Hans J. Salter; Ex-Music Chief at Film Studio

Hans J. Salter, reigning music director, composer and conductor at Universal Studios through four decades, has died at his Studio City home.

A family spokeswoman said the prolific film scorer, who was nominated for four Academy Awards, was 98 when he died Saturday.

Salter presided over a musical mishmash of the prodigious Universal output, starting in 1939. His first feature credit was in 1940 for “The Invisible Man Returns.” He wrote music for films ranging from Deanna Durbin musicals to Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff horror films to historic melodramas.

He also scored or wrote music for most of the Basil Rathbone-Nigel Bruce “Sherlock Holmes” serial features and the Bud Abbott and Lou Costello knockabout comedies.

Salter’s last picture, “Beau Geste,” was a 1966 remake of the Foreign Legion classic.

In 1941, he received the first of his Academy Award nominations for film scoring on “It Started With Eve,” which featured Durbin and Charles Laughton. Two years later he was nominated for another Durbin musical, “The Amazing Mrs. Holiday,” and in 1944 for “Christmas Holiday,” again with Durbin and Gene Kelly.

His last nomination was for “This Love of Ours,” a romantic melodrama starring Merle Oberon released in 1945.

Salter, who leaves no immediate survivors, had been retired since the late 1960s.