Lee Erwin(1908-2000)
- Composer
- Actor
Lee Erwin was a theatre organist and composer, and provided music for
seventy silent films, including all of Buster Keaton's films, Mary
Pickford's "My Best Girl", The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925). As a high school
student in Huntsville, Alabama, he substituted for the regular
organists in two local theatres. Studying under organist Andre Marchal
and composer Nadia Boulanger in Paris during 1930, he returned to
Cincinnati, Ohio two years later to be staff organist at WLW Radio.
From 1943 to 1966 he was an organist and arranger for CBS in New York,
playing "Moneybags Erwin" on the "Arthur Godfrey Show", resuming film
work a year later.