Lee Erwin

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.