Steven C. Smith - Music by Max Steiner: The Epic Life of Hollywoods Most Influential Composer

Oxford Cultural Biographies

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Gary Giddins

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Cathy Curtis

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Will Friedwald

Music by Max Steiner: The Epic Life of Hollywoods Most Influential Composer

Steven C. Smith

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Steven C. Smith 2020

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Smith, Steven C., author.

Title: Music by Max Steiner : the epic life of Hollywoods

most influential composer / Steven C Smith.

Description: New York City : Oxford University Press, 2020. |

Series: Cultural biographies | Includes bibliographical references and index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2019058681 (print) | LCCN 2019058682 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780190623272 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190623289 (pdf) |

ISBN 9780190623296 (epub) | ISBN 9780190623302

Subjects: LCSH: Steiner, Max, 18881971. | Film composersUnited StatesBiography.

Classification: LCC ML410.S8163 S65 2020 (print) | LCC ML410.S8163 (ebook) |

DDC 781.5/42092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019058681

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019058682

For James V. DArc and John W. Morgan,

who preserved the scores, the letters, and the stories,

and made this book possible

biography is a kind of one-sided marriage in which a writer lives with a subject for years, trying to bring him or her to life, while the subject, usually long deceased, is by turns inspiring, infuriating, frustrating, helpful, honest, mendacious, indifferent, and, perhaps most often, maddeningly elusive. The marriage may be self-imposedan undertaking of devotion, abhorrence, even of commercial practicalityor arranged by a third party. But a crucial consideration is invariably the suitability of the match. Music by Max Steiner is an ideal biographical marriage.

In 1991, Steven C. Smith published his first book, the prizewinning A Heart at Fires Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann. It was not only the finest biography ever written about a film composer, admittedly not a high bar to clear, but also a dramatic exposition of the way film scoring really works. Smith showed how film composers, once regarded as musical hacks, could achieve enduring greatness in a profession that consists largely of composing fastidiously timed cues, frequently no longer than seconds in duration. When I approached him with the idea of embarking, after twenty-five years, on another biography, I figured it might be a long shot. Smith has written extensively about film and film music but is best known as the producer, writer, and director of two hundred or so documentary films for network and cable television stations, as well as bonus short subjects for every kind of home video media.

Happily, he leaped at the challenge of writing a life of Steiner, the man who, more than anyone else, advanced the paradoxical art of movie musicmusic that must not call attention to itself at the expense of the story, even as it rivets the filmgoers mind and heart. As an essential collaborator on some of the most durable pictures ever made, Steiner lives on in King Kong, The Gay Divorcee, The Informer, Dark Victory, The Charge of the Light Brigade, Jezebel, Gone with the Wind, The Letter, Casablanca, Now, Voyager, The Big Sleep, Key Largo, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, White Heat, and The Caine Mutiny, among hundreds of other films and television shows. Few composers are more widely heard and less recognized by the general public. Twenty-four of Steiners scores have been nominated for Academy Awards, and his Taras Theme remains among the most familiar of melodies. He never created a Broadway hit or a concert hall staple, and not for want of trying, but in 1960, he had the number one song in the country (charting 21 weeks), when Percy Faith recorded his Theme from A Summer Place.

In Smiths telling, Max Steiner, about whom little is generally known, comes alive as a splendid character in his own right, the wizard behind the curtain who turns out to be a genuine wizard. Unlike most great cultural figures, his career threatens to be a long apprenticeship without a payoff. The bright child of a farsighted but often hapless Viennese showman, Max enjoys a few triumphs as a prodigy, before making his way through European capitals and New York, exhibiting undeniable gifts, experiencing champagne coups and utter insolvency, rising and falling with flukes of luck, indulging in serial marriages and other impulses, working closely with artists already destined for immortality. Yet as he commences his 41st year, he is little more than a footnote, a mention-in-passing.

Then, after an uproarious Broadway disaster called Rainbow, Max conducts a couple of Broadway hits that lead to an invitation from RKO in Hollywood to work in the new business of talking pictures. It is December 1929. Music had been vital to silent pictures, producing several hit songs, but audiences could see that it was performed nonstop by a pianist or ensemble in the theater to enhance the mood of the story. Talkies were different: it was one thing to show characters singing and dancing, but would audiences accept invisible offscreen music popping up out of nowhere? Mel Brooks satirized that conundrum in Blazing Saddles, as his two western heroes ride across the plain, accompanied by radiant orchestral riffs played, as we eventually see, by the orchestra of Count Basie, who waves them on as they pass.

Steiner soon overcame objections as he revealed himself to be a visionary composer, arranger, and conductor who wrote memorable themes to play behind the credits, and increasingly nuanced musical cues that intensified the onscreen drama and comedy, suspense and horror, romance and sex. Smith takes us deeper into the process, demonstrating how Steiners music made audible the psychology of characters, portended bombshells, and heightened climaxes. He shows how Steiner developed his art from broad accompaniments to the kind of subtleties derived from studying speech cadences and vocal ranges of actors in order to find just the right musical timbre and resonance to complement them. His music managed to be at once unobtrusive and indispensable and has thus survived the decades. Beyond establishing him as one of the undisputed titans of film composing, it has found an independent life on recordings and in concert halls, where excerpts from his scores are performed internationally to much acclaim. Steven C. Smith tells a remarkable story that will change forever the way you watch and hear movies.