Of Hungarian ancestry, the son of film composer
George Steiner followed in his
father's footsteps. A child prodigy, he played the piano by the age of
six and cello at thirteen. Growing up in Manhattan, Fred immersed
himself in his father's vast collection of records, which included a
great deal of orchestral and chamber music. Highly motivated to study
composition and playing two instruments, he soon earned himself a
scholarship. By the age of twenty, he graduated with a degree from the
Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio, and, in later years, added a PhD
from USC to his resume for writing a dissertation on the legendary film
composer Alfred Newman. Straight out of
college, Fred began writing and arranging scores for several New
York-based radio broadcasts, including "Suspense" and "CBS Radio
Workshop". He also scored wartime propaganda shorts, selling war bonds.
Another popular show, for which he composed and conducted, was "This Is
Your FBI", a semi-documentary production based on actual case files and
often narrated by movie personalities, like
Richard Widmark,
Jack Lemmon and
Jeff Chandler.
From 1947, Steiner (who was not related to the legendary Max) spent
time in Hollywood, working as arranger, conductor and (often
uncredited) composer. His first solo motion picture effort and personal
favourite among his scores,
Der Sonne entgegen (1956), came
about via a recommendation from his good friend
Bernard Herrmann. Though he
later shared an Academy Award nomination for adaptation/orchestration
of Die Farbe Lila (1985), Fred
reserved his best work for the small screen. One of the most prolific
of television composers, he contributed to numerous episodes of popular
series, ranging across diverse genres, from
Rauchende Colts (1955) to
Ein Käfig voller Helden (1965); from
Unwahrscheinliche Geschichten (1959) to
Hawaii Fünf-Null (1968). He was
singularly adept at suiting his music to a particular dramatic
situation or conveying specific emotions to a certain scene, as, for
example, in his use of violins and harp in the Rachmaninoff-inspired
score for the "Twilight Zone" episode "The Passersby".
One of Steiner's most fondly remembered compositions is the jazzy "Park
Avenue Beat", which served as the theme for the long-running courtroom
drama series Perry Mason (1957),
conceived to represent a combination of 'sophistication and toughness'.
In stark contrast, he provided a more light-hearted musical approach to
his score of the animated cult favorite
Rocky und Bullwinkle (1959).
His affinity for animation can be traced back to his father, who wrote
music for many of the early classic cartoons, such as the "Betty Boop"
series and Terrytoons productions, almost always working from home.
Fred Steiner also made a lasting impact on fans of
Raumschiff Enterprise (1966), composing music
for several episodes, of which "The Corbomite Maneuver" and "Balance of
Terror" are often considered among the best of the original series. In
an interview (recorded in Santa Fe on June 25, 2003), he recalled that
Gene Roddenberry had made it clear to
him from the beginning, that he didn't want "poops and peeps music",
but "Captain Blood in space"!
Between 1958 and 1960, Steiner worked in Mexico, compiling and
archiving Latin American music for government-sponsored television
documentaries. He grew to admire the local traditional culture and was
in later years drawn back to spend his twilight years there. He also
continued his life-long interest in musicology, co-founding the Film
Music Society, lecturing in composition at USC and regularly
contributing to a number of musical publications (authoring analyses of
classic film scores, such as
King Kong und die weiße Frau (1933) and
Die Abenteuer des Robin Hood (1938)).
