Biography
Leo F. Forbstein was an American film musical director and orchestra conductor. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, he began playing the violin at the age of four and later conducted orchestras in Missouri theatres, where he synchronised music with silent films. In the mid-1920s he moved to Hollywood to lead the orchestra at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre.
He joined Warner Bros. in the late 1920s as a director of the Vitaphone Orchestra and became the studio's general music director in 1931. Forbstein received screen credit for music on I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) and supervised scores for numerous Warner Bros. productions, including Casablanca (1943), The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). As head of the music department he shared the Academy Award for Best Original Score for Anthony Adverse (1936) and received further nominations for The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) and The Life of Emile Zola (1937).
