Farewell to a Golden Time By C. William Chilman IT wasn't entirely what you saw on the screen, or in detail its sound-effects and attachments. A new what you read in the subtitles. The silent movies of addition had to be tacked onto the rear of the theater the early and mid-1920s had another dimension - the to hold it. And when finally the organ was set up gorgeous pipe organ music that accompanied the ac- and ready to go, the Star announced a special showing tion on the screen and embellished and gave radiance of The Covered Wagon to celebrate the musical pre- to the story. The organ bore you along on glorious miere - reserved seats only. waves of sound, transporting you to unimaginable Indeed, the Star's new organ was a marvelous, places and arousing emotions you hadn't dreamed of. four-manual instrument with an astonishing array of It recreated you in a quite different image from the stops that, at the flick of a finger, could produce all person who had bought a ticket on the way in. And sorts of sound-effects: xylophone, celesta, tambourines, later, stumbling out into the bright afternoon of Cot- gongs, cymbals, castanets, kettle and snare drums, tage Street and the familiar noises of Bar Harbor, you trumpet, oboe and even a special accompaniment for knew you were changed and would never again be any oriental scene that went "plink-plonk-a-plunk." quite the same. But it wasn't these marvels alone that made the organ The organ was the magic difference. In a gesture such a musical wonder. The real heart of its music was of faith that the silent movies were here to stay, the the wizard behind the maze of keys and pipes - the management of the Star Theater had gone all-out and organist, Pearl Otto, who later became Mrs. Freder- bought a new and splendid, $25,000 Robert Morgan ick Wescott. pipe organ. For a small town theater that couldn't Pearl was a genius, the high priestess of a van- have had more than 250 seats, this purchase was the ished and peculiarly American skill, a blender of ultimate in splurge and optimism. It was easily the grandest organ this side of Portland. It could even emotion, high drama and musical expertise. With hold a candle to the one at Loew's Orpheum in Bos- one eye on the screen - a mere twelve feet away - and the other on her sheet music, her keys and her ton, and its coming to Bar Harbor was truly an earthshaking event. One of the billboards outside the stops, she coaxed the maximum of appropriate sound from this great new organ. The pedals she never Star Theater proclaimed its imminent arrival, gave glanced at at all. With split-second timing, she its name, where and by whom it was made, how adapted her fingerwork to the action and mood of the much the management had paid for it, and described movie. She had not only to choose what to play as the 38 Pearl Wescoll Down 1/69 story unfolded, but play it for exactly the right time Then she turned back to the organ, span and with just the right degree of emotion. Then shifted a piece or two of music, flipped a she must shift her theme, as the scene shifted, trans- stops and was ready. At that precise in posing smoothly without a break, always blending house lights dimmed, Pathe News flashe music and action in one continuous form. screen, and Pearl was off - calm, cool and To do this required infinite subtlety and finesse. as a mountain pond - for two straight hou Obviously, for a heartrending deathbed scene, like ing. In the evening, she came back again an that of Colleen Moore's mother in Little Old New more shows, one right after the other, 7 York, the organist couldn't play "March of the Tor- days a week. leadors" from Carmen, Nor could a stampede of We always wondered when she rehea buffaloes be accompanied by "Evening Prayer" from was an excellent piano teacher and ha Hansel and Gretel. A pastoral scene - elm-shaded several mornings a week. My brother Leste farmstead, limpid stream, cattle grazing in somnol- How she prepared the accompaniment f ent meadows - could hardly be seen to the stirring picture; how she knew its contents and se strains of Stars and Stripes Forever. Whoever was advance; how she planned the timing and at the keyboard had to have finely-tuned taste and what she would play, we never discov superb musical judgment. Above all, the organist failingly, what she played was right - : needed to know music and to possess a bottom- velant to the action and mood of the I less repertoire. For any of a thousand scenes, each says now she did rehearse, that all her : with its own particular dramatic context and impact, carefully selected and prepared prior to re she must summon forth and play on cue exactly the showings, and that the matinee was in f right accompaniment. "dress" rehearsal. But as boys, we never If meeting these requirements ever posed any Pearl did follow certain routines. Com problem to Pearl, she never showed it. At 2:25 - cartoons always called forth the exylophone five minutes before matinee time - she ambled down deathbed and tragic scenes, she used a lot the right-hand aisle at the Star, entered the organ - sad, minor key, swooping effects that fair space with the low, dark red