Bob Mitchell (rear) posed for a photo in 1938 with Judy Garland and the his choir, known as the Mitchell Singing Boys, which he oversaw for 66 years. He still played organ in 2002 (below).
(Silent Movie Theater)
Bob Mitchell, 96; organist who played in silent films
Bob Mitchell (rear) posed for a photo in 1938 with Judy Garland and the his choir, known as the Mitchell Singing Boys, which he oversaw for 66 years. He still played organ in 2002 (below).
(Silent Movie Theater)
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, died Saturday of congestive heart failure at Hancock Park Rehabilitation Center in Los Angeles, said Vincent Morton, his caregiver. He was 96.
When the Los Angeles Dodgers opened at their new stadium in Chavez Ravine in 1962, so did Mr. 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, 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, Mr. 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 such films 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,’’ Mr. Mitchell’s first silent-movie career ended. He was 16 years old.
“My father said, ‘I see they are going to have sound,’ ’’ in the movies, Mr. Mitchell told CBS News in 2005. “And I said, ‘Oh, that will never catch on.’ But, of course, it ended the organist right away.’’
After being hired in 1934 as the organist at St. Brendan’s Catholic Church in Los Angeles, Mr. Mitchell organized a boys choir that he oversaw for 66 years.
In the early days, the choir sang at Catholic Masses broadcast on the radio. The singers were cast in their first film, 1936’s “That Girl From Paris,’’ after the casting director heard one such performance.
The group, also known as the Mitchell Singing Boys, sang “Ave Maria’’ with Bing Crosby in the 1944 film “Going My Way’’ and were conducted by Cary Grant in 1947’s “The Bishop’s Wife.’’ Mr. Mitchell appeared with the ensemble in “Blondie in Society,’’ released in 1941.
The choir was also the subject of a 1941 short film, “Forty Boys and a Song,’’ that was nominated for an Academy Award.
Because some choir members were poor, Mr. Mitchell poured most of the money he earned back into the endeavor, CBS reported in 2005.
He set up a private school, paid for braces, and sometimes even college.
Over the decades, more than 600 boys, from about age 8 to 16, passed through the choir.
Alumni include members of the Lettermen, the Modernaires, and the Sandpipers, said Morton, a 1946 choir member who returned 10 years ago to care for Mr. Mitchell.
Robert Bostwick Mitchell was born Oct. 12, 1912, to Robert Mitchell and the former Florence Bostwick in Los Angeles. His father was mayor of Sierra Madre from 1918 to 1924, and his mother was a schoolteacher and musician.
At 4, Mr. Mitchell started taking piano lessons, and by 10 he was studying the organ.
He attended the New York College of Music but returned to Los Angeles in 1934 because his father was ill. He eventually graduated from what is now California State University at Los Angeles, and Trinity College London, Morton said.
During World War II, Mr. Mitchell served in the Navy and played keyboards for the Armed Forces Radio Orchestra under the direction of Meredith Willson, who would write “The Music Man.’’
Mr. Mitchell once said that the four years he spent as the organist for the Dodgers brought him the most fame. He also was the organist for the then Los Angeles Angels when they used Dodger Stadium from 1962 to 1965.
Although Mr. Mitchell’s career as a movie-house organist was revived in 1992, it came to a dramatic halt five years later when Larry Austin, proprietor of the Silent Movie Theatre, was gunned down in 1997 in the theater’s lobby. He was the target of a hired killing.
When Lustman reopened the theater in 1999, he rehired Mr. Mitchell.
Mr. Mitchell leaves several cousins.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
