German-Jewish composer active in Germany and in Hollywood, nominated for an Academy Award four times in the early 1940s.
Werner was a child prodigy, starting to sit at the piano at age 3, receiving violin lessons at age 5, and writing his own compositions at age 8. He became a member of the Philharmonic at age 12 and presented his first work for orchestra at age 16.
When the theater impresario Max Reinhardt opened the satirical cabaret Sound And Smoke he became, with Friedrich Hollaender, one of its two main pianists. Later the film producer Erich Pommer introduced him to the UFA studio, where he wrote music that accompanied over a dozen silents, including Faust by F.W. Murnau and Spies by Fritz Lang.
When sound came in, the songs he wrote for the then popular musicals became hits and are the work for which he is most well known today. Among these films is The Congress Dances, directed by Erik Charell with whom he would work again soon on Caravan in Hollywood, after he had to quickly leave his country, along with other artists, when the National Socialists took power in 1933.
The emigre German director Ernst Lubitsch got him to work on 5 of his classic American comedies. He also scored 2 films by another great comedy director, Preston Sturges.
After World War II, he returned to Germany where he wrote the music for a stage version of the classic film The Blue Angel in 1952, and was a member of the jury at the 10th Berlin International Film Festival. He died on 30 May 1961, aged 65, in Munich. His memoirs, recorded on tape during his last years, were published as an autobiography in Germany in 2001.
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