Bob Mitchell Silent-Movie Organist Was House Musician for Dodgers

Bob Mitchell improvised soundtracks for silent movies, starting when he was 12 years old at Strand Theater in Pasadena. The longtime director of the Robert Mitchell Boys Choir played at the Silent Movie Theatre in Los Angeles.
Bob Mitchell, an organist who was the first such house musician at Dodger Stadium and the last surviving working accompanist from the silent-film era, has died. He was 96.
Mitchell died Saturday from congestive heart failure at Hancock Park Rehabilitation Center in Los Angeles, said his caregiver, Vincent Morton.

When the Dodgers debuted in 1962 at their stadium in Chavez Ravine, so did Mitchell -- on a Wurlitzer double-keyboard organ with a 25-note pedal board. At the time, he was best known as founder and director of a group often called the Robert Mitchell Boys Choir, which would appear in more than 100 movies.
His career as choir director was framed by two stints as a silent-movie organist, played out more than 60 years apart. One of his last performances was in early June at the Silent Movie Theatre on Fairfax Avenue, where he was first featured in 1992.

He helped create “a true revival of cinema on the highest level," said Charlie Lustman, who owned the theater from 1999 to 2006. “That you could walk into a classic theater and see a classic movie accompanied by a man who had done it way back when. . . ."
On Christmas Day 1924, Mitchell was practicing carols on the organ at the Strand Theater in Pasadena when the lights went down and a movie about the Yukon went up. The 12-year-old kept playing, improvising a soundtrack. Soon he was accompanying matinee shows five times a week.

He played for films such as the romantic wartime drama “What Price Glory," the action-adventure “Beau Geste" and the Fritz Lang futuristic fantasy “Metropolis."
With the arrival of talkies and Al Jolson in the 1927 film “The Jazz Singer," Mitchell's first silent-movie career ended when he was 16.
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=38986