Author: Alison James

The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company was finishing and shipping one theater organ every day in 1926, at the height of the silent film era. It’s difficult to visualize that figure. Each instrument had hundreds of pipes ranging in length from pencil-thin to thirty feet or more, weighed several tons, and needed its own special chambers built into the structure. The console, which was the organist’s curved, horseshoe-shaped desk surrounded by colored stop-tabs, was merely the portion of the apparatus that was visible. The actual equipment was located inside the walls, beneath the stage, backstage. Nevertheless, the majority of those instruments had…

On July 27, 1921, Brighton’s Regent Cinema on Queen’s Road opened, and it wasn’t modest about what it had to offer. This was more than just a picture house; it included an orchestra pit, a dance hall, a café, and a restaurant. The structure presented itself as a destination rather than merely a venue. The Regent was a perfect fit for Brighton’s understanding of leisure in the early 1920s. A reputable British theater organ, the Hill, Norman, and Beard organ, was the first instrument installed there. It seemed fitting for a movie theater with such aspirations. It carried a full…