‘Miracle on Myers Street’

The console of the Mighty Wurlitzer organ now being installed in Oroville’s State Theatre is a thing of great beauty. And its three banks of keyboards and dozens of multicolored tabs for making individual sounds—glockenspiel, piano, harp, piccolo and many more—suggest just how versatile it is.

But the console is only part of the organ’s story. Largely unseen are the many devices that make the organ’s sounds. Most of them are hidden in a chamber above the theater’s stage. There’s a set of sleigh bells, for example, with sufficient notes to play a song by themselves. The piano sounds come from an actual piano. A snare drum and bass drum are pounded by actual mallets.

Much like traditional organs, the Wurlitzer’s pipes—some of which are 16 feet tall—are powered by “wind,” here generated by a turbine located below the stage.

Designed to be played during silent movies, the organ is truly a “one-man orchestra,” as it has been called—the most complex acoustic musical instrument ever devised.

According to the Oroville State Theatre’s website, when the theater first opened, on April 7, 1928, it was one of thousands of “movie palaces” that used organs to give sound effects to movies that had no sound of their own: hoof beats, wind storms, guns firing, doors slamming—you name it.

The State’s timing was bad, however. The first “talkies” were appearing, and theater operators were beginning to switch to sound. The theater’s original Wurlitzer, rarely used, was removed in 1954.

People didn’t stop being fascinated with the instruments, however, and in recent years many have been restored. In 2011, the Sierra Chapter of the American Theatre Organ Society joined forces with volunteers at the State Theatre Arts Guild (STAGE), which manages the Oroville theater, to install an organ donated by the California Auto Museum in Sacramento. The museum’s directors had decided the organ wasn’t a good fit with an automobile museum, said Dave Dewey, a “semi-retired piano tuner” who is managing the installation project.

At the time, STAGE hoped to have this “Miracle on Myers Street,” as it was soon dubbed, completed by Christmas 2013. Dewey laughed when he was reminded of this fact.

Right now, STAGE is facing a more daunting deadline: the State Theatre’s 90th anniversary celebration coming up this weekend. It will feature, among other events, the first performance by the new organ. Dave Moreno, the Sacramento-based technician who is assembling the instrument, will provide sound for a double feature of silent films, including the Laurel and Hardy classic, Two Tars.

It’s a race against time, and volunteers have been deployed widely. Two blocks south, in the theater’s storefront workshop, Marie Wilson is punching out hundreds of leather washers for use in the valves that are part of the sleigh bells apparatus. In the theater lobby, four or five volunteers are planning for the anniversary celebration. Up in the balcony, other volunteers are working on the theater’s lighting.

Even if it all comes together in time, the installation won’t be fully finished, Dewey says. STAGE intends eventually to expand the organ into a second chamber that was built as part of the original theater but never used. The organ they’re now installing is sufficiently powerful to make use of both chambers, Dewey said.

STAGE also wants to build an elevator for the organ, so that it can be placed center stage and rise up as a performance begins. Finally, they want to create a working orchestra pit for use during musical-theater productions.

So far, they’ve spent about $100,000 on the organ. Dewey cautiously estimates that, if all of their goals were met, the cost would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 million.

Dewey seemed undaunted. “We’ll just take it a step at a time,” he said.