part of the story, Max had no choice. He majestically incorporated 'A Time Goes By' and 'La Marseillaise' into the movie. The film and its score were, and continue to be eighty years later, beloved masterpieces, and the defining work of Max's career. He continued working constantly and won his third Oscar for 'Since You Went Away'.  His post-war successes included 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre', 'Key Largo' and 'Johnny Belinda'. In the early 50's, Max was over 60, struggling with an endless array of creditors, including the IRS, and completely failing the son, Ronnie, born to him and his third wife in 1940. As America turned to tv, movie attendance plummeted and all of the studios were suffering. Max's famous Warner Brothers' Orchestra was disbanded. He left Warner's in 1953 when his contract was not renewed. Columbia asked him to do 'The Caine Mutiny', which was his twelfth and final work on a Humphrey Bogart film. His last great piece of work was 'The Searchers', released in 1956. A few years later, he scored 'A Summer Place'. The theme from the movie became one of the most successful instrumentals in Billboard's history. At 71, Max Steiner had a hit single. He won a Grammy for Record of the Year. His rights in the song earned him $250,000 in a few months and solved a myriad of financial problems. He also prevailed in a twenty-year battle he led on behalf of score composers with ASCAP and soon money was pouring in from television's use of so many of his films. But, in 1962, his troubled and neglected son committed suicide. Max also was legally blind. He scored a few films in the decade and passed away at 83 in 1971. 

         I know nothing about music, but I've loved reading this book. It is extremely well-written and perfectly paced. Growing up in NYC, the three non-network tv stations ran a potpourri of material from quiz shows to cartoons to movies. There were dozens of film classics on every week.  I was fascinated by 'Kong' as a boy. The theme from GWTW is my favorite movie music and Casablanca is my all-time favorite film.  I believe that score music is a major American contribution to world culture, and reading about how it evolved in Steiner's time has been a pleasure.