cafe curtain around it, the hearts of the audience - as in the sce doffed her racoon coat, fluffed and patted her dark The River To The Poorhouse, where th hair a bit, flicked the switch that turned on the bel- son finds his poor old mother on her knees lows, snapped on the light over the music rack of the the almshouse floor. For Spanish scenes, ] console, then turned and gave the audience a casual Moskowski's Spanish Dance, complete once-over. bourine and castanets. For fast action ep Left - The Star Theatre at Bar Harbor in the 1920s. Right - Pearl Otto Wescott at the the- atre's $25,000 organ. auto races, mad chases and runaway trains, she chose of her whole right side, she pushed the ticket headlong music like Von Suppe's Light Cavalry through the slot and spun me on my way. Overture. If her choices were sometimes predict- Once armed with our tickets, my friends and I able, they were always in impeccable taste. Equally ascended a short flight of stairs that were sheathed at home in jazz, the classics or Victor Herbert - even with brass kick-plates. Then we piled through a pair hornpipes, jigs and The Indian Love Call - she of swinging doors, leather-covered and with oval never failed to pick the right tune. She knew them windows. There, in a narrow, carpeted hall, we en- all. countered the "Paw." The Paw was a man in a dark suit who stood THE Star Theater, where Pearl performed her beside the glass-topped ticket box. His face was fea- musical magic, was no fabulous palace. Its lobby tureless. We couldn't have described what he looked had none of the rococo grandeur of Loew's Orph- like, for we never looked at him. We had, after all, eum. There were no plaster cupids, romping among paid our way in and now had only to enter and en- festoons of unlikely flowers; no gilt-painted gewgaws, joy ourselves. The Paw was something we passed, ormulu clocks or marble staircases. The lights on the like a billboard or the water cooler. The only dif- marquee could not match the sunbursts, geysers ference was that when each of us passed him, a hand and pinwheels of colored bulbs that showered forth - a rather ham-like, anonymous paw - reached out on the Stratford in Chicago or the Bijou in Bangor. and seized our tickets. We never noticed anything The Star's marquee and the modest vertical sign more than the hand and the white shirt cuff and blue above it were rimmed with white bulbs that simply serge coat sleeve above it. winked on and off. The theater's facade - a false Once past the outstretched hand, we could go front done in gray stucco - struggled upward in a through either of two doors and down one of the two series of diminishing setbacks that terminated in a aisles. The body of the theatre was narrow - not more little arch with a white wooden spike on the top. than 30 feet wide and possibly 100 feet long. The The lobby below was narrow and plain and open floor was raised slightly toward the back and then to the vagaries of the weather. The young theater- leveled off. The seats, at first plain wood and joined goer walked first to the ticket window on the left at the sides, gave way later in the 20s to splashily- and plunked down his dime. Behind the glass, with upholstered, springy new ones. In a simultaneous a little brass-rimmed speaking hole in the middle, burst of improvement, the management also installed sat the ticket lady. For reasons that never became new stage curtains - chiffon-like and flowered. But clear to me, there was a perennial, chronic state of un- throughout the decade the walls and the ceiling re- declared war between the two of us. There seemed mained the same: exposed two-by-four uprights, to be something about me - the shuffling shyness boarded in, the simplest of roof timbers, the whole with which I approached the window, the eleven- stained a deep evergreen. It was cheerfully rustic, year-old roundness of my face or the grubbiness of informal and unpretentious - like a lakeside cottage my well-gnawed fingernails - that irritated her be- with no hint of plaster or beaverboard. But none yond words. Though she raked in pounds of my of the patrons minded this simplicity, and the man- small change since I was seven and a half, there was agement of the Star knew they didn't. It recognized never a hint of recognition or the merest twinkling that once it had given the trade a fine new organ in her deep chestnut eyes. Always, it was the same and cushiony seats, there was no need to go to still anonymous, no-nonsense glance, that flicked over me further extremes. quickly and then through me to the street beyond. Entirely apart from the movie, it was for the The glance was all the more piercing because it momentary thrill and joyous diversion that we went drilled me through pince-nez glasses, which fascinated to the Star. There was, of course, a suffocating and me because they were attached to a gold chain that insupportable excitement when Douglas Fairbanks disappeared mysteriously among the waves of her was nearly scalded with boiling oil as he hid in a huge hair. jar - one of dozens - in The Thief of Baghdad. And The ticket transaction was speedy and word- when, in The Covered