Virtual Sky Room Talk – Live Zoom Lecture
Program
The Music of Max Steiner – a live lecture
program hosted by documentarian and
author Steven C. Smith
Tuesday, March 30th at 7:00 PM EST - Zoom Invitation Link
provided in Email Order Confirmation
Public $10 | Members $7
The Music of
Max Steiner
Discover the previously untold story of 24-time
Oscar nominee Max Steiner, the pioneering composer whose scores for King Kong, Casablanca and over 200 other titles 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. Composers
today like Danny Elfman and John Williams use many of the same
techniques Steiner pioneered in scores for The
Searchers, Mildred Pierce, White Heat, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Gone with the Wind, Now,
Voyager, The Big Sleep and other
classics.
In this lively webinar, which includes
film clips and rare interviews with the composer, Steiner biographer Steven
C. Smith takes us through the story of the three-time Oscar winner, who was
born into a theatrical dynasty in Vienna… who teamed on Broadway with Gershwin,
Hammerstein and Ziegfeld… 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 gift for
melody – qualities that came to the fore in work with Bette Davis, Fred
Astaire & Ginger Rogers, Joan Crawford, Frank Capra, John
Ford, Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, and many more.
Steven C. Smith
is a four-time Emmy-nominated documentarian and author who specializes in
Hollywood history. He is the author of two 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. Music by Max Steiner was recently cited
by Variety and BBC Music Magazine as one of the best books of 2020.
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.
Author Steven C. Smith, Photo by Mark A. Vieira
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Max Steiner, c. 1936