Biography

Robert Hood Bowers (24 May 1877 – 29 December 1941) was an American composer, conductor and musical director of operettas and stage musicals, and a conductor and musical director for radio. He composed the musical scores for some of the most popular silent movies, including Aloma of the South Seas and A Daughter of the Gods. Born and raised in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, Robert Hood Bowers was the eldest son of Ellen Graham Heyser and Oliver C. Bowers (a district attorney of Franklin County, and nominee for the Democratic Party for Pennsylvania's 17th congressional district for the 1904 elections). When Bowers was 14, he went to the Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, graduating in 1896. He started working as head of the Musical Department of Cheltenham Military Academy. At the same time, he continued his musical studies first with Constantin von Sternberg and later with Frederick Grant Gleason at the Conservatory of Chicago, where he won the gold medal in 1902. He married Virginia Belving on September 16, 1905. Their only son was also called Robert Hood Bowers (born in 1906, he became a Professor of English at the University of Florida.)

Working as a conductor for Victor Herbert for five years, and as a conductor at the radio stations WMCA, WEAF and WOR, as well as for the Columbia Phonograph Company, Robert Hood Bowers composed songs, school music, operettas and musicals. He also composed dances in an 'oriental' style for modern dance pioneer Ruth St. Denis and music for comic operas of Jesse Louis Lasky. He was employed at the School of Radio Technique at the Rockefeller Center, as the head of the musical department for five years before his death. He died in New York in 1941.