Chariton's Mortimer Wilson and The Thief of Bagdad

January 2022 brought with it the 90th anniversary of the death in New York City on Jan. 27, 1932, of Mortimer E. Wilson, then age 56 and Lucas County's most celebrated composer. Although neither celebrated nor widely remembered in his hometown today, prophets (and sometimes trailblazing classical composers) rarely are, the good book tells us.

That's Mortimer front and center, wearing glasses and looking directly into the camera, in the vintage photograph, taken about 1896 when he was director of the Chariton Military Band. At left is the image published with his obituary in The New York Times of Jan. 28, 1932. Here's the text of the obituary:

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Mortimer Wilson, American composer and teacher of musical composition, died yesterday afternoon at his home, 227 Riverside Drive, of complications in consequence of an attack of pneumonia that began a month ago. When apparently on the road to recovery he suffered a fatal relapse. He was in his fifty-sixth year. Besides his widow, who was Miss Hettie Lewis of Chariton, Iowa, at their marriage in 1904, he is survived by a son, Mortimer Jr., an artist. A funeral service will be held at the house at 1:30 o'clock tomorrow afternoon.

A native of Chariton, Iowa, Mr. Wilson went to Chicago for his musical education, studying at the conservatory and Musical College there. Among his teachers were Frederick Grant Gleason, Hans Stitt and Max Reger. From 1901 to 1908 he was director of the Department of Theory and Composition at the University of Nebraska; 1913-14, director of the Atlanta Conservatory; 1912-15, of the Atlanta Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1918 he was guest conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

Some of Mr. Wilson's music has been heard all over the world, through the aid of the motion picture, for he provided the music for several of Douglas Fairbanks's feature films: "The Thief of Bagdad," "Don Q," "Son of Zorro" and "The Black Pirate." His "1849" was played as the overture to "The Covered Wagon."

"From My Youth," a suite by Mr. Wilson, was performed by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1918, and six years later the same orchestra, under the direction of Willem van Hoogstraten, in the Lewisohn Stadium, for the first time placed on its program music composed for a motion picture, when it played an arrangement of his score for "The Thief of Bagdad." Several other symphony orchestras in leading American cities have presented works by Mr. Wilson.

In 1920 his "New Orleans," or Mardi Gras overture, won the prize of $500 offered by Hugo Riesenfeld for the best original American overture, receiving the unanimous verdict of the judges in a competition that included eighty compositions. One many occasions, Mr. Wilson has conducted the String Sinfonietta that he organized. The long list of his works includes pieces for the piano, organ, cello, violin and piano; string quartets; and many songs, notably his "Songs for Children" and "Echoes from Childhood."

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Mortimer, born in Chariton on Aug. 6, 1876, was a son of Hess John (1848-1939) and Mary Elizabeth Harper (1850-1918) Wilson, a most interesting couple. He had one brother, Wilfred (1875-1937), also a musician but less widely known than Mortimer. Wilfred spent his working life as a music teacher and conductor for the most part in Texas and Michigan.

Hess John, after his 1873 marriage in Appanoose County with family in tow, seems to have been in his earlier years something of a "music man." There is at least one suggestion out there that another Iowa composer, Meredith Willson, of The Music Man and a student in New York City of Mortimer Wilson, formed Prof. Harold Hill in part from Wilson family stories shared by his mentor.

Chariton was home base for the Wilsons from the mid-1870s until the mid-1890s. When the 1880 federal census was taken, Hess John was identified as a saloon keeper, perhaps his backup occupation. Mary Elizabeth advertised her services in the Chariton newspapers as a "fashionable hairdresser." There aren't that many references to the family in newspaper archives, but we do know that Hess John and his sons spent the 1894 season touring with the Sun Brothers' Overland Circus.

By 1900, Hess John and Mary Elizabeth had relocated to Kansas, where he was identified as a musician and her occupation was given as music teacher. They eventually settled down in Indiana.

In Chariton, Mortimer's musical talents caught the eye of Jessie Mallory Thayer --- daughter of Smith H. Mallory, Lucas County's most prominent citizen of the day,  and a talented musician in her own right. She began to mentor Mortimer; the Mallory family home, Ilion, became his home once his parents had moved on; and it seems  likely that Jessie underwrote the cost of his advanced musical education. That education included two years of study in Europe --- 1909-1910 in Vienna and 1910-1911 in Leipzig.

Jessie and her mother, Annie, moved to Orlando, Florida, during 1909 and she remained closely connected to Mortimer and his wife, Hettie, until her death in 1923, leaving Mortimer a substantial bequest in her will.

During the 1920s, Mortimer became something of a pioneer --- a classically trained composer creating for the movies --- when he became a friend and favorite of Douglas Fairbanks. 

Here's a rousing way to start a Tuesday morning --- an orchestral piece incorporating Mortimer's Thief of Bagdad themes.