Max Steiner

Max Steiner (born Maximilian Raoul Steiner May 10, 1888 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary; died December 28, 1971 in Hollywood) wrote dozens of Hollywood’s most memorable music. He is sometimes credited as the father of film scores thanks to the 1933 King Kong, at a time when studios generally used generic or classical pieces, such as Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake themes, for their main themes. Steiner composed the scores for such Warner Bros. classics as Dark Victory (1939), Now Voyager (1942), Casablanca (1942), Mildred Pierce (1945), The Big Sleep (1946), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), The Searchers (1956), and he was lent out to David Selznick for Gone With the Wind (1939). His sole Golden Globe nomination was for Life With Father (1947). Steiner’s theme for A Summer Place (1959) was one of his biggest hits: Percy Faith’s cover version was No. 1 on Billboard’s charts for nine weeks.