Music by Max Steiner: The Epic Life of Hollywood's Most Influential Composer

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Prologue
PART ONE The Little Prince
1 Elegant Revolutions
2 Heir Apparent
PART TWO The Wanderer
3 Come Over Here
4 Stairway to Paradise
5 roaring in the Twenties
PART THREE The Apprentice
6 Where Does the Music Come From?
7 Revolution
8 Startling, Unusual Sensation
9 Orchids in the Moonlight
10 Working Night and Day
PART FOUR Emperor
11 Monarch of Sound
12 Exodus
13 Battles Won and Lost
14 The Right Place to Be
15 Fighting for Steiner
16 The South is Dead
17 Breaking Point
18 Voyage into Fog
19 Yours, Herman Hupfeld
20 Sucker
21 Aur Revoir and Bonjour
22 Indian Summer
23 Falling Star
PART FIVE Twilight of the Gods
24 A Jewish Aloha
25 Gotterdammerung
26 Coda

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During a seven-decade career that spanned from 19th century Vienna to 1920s Broadway to the golden age of Hollywood, three-time Academy Award winner Max Steiner did more than any other composer to introduce and establish the language of film music. Indeed, revered contemporary film composers like John Williams and Danny Elfman use the same techniques that Steiner himself perfected in his iconic work for such classics as Casablanca, King Kong, Gone with the Wind, The Searchers, Now, Voyager, the Astaire-Rogers musicals, and over 200 other titles. And Steiner's private life was a drama all its own. Born into a legendary Austrian theatrical dynasty, he became one of Hollywood's top-paid composers. But he was also constantly in debt--the inevitable result of gambling, financial mismanagement, four marriages, and the actions of his emotionally troubled son. Throughout his chaotic life, Steiner was buoyed by an innate optimism, a quick wit, and an instinctive gift for melody, all of which would come to the fore as he met and worked with luminaries like Richard Strauss, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, the Warner Bros., David O. Selznick, Bette Davis, Frank Sinatra, and Frank Capra. In Music by Max Steiner, the first full biography of Steiner, author Steven C. Smith interweaves the dramatic incidents of Steiner's personal life with an accessible exploration of his composing methods and experiences, bringing to life the previously untold story of a musical pioneer and master dramatist who helped create a vital new art with some of the greatest film scores in cinema history.

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In colorful prose and with finely detailed scenes...Smith adeptly details the process of making films and Steiner's involvement in scoring them...Filled with great detail of early Hollywood music, Smith's biography serves as the definitive study of the composer

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

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