
Died at 138
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Maximilian Raoul "Max" Steiner (May 10, 1888 – December 28, 1971) was an Austrian-born American composer of music for theatre and films. He was a child prodigy who conducted his first operetta when he was twelve and became a full-time professional, either composing, arranging or conducting, when he was fifteen. Steiner composed over 300 film scores with RKO and Warner Brothers, and was nominated for 24 Academy Awards, winning three: The Informer (1935), Now, Voyager (1942), and Since You Went Away (1944). Besides his Oscar-winning scores, some of Steiner's popular works include King Kong (1933), Little Women (1933), Jezebel (1938), Casablanca (1942), The Searchers (1956), A Summer Place (1959), and the film score for which he is possibly best known, Gone with the Wind (1939). He was also the first recipient of the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, which he won for his score to Life with Father. Steiner was a frequent collaborator with some of the most famous film directors in history, including Michael Curtiz, John Ford, Howard Hawks, William Dieterle, William Wyler, Raoul Walsh, John Huston, Irving Pichel, King Vidor, and Frank Capra.

In the jungles of the Congo River in Africa, the grandson of Dr. Frankenstein creates a giant gray-skinned, hairless, and humanoid-shaped monster made of various African megafauna such as elephants and crocodiles. At the same time, King Kong is revealed to have somehow survived his fall from the Empire State Building and secretly spirited back to Skull Island by an elderly Carl Denham. Originally meant to be a servant, Dr. Frankenstein is encouraged by a visiting Denham to promote his creation and the two combine their respective monsters into a large show together. The doctor assumes his creation, Prometheus, is docile thanks to a control device; however, Prometheus turns on his creator and kills him upon the show being brought to San Francisco. With Prometheus on a rampage, King Kong is turned loose to fend him off. The two creatures do battle across the city, where they both eventually fall off the top of the Golden Gate Bridge and into San Francisco Bay while still fighting each other, with neither one of them emerging from the water. Both of them are then believed to have died.[5]


