Robert Hood Bowers

Robert Hood Bowers (May 24, 1877 – December 29, 1941) was an American composer, conductor, and musical director whose work spanned Broadway musicals, silent film scores, and radio broadcasting. Born in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, he was the eldest child of Ellen Graham Heyser and Oliver C. Bowers, a Franklin County district attorney who was the Democratic Party nominee for Pennsylvania's 17th congressional district in the 1904 elections.

Bowers began his formal education at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, graduating in 1896. He subsequently took a position as head of the musical department at Cheltenham Military Academy while simultaneously pursuing advanced musical studies, first under Constantin von Sternberg and later under Frederick Grant Gleason at the Conservatory of Chicago, where he was awarded the gold medal in 1902. On September 16, 1905, he married Virginia Belving. The couple had one son, also named Robert Hood Bowers, born in 1906, who went on to become a Professor of English at the University of Florida.

His professional conducting career included a five-year tenure working under Victor Herbert, as well as engagements with radio stations WMCA, WEAF, and WOR and work for the Columbia Phonograph Company. He composed songs, school music, operettas, and stage musicals throughout this period, and also created dances in an oriental style for modern dance pioneer Ruth St. Denis. Additional early stage work included comic operas produced by Jesse Louis Lasky, among them The Antique Girl, which Bowers co-created with Cecil B. DeMille and William LeBaron, and The Beauties, a 1914 Lasky production with a book by LeBaron.

Among his Broadway and stage credits, Bowers contributed music to productions spanning several decades. Early works included Rubes and Roses in 1903, The Maid and the Mummy in 1904, and The Paraders by 1905. The Hoyden in 1907 and The Vanderbilt Cup in 1906 both featured Elsie Janis as a singer. The Silver Star, produced in 1909 and danced by Adeline Genée, was followed by The Wife Tamers in 1910 and A Certain Party in 1911, the latter written by Edward W. Townsend and Frank O'Malley. That same year he contributed to The Red Rose and The Scarecrow. The Redheads followed in 1913, and California in 1912 was co-directed by Cecil B. DeMille. His 1919 credits included A Lonely Romeo, East is West, and a contribution to the Ziegfeld Follies. Later stage work encompassed East of Suez in 1922, Old English in 1924, Oh, Ernest! — a musical adaptation of The Importance of Being Earnest — in 1927, and Listen In in 1929. He also contributed to Miss 1917 and the production Hell.

Bowers composed scores for silent films as well, most notably A Daughter of the Gods in 1916 and Aloma of the South Seas in 1926. A Daughter of the Gods held the distinction of being the most expensive film produced up to that time, and Bowers created its score specifically for the picture, a practice that was uncommon in the era. The score was cited in advertisements for the film and was described in 1921 as the most memorable film score to that point, characterized as a high point of motion picture music.

In the final years of his life, Bowers served as head of the musical department at the School of Radio Technique at Rockefeller Center, a position he held for five years before his death. He died in New York on December 29, 1941.