The Mighty Wurlitzer at the Fabulous Fox Theatre

Video Transcript:

My name is Dave Stephens and five years ago I became one of the tour organists here at the Fox Theater playing the Mighty Wurlitzer theater pipe organ.

This Mighty Wurlitzer was here when the theater opened in 1928 and was ready for the grand opening of the Fox Theater in St. Louis in 1929.

That time it was owned by the Arthur brothers and I persuaded Mr. Arthur to let myself and some friends from the University come in here at
night after the last show and try to work on it and try to get it to play again, which we did. And after we got it to play reasonably well, and of course it wasn’t great but it was reasonable, I called them in to let him hear it. And he said let’s put you to work for five weeks playing it seven days a week, four times a day.

Well the public liked it so well that those those five weeks became 22 years.