"King Kong". "Gone with the Wind". "Casablanca". Perhaps the most influential trio in the history of cinema?

One man tied the three classics together: Max Steiner, an Austrian-born Jew. One of the first composers to score movies, he wrote the music for all three.

In fact, pretty much all of early film composers were Jewish: other than Steiner and previously-profiled Alfred Newman, there were Dimitri Tiomkin, Franz Waxman, Erich Korngold, Bernard Herrmann...

But Steiner rises above the rest. A three-time Oscar winner (strangely, for neither for the above), he has been called "the father of film music". Steiner came up with themes for individual characters and scenes, and with synchronizing music and narrative. So, pretty much every film score since owes something to Steiner.

Max Steiner. The most influential composer in the history of cinema.