Arthur Dulay

Arthur Dulay first played the piano in public when he was 6. He went on to study under Samuel Coleridge-Taylor at the Guildhall School of music in London and was a student alongside Thomas Beecham. He began a successful career as an accompanist of silent films at the age of 16, and played from a repertoire of over 7000 pieces at the Avenue Pavilion Cinema in Shaftesbury Avenue London, where he had his own orchestra and was musical director. On the arrival of talkies in the late 1920s he moved to BBC Radio, making over 2000 broadcasts until 1952 with his quintet and cameo orchestra. He then moved to the newly opened National Film Theatre in London as musical director, where he remained until his retirement, accompanying great silent films like Buster Keaton's The General (1926).