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.

Steven C. Smith is an award-winning documentary producer, author, and speaker who specializes in Hollywood history and profiles of contemporary filmmakers. He is the author of two acclaimed biographies: Music by Max Steiner: The Epic Life of Hollywood’s Most Influential Composer (Oxford University Press), and A Heart at Fire's Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann (University of California Press). The latter received the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award, and was the main research source for the Academy Award-nominated documentary Music for the Movies: Bernard Herrmann.

Steven has produced and written over 200 documentaries for television and other media. They include The Sound of a City: Julie Andrews Returns to Salzburg; The Lure of the Desert: Martin Scorsese on Lawrence of Arabia; A Place for Us: West Side Story’s Legacy; and Thou Shalt Not: Sex, Sin and Censorship in Pre-Code Hollywood. Steven lives in Los Angeles.

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