Maximilian Raoul Steiner was an Austrian composer and conductor who emigrated to America and became one of Hollywood's greatest musical composers.
Steiner was a child prodigy who conducted his first operetta when he was twelve and became a full-time professional, proficient at composing, arranging, and conducting, by the time he was fifteen. Threatened with internment in England during World War I, he fled to Broadway; and in 1929 he moved to Hollywood, where he became one of the first composers to write music scores for films. He is often referred to as "the father of film music", as Steiner played a major part in creating the tradition of writing music for films, along with composers Dimitri Tiomkin, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Waxman, Alfred Newman, Bernard Herrmann, and Miklós Rózsa.
Steiner composed over 300 film scores with RKO Pictures and Warner Bros., and was nominated for 24 Academy Awards, winning three: The Informer; Now, Voyager; and Since You Went Away. Besides his Oscar-winning scores, some of Steiner's popular works include King Kong, Little Women, Jezebel, and Casablanca, though he did not compose its love theme, "As Time Goes By".