Long-lived Mighty Wurlitzer is star of Paramount's Silent Movie Mondays

An octogenarian is still going strong at the Paramount Theatre, the last of Seattle's 1920s theater organs still fulfilling its original purpose. The Mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ, built in 1927 and bought by the theater for $46,500, can be heard Mondays this month as part of Silent Movie Mondays, played in accompaniment to classic 1920s silent films.

"It's really unique — it's the only one left in the city of Seattle in its original home," said Tom Blackwell, outgoing president of the Puget Sound Theatre Organ Society. "At one time there were 45 theaters within the Seattle city limits that had pipe organs in them. These were considered standard equipment for theaters that had silent films in the 1920s."

Movie-theater organs haven't been manufactured for decades. They differ from church or concert-hall organs in their variety of sounds: percussion instruments, train whistles, bird calls, horse hoofs — "all those things were to allow the organist to accompany the movie," said Blackwell. "It was a huge industry. Over 10,000 were built in the 1920s. A lot of church-organ companies became theater-organ builders."

The society has tracked the history of local theater organs as they slowly disappeared after the arrival of sound movies. The organs were still used through the 1940s and '50s, said Blackwell, as entertainment before a movie's screening, but eventually they began to disappear.

The 5th Avenue Theatre's organ, for example, was bought by a private owner and moved to a restaurant. The Neptune's was moved to Seattle Pacific University and eventually broken up for parts.

Others were moved to churches, radios stations, funeral homes or private homes.

The Paramount's Mighty Wurlitzer is an unusually large model — one of the largest the company ever made, said Blackwell. If it were moved to a smaller space, he said, it wouldn't sound the same.

"That huge space is where these things belong, and that's why they were built," he said. "That's a difference with a theater organ: the wind pressures are much higher than you find in a church organ and much louder. The whole purpose is to fill this massive place with sound."

Blackwell leads a team of society members working on an ongoing restoration to the Paramount organ, which still contains many of its original parts. The group, which has maintained the organ for decades on a volunteer basis, has a five-year restoration plan with a fundraising goal of $105,000.

So far, it has raised about $60,000, said Blackwell, including a recent 4Culture Challenge Grant from King County of $11,500.

Much of this will be used to replace the organ's leather valves, which are made from perishable sheepskin and are only intended to last 30 or 40 years. "It's a very labor-intensive process," said Blackwell, noting there's no synthetic substitute for animal leather (which is used even today by organ builders).

Though not a professional musician himself, Blackwell says he's thrilled by the sense of history the organ represents.

"The fact that the Paramount has this movie series using it for what it was originally installed for, that's the exciting part," he said. "In these days of overdubbing and digital sampling and pitch correction, this is all completely natural. There's no electronics involved as well, it's a completely acoustic sound. It's fun, it's a neat thing, it appeals to everyone."

Silent Movie Mondays, which this month has a horror-movie theme, continues tonight and Jan. 26, with longtime Paramount organist Dennis James at the Wurlitzer. Tonight's movie is "The Bells," a 1926 silent film long thought lost but recently discovered in the Library of Congress archives. It stars a young Lionel Barrymore as a murderer haunted by his crimes.

The final screening next week will be "The Golem," a 1920 German horror film about a mystical monster of Jewish legend. The film screened in November at Benaroya Hall with a live score by Israeli composer Betty Olivero as part of the Music of Remembrance series.

This time around, it will feature an original score by James and sound-effects artist Mark Goldstein, performed by them in its Seattle premiere.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com

Information in this article, originally published January 19, 2009, was corrected January 20, 2009. A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that the Paramount's Mighty Wurlitzer organ is the last it was the last of its kind in the whole Northwest. It is the only silent-movie organ still in its original Seattle home.