What was the Silent Movies’ most spectacular moment? The chariot race in “Ben-Hur”? The fall of Babylon in “Intolerance”? The parting of the Red Sea in “The Ten Commandments”?
What was the Silent Movies’ most spectacular moment? The chariot race in “Ben-Hur”? The fall of Babylon in “Intolerance”? The parting of the Red Sea in “The Ten Commandments”?
Those were admittedly gigantic, colossal and stupendous. But for many a moviegoer not even they surpassed that thrilling, razzle-dazzle moment when the house suddenly went dark, and out of the pit on a lift arose the great theatre organ console -- its varicolored lights ablaze and its multitudinous voices sounding out in mighty sonics that engulfed the orchestra, loges and balcony and resounded into the layer.
Having overwhelmed the audience with the brilliance of an all-too-brief virtuoso performance, that same organ and its player would then linger to accompany the feature picture. For a singularly important film, the production company might supply a precomposed score. More often, the renowned organ maestros of the day would create their own accompaniments. When possible, they saw the movie in advance. Otherwise, they improvised “cold” at the first screening. There was no mood they couldn’t enhance, and when special sound effects were called for, anything from a bird call to an auto’s backfiring could generally be supplied.
Unquestionably, as the talking picture era advanced, making obsolete the great cinema palaces and their mighty theatre organs, much was gained. But much too was lost--a glamour and opulence that patrons of today’s boxlike “art house” cinemas can hardly imagine. All the grandeur of the silent film era seems somehow epitomized in those incredible theatre organs.
All of which may account in part for the sellout success of the entertainments in which Lee Erwin has lately been a star attraction. In 1967, the New York chapter of the American Theatre Organ Society staged a gala screening of the rare Gloria Swanson silent “Queen Kelly” at Manhattan’s Beacon Theater. The Society commissioned Erwin to compose a new organ score for the film.
The evening, the film, Miss Swanson’s personal appearance, and Erwin’s score and performance met with dazzling success. Immediately, the New York ATOS commissioned Erwin to score the Rudolph Valentino film “The Eagle.” That evening was attended by New York Times critic Allen Hughes, who wrote: “Waves of magnificent sound rolled through the Academy of Music last night...Lee Erwin was the organist, and he was excellent. The nationwide theatre organ revival is resulting in the establishment of a concert circuit. If all goes well, the sound of the theatre organs may again be heard regularly throughout the land.”
Allen Hughes’ prediction proved correct, and Lee Erwin has found himself launched on a renewed career of composing silent film scores and performing them at festive, sold-out screenings from the East Coast to the West. For the celebrated maestro, it is a return to the great love of his youth. In the heyday of Jesse Crawford (Mr. and Mrs.), Gaylord Carter and Eddie Dunstedter, Lee was a promising boy pianist in Huntsville, Alabama, too young to make his mark in the nation’s cinema centers. Huntsville’s two movie houses recognized his talents, however, and allowed him to play for them during the evening, while the regular organist went out a bite of supper.
Later, studying on scholarship at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, Erwin played organ in the local theatres for $20 a week. He graduated in the late Twenties -- just in time to have a taste of the glory he’d always yearned for. The magnificent Loew’s Temple Theatre in Birmingham hired him as assistant organist on their 4/60 Moller. He remained at the Temple until 1930 when he went to Paris to study with Andre Marchal, Mile, Grandjany, Nadia Boulanger and Jean Verd. In 1932, he returned to the States to become chief organist for the RKO Albee in Cincinnati, performing in a featured solo spot between the talking picture and the stage show.
Lee Erwin’s greatest fame came, perhaps, from radio and television. His nightly, late-night “Moon River” program on Cincinnati station WLW and the NBC network remained a national airwave favorite for eleven years and established Erwin as the organ’s master of mood. In 1944, Erwin became staff organist, arranger and composer for CBS in New York, and it was in that city that his longtime association with Arthur Godfrey began. Again he served as arranger and composer as well as organist, on “Arthur Godfrey Time,” “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scout,” “Arthur Godfrey and His Friends” and “The Arthur Godfrey Show.”
Today Lee Erwin is on the staff of the music department of New York’s Lehman College, where he teaches electronic music composition. And now he has returned full circle to the activity which gives him his greatest sense of fulfillment: playing theatre organ before an audience in a theater, in his cross-country appearances with the greatest of the old silent movies.
In this, Lee Erwin’s first Angel album, he plays two popular themes from the era of the silents: “Diane” from “Seventh Heaven” and “Charmaine” from “What Price Glory?” All the other selections are excerpts from his own original scores, composed especially for the silents he accompanies in personal appearances. Erwin generally views each film and set to work on its accompaniment three months before its scheduled performance. Every score is a labor of love, and his genuine admiration for the artistry the films embody is reflected in his music’s unerring sensitivity to the style and flavor of the Silent Picture era, as well as to each individual film and its performers.
-- Rory Guy
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