Max Steiner

Child prodigy and former student of Gustav Mahler who began working professionally as a conductor at the age of 16 and became Hollywood's most prolific film composer, allegedly scoring over 250 films. In the US from 1914, Steiner moved to Hollywood at the beginning of the sound era, working first as a musical director and then a composer, becoming a key innovator in the development of film scoring. His richly orchestrated scores provided the appropriate emotional resonance for films such as "King Kong" (1933), "Gone with the Wind" (1939), "Now Voyager," "Casablanca" (both 1942), "The Big Sleep" (1946) and "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1947). Steiner worked on nearly 20 Bette Davis films and was with RKO and Warner Bros. for most of his career.