LOS ANGELES — When the 1926 silent picture classic "Ben-Hur" first opened at the Million Dollar Theater in Los Angeles, Gaylord Carter was one of the movie's most important players — but he was never seen on screen.
Instead, he was the man behind the theater's immense pipe organ.
Carter, who started accompanying silent films as a teenager and got his big break in the 1920s when comic film star Harold Lloyd hired him as his personal organist, died late last month at his home in suburban San Pedro, south of Los Angeles, friends said Monday. He was 95.
One of the last surviving movie theater organists of the silent era, Carter put countless chariot races, car chases and shootouts to music in a bygone craft that provided the closest thing to a movie soundtrack that existed in those days.