By the mid-1950s the rich business woman Dorothy Buffum Chandler was funding the orchestra. They were looking for a really good conductor to be their musical director. They had hoped to get Eduard van Beinum, but he suddenly died. Then Georg Solti agreed to come for three years. He was going to begin officially in 1962 but then he resigned because he had not been consulted when the orchestra had appointed Zubin Mehta as assistant conductor. So Zubin Mehta became musical director.