In 040904 MMDigest Paul Morris asked of the movie, "The Great Race":


>> My question is best summarised by saying: when we see the film,
>> what exactly are we looking at, and what are we listening to?


From Los Angeles Theatre Organ Society history, Chapter 18, Spring
1965, http://www.latos.org/html/history/history18.htm:

  While that was going on LA-ATOE's new Chairman, Les Pepiot (with
  his wife, Olive) explained in The Console magazine how the organ
  "played" by Jack Lemmon in the film "The Great Race" was built by
  them for Warner Brothers studio.  The four manual console was only
  a "dummy" and was not connected with the 42 ornate display pipes
  placed (along with a roll player mechanism) on top of the console.
  In fact, hidden in the console was a human "player" who had a 36
  note keyboard which, by pulling strings, made it appear the roll
  player was actually working!  Also, the studio originally planned
  to play a Hammond tape but the Pepiots convinced them to use a pipe
  organ recording by E. Power Biggs instead.

Joel Shprentz
Reston, Virginia, USA
jshprentz@his.com.geentroep [delete ".geentroep" to reply]