Max Steiner: the creation of the Hollywood sound

Discover the previously untold story of the pioneering composer whose scores for Bogart, Bergman, Bette Davis and others paved the way for modern film music.

In a career spanning 19th-century Vienna to 1920s Broadway to the golden age of Hollywood, Max Steiner did more than any other composer to create the sound and style of film music. Today’s composers use many of the same techniques Steiner pioneered in his scores for Casablanca, King Kong, Gone with the Wind, Mildred Pierce, The Searchers, Now, Voyager, and over 200 other titles.

In this talk we’ll meet the three-time Oscar winner and 24-time nominee, who was born into a theatrical dynasty (family friends included Mahler and Johann Strauss)…who teamed on Broadway with Gershwin and Kern…and who revolutionized Hollywood, by writing the first, and often best, scores of the sound era.

His personal life was chaotic: a gambling addiction, four marriages, a father trapped in Nazi-controlled Austria. But through it all, Steiner was buoyed by a quick wit and a bountiful gift for melody--qualities that came to the fore in work with Irving Berlin, Bette Davis, Frank Sinatra, Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers, Vivien Leigh, and Cary Grant.