The Last of the Silent Picture Organists

I remember when I first arrived in New York in the early '90s... one of the first things I wanted to do was to see a silent film in an actual New York City movie theatre.  I managed to find an extant Garbo screening, which was fascinating... and, I believe, in Long Island City at the Museum of the Moving Image, saw one of the famous silent film organists playing live to a silent picture.  I was so thrilled.  But not as thrilled as when I attended Lillian Gish's 100th birthday celebration at MoMA.  She had recently died at 99!

Now, Rosa Rio, among the very last to have played the silent-picture houses, "accompanying the likes of Chaplin, Keaton and Pickford on the Mighty Wurlitzer amid velvet draperies, gilded rococo walls and vaulted ceilings awash in stars," has passed on to the Great Silent Beyond!  She was 107!!  Read more here...