Max Steiner

A photograph of his right hand, holding a pen and writing notes on a musical score, appears on one stamp of a sheet of 10 USA 37¢ commemorative postage stamps, issued 25 February 2003, celebrating American Filmmaking: Behind the Scenes. The stamp honors early film composers.

Pictured on one of six 33¢ USA commemorative postage stamps in the Legends of American Music series, honoring Hollywood Composers, issued 21 September 1999. Issued in panes of 20 stamps. Others honored in the set were Dimitri Tiomkin, Bernard Herrmann, Franz Waxman, Alfred Newman, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1995.

Was posthumously awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1559 Vine St. on December 30, 1975.

After his friend and fellow composer Victor Young died suddenly while working on Samuel Fuller's China Gate (1957), Steiner finished the score gratis. Official credit reads "Music by Victor Young, extended by his old friend Max Steiner.".

Scored ten films for David O. Selznick, winning a third Oscar for the last one, Since You Went Away (1944). Two months after the film's release, the song "I'll Be Home for Christmas" gained great popularity utilizing the same melody Steiner composed for the railway station farewell scene.

His son Ronald Steiner (2 March 1940) was a soldier in the US Army stationed in Honolulu, Hawaii, when he committed suicide on April 29, 1962.

In addition to his familiar theme music for Gone with the Wind (1939) and A Summer Place (1959), Steiner was also the composer of the well-known Warner Bros. Fanfare, originally written for Tovarich (1937) and used to introduce numerous Warner Brothers films ever since. For many years, composers at the studio, instead of writing the music out, would simply write "'Tovarich' Fanfare" at the beginning of their scores, and the musicians would know what they meant.

Awarded the King of Belgium Bronze Medal by the Cinema Exhibitors, Brussels, Belgium, in 1936; the American Exhibitors Laurel Award in 1948; the Golden Globe for Life with Father (1947); the Academy Award for Since You Went Away (1944); the Academy Award again for Now, Voyager (1942); the Academy Award, French government decoration, for The Informer (1935); the Italian Medal for So This Is Paris (1954); and the Statuette Award from the Cinema Exhibitors, Venice, Italy, for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).

Worked on 36 films in 1934 and 37 the next year. It is doubtful anyone will ever approach that record again.

Austrian composer Max Steiner achieved legendary status as the creator of hundreds of classic American film scores. He was born Maximilian Raoul Walter Steiner in Vienna, Austria, the son of Marie Mizzi (Hasiba) and Gabor Steiner, an impresario, and the grandson of actor and theater director and manager Maximilian Steiner. His family was Jewish. As a child, he was astonishingly musically gifted, composing complex works as a teenager and completing the course of study at Vienna's Hochschule fuer Musik und Darstellende Kunst in only one year, at the age of sixteen. He studied under Gustav Mahler and, before the age of twenty, made his living as a conductor and as composer of works for the theater, the concert hall, and vaudeville. After a brief sojourn in Britian, Steiner moved to the USA in the same wave as fellow film composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold and quickly became a sought-after orchestrator and conductor on Broadway, bringing the Western classical tradition in which he had been raised to mainstream audiences. He was soon snatched up by the film studios with the advent of sound and helped the fledgling talkies become musically sophisticated within a brief few years. He was one of the first to fully integrate the musical score with the images on-screen and to score individual scenes for their content and create leitmotifs for individual characters, as opposed to simply providing vaguely appropriate mood music, as evidenced in King Kong (1933), which set the standard for American film music for years to come.

Acclaimed for his first complete movie feature score for Cimarron (1931), although he received no screen credit for it.

From the 1930s to the 1960s, he was one of the most respected, innovative, and brilliant composers of American film music, creating a truly staggering number of exceptional scores for films of all types. He was nominated for Academy Awards for his scores eighteen times and won three times.

Was extremely prodigious, composing 111 scores for RKO alone during his tenure as musical director between 1929-35. From 1936-65 he worked under contract at Warner Brothers, except for brief periods on loan to David O. Selznick.

Arrived in New York in 1914 after being hired by Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. to conduct his "Ziegfeld Follies.".

Worked in England from 1904-4, where he was spotted by Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. and persuaded to move to the U.S..