Music by Max Steiner

January 13, 2020
In colorful prose and with finely detailed scenes, music journalist Smith (A Place for West Side Story’s Legacy) draws deeply on archives in this first full biography of composer Max Steiner (1888–1971), famous for his scores for Casablanca and Gone with the Wind. Smith traces Steiner’s life from his childhood in Vienna, where his father managed lavish theatrical productions, through his early days in Hollywood, and his work with stars such as Bette Davis and director John Huston, to his final decade, when he composed scores that brimmed over with joy and melody, including the theme for A Summer Place in 1959. From the beginning of his career, Steiner threw himself into his work and was so obsessed with his feelings for music that he often struggled to maintain lasting personal relationships. Smith vividly illustrates the chaotic atmosphere into which Steiner came to RKO in 1929 and the ways he worked with audio engineer Murray Spivack to introduce scores at a time when producers were often dubious about the potential of sound to transform movies. Smith adeptly details the process of making films and Steiner’s involvement in scoring them, such as when in 1933 he hired a team of orchestrators to maintain stylistic consistency in Melody Cruise. Filled with great detail of early Hollywood music, Smith’s biography serves as the definitive study of the composer.

March 1, 2020

Exhaustively combing archives and special collections in the United States and abroad, Smith (A Heart at Fire's Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann) paints a rich portrait of Max Steiner (1888-1971), composer of some of the greatest film scores of all time. The backstories of the music for Gone with the Wind, King Kong, Casablanca, and other films are as full of drama as Steiner's private life. Born into a theatrical family in imperial Austria, he enjoyed a long career that took him from 19th-century Vienna to 1920s Broadway to the Golden Age of Hollywood. One of the highest paid composers in Hollywood, Steiner was nevertheless plagued by debts, owing to a gambling habit and frequent marriages. Smith has a keen eye for detail and a genuine appreciation for his subject, deftly combining details of Steiner's personal life along with compelling accounts of his work with a roster of Hollywood notables and discussions of his composing methods. VERDICT This well-crafted biography will have film buffs applauding.--Carolyn M. Mulac, Chicago

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.