Götterdämmerung

The strands of Steiner’s life emphasized in earlier chapters—his yearning for commercial success, his growing debts, and his emotional neglect of his son—reach their fulcrum here in ways both triumphant and tragic. After an anxious year of unemployment, Steiner found a sympathetic partner in director Delmer Daves. Daves’s 1959 film of a racy bestseller, A Summer Place, inspired 71-year-old Max to write a pastiche of dreamy ’50s rock ballads. Steiner had no commercial expectations for the tune, but a recording of the theme rose to Number One on the charts, won a Grammy (beating Elvis and Sinatra), and became the best-selling instrumental of the rock ’n’ roll era. Almost simultaneously, Steiner won his decades-long battle with ASCAP, which agreed to collect royalties on film music. Max would soon receive millions. But in 1962, Steiner received shattering news from which he’d never fully recover: his 22-year-old son, Ronald, had committed suicide.