Wagon, the wagon train was less. I shoved toward her whatever I had for change ambushed and Indian arrows whizzed thick as angry - a dime, two nickels, or a nickel and five pennies. hornets, our hearts hammered violently and we half Rather grimly and with a quick, slantwise movement (Continued on page 45) WHEN WINTER COMES 40 North Bridgton Congregational Church, by Carleton W. Patriquin FAREWELL TO A GOLDEN TIME Pearl Otto didn't saunter down the aisle SO often (Continued from page 40) now. She did give preliminary and fill-in concerts, as well as accompany the soundless short subjects rose out of our seats. Later, when the mother died and play for the "sing-alongs," where the audience and the prairie schooners were driven over her sang to the bouncing of the little white ball as it grave to conceal its whereabouts, we were gripped hopped in time over the printed words on the screen. and lacerated with a terrible grief. But there was a sadness in her brown eyes these When the cartoon title flashed on the screen our days. Often she just sat quietly at the console, her full-throated yell rose to the ceiling. The roar had fingers idle, the great organ stilled. Less and less, as nothing really to do with how good or lawful the one walked up Rodick Street at the rear of the Star, cartoon might be; it was a shout of primitive welcome could one hear the rumbling and throbbing of the for the violent antics that were certain to follow. And giant instrument whose advent, only four or five when, in The Phantom of the Opera, the phantom years earlier, had been an unprecedented happening loosened the great chandelier in the Paris Opera in Bar Harbor. An era in the world of entertainment House and it crashed down on the struggling hu- was ending and no one - except Pearl, a part of manity beneath it, we froze in horror. whose life was ending, too - seemed to mind. And the comedies! What marvelous delight we had in watching cream pies being mashed against POSTSCRIPT hapless faces and $100 bills being whisked away by the wind just as the owner bent to pick them up. The Star Theater closed its doors in 1931, coin- Fords that disintegrated as they tore madly down cident with the opening of the "new" Criterion Thea- the street. And wild pursuits that dodged between ter diagonally across Cottage Street. Joel Emery, the opposite-bound streetcars, over the roofs of buildings Star's long time owner and manager, had died the and through china shops, ladies' garden parties and previous year. Roy Blake, the motion picture pro- clotheslines full of wash. We roared with laughter jector operator at the Star for many years, is still until our sides ached and we were weak with ex- the operator at the Criterion, where he is also as- haustion. sistant manager. Mrs. Pearl Otto Wescott, now One tends to forget now how really silent the seventy-five, is still actively teaching piano in Bar silent movies were. Their one dimension was visual. Harbor, where she recently presented her thirty pu- Lips moved - supposedly with the same words pils in recital. And the great Robert Morgan pipe printed in the subtitles - but no voice came. A de- organ that she played is waiting to be installed in stroyer's guns fired, and the audience saw the the Hauck Memorial Auditorium at the University flashes and bursts of smoke but heard no boom. of Maine, having been presented to the university Trains raced each other down clear stretches of by William Deacon, an alumnus from Bangor. track but without a shriek of whistles, a hiss of steam or the clack of wheels. There was total, utter silence. copa We never really thought about it then, but it was the organ - and the organist - that filled the void. How The Lantern empty and finanely mechanical these old movies would have seemed were it not for the wonderful organs that accompanied them. Their music set the Supper dishes finished, whole tone of the show. They breathed life into it Gram went making calls and clothed it with meaning. They embroidered it eager for some gossip; with fantastic stitchings of feeling. And they em- bundled up in shawls, bellished any situation with outsize significance. You mittens, fascinator, didn't have to hear the thunder of the runaway train, against the evening chill; the cannon's roar or the earthquake's rumble. The carrying a lantern organ music took care of that. You were fulfilled. to light her down the hill. You were there. Toward the end of the 1920s, the Star Theater When it came eight-thirty, got a new manager from Rockland. Winds of change we'd begin to pass stirred through the lobby and brought blue neon casually on errands tubes to the marquee and "Vitaphone" to the screen. which took us by the glass, "Talkies," the new movies were called. Crackly and watching for a distant erratic at first, their spoken words and lip move- glimmer. ments weren't always coordinated. Sometimes, as in Now and then one of Ralph Bellamy's early talkies, only a portion a star looks like that lantern of the film would be sound-tracked. But the public, coming home again. ever hungry for change, took the new movies to its heart and embraced them avidly. - FLORENCE B. JACOBS 45