By Joe Rinaudo

CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6 

Chapter 7

The next several months were filled with Dave teaching me how to recover pneumatics (bellows) and various other tasks related to the rebuilding of an American Fotoplayer.

Since I got in the habit of spending sometimes the whole day at Dave’s shop, I found various places to get a quick lunch. One of these places was Taco Bell or as Dave called it “taco hell!” On one of my excursions to Taco Bell, I had a very unfortunate experience. I had given the clerk a twenty- dollar bill to pay for my lunch but I only got back change for a ten! I reminded the clerk that I had given him a twenty but he just said that I was mistaken. I insisted that he was in the wrong and asked to see the manager. After disappearing for a while, the clerk returned to tell me that the manager was busy and that I should go away! I said that I will not go away without seeing the manager! Finally after waiting several minutes a very grumpy looking woman, who apparently was the manager, came to the counter and stated that she sides with the clerk and that was that and I should now leave! So, I took my fifteen-dollar burrito back to Dave’s house to have lunch with his family. After recounting my Taco Bell tale of woe to Dave and Jennifer, Jennifer stood up and shouted “They said what?!” With that she asked for my receipt and change for the “ten.” She left the house and Dave just smiled. I asked Dave what she might do to correct the situation. Dave, now laughing, said “Have you ever heard of the saying ‘Hell has no fury like a woman scorned?’” When I said no, Dave just said “Well now you have!” After about twenty minutes Jennifer returned with change for a twenty! When I asked just how did she prevail when I could not? Jennifer just smiled and said “A word to the wise, if I were you, I wouldn’t go back there until things cool down!” I never did. Dave told me later “Nobody crosses Jennifer and gets away with it! Just remember that!”

Once back out in the shop, Dave was showing me how to rebuild the large pneumatics that the pull cords operate. These things look like a fire place bellows. Dave said that they have to survive a lot of brutal force with the fast- jerking motion sometimes required from the action of pulling the cords. So, he showed me how to rehinge them with heavy canvas and a finger joint method he had learned from Carty piano.

One day I asked Dave if I should keep track of what the Fotoplayer cost to restore. Dave said that this was a very important thing to do as it can tell you (over the course of time) just what I had spent on my valuable investment. He said that this is very important to follow his instructions carefully. Dave said to get a shoe box and cut a slot in the lid large enough to push receipts into. He said to tape the lid closed so no receipts can fall out and be lost. Keep the box in a safe place so it can’t get damaged or lost. Then when you have finished your restoration and you know that all of the receipts are accounted for…burn the box because you don’t want to know what you spent on your stupid project!

On another day, while I was working in Dave’s shop, in comes Jim Sloan. He starts talking to Dave and me about the old days when he was an assistant cameraman. I asked him if he had ever become a full- fledged cameraman. Jim said that he never wanted to become a cameraman and preferred to stay as an assistant cameraman due to the fact that an assistant makes just a little less than a cameraman. The other reasons were that with the title of cameraman comes a lot of responsibility and cameramen are not always working where as an assistant he was always working. I asked Jim if he had ever worked for a director that he found to be difficult. Jim said that that would be Alfred Hitchcock. Jim said that he found Hitchcock to be very strict and not very nice. Jim was working as assistant cameraman on Psycho and that there was an incident that he could never forget. Jim said: “We and the cameras were up on a platform and Mr. Hitchcock was just below to my right. During a scene, when the cameras were rolling, my right foot slipped off of the platform and slightly brushed Hitchcock’s left shoulder! Hitchcock then shouted “CUT” and everything stopped! Hitchcock slowly looked up at me and gave me the longest and most evil stare while all of the cast and crew looked on! Finally (after what seemed like an eternity) Hitchcock allowed shooting to continue. I thought, at that moment, my career was over but I never heard any more about it. I guess he felt that he had shamed and punished me enough in front of everyone.’’

Later Jim told me that Psycho had made motion picture history. Being the assistant cameraman meant that he was in charge of the lenses. This film was the first time a zoom lens was used in a motion picture. It was used in the shower scene.

On a lighter note, one evening Dave and I were working late in the shop. Now the shop had a large garage door that opened into the back alley. We had the garage door open as it was summer and was hot. It was about 9:30 p.m. when we heard a horn honk. When we went out to see who it was we found two cops in a squad car. One of the policemen asked if we had seen two men running down the alley. We said no but what was going on? They said that the Taco Bell had just been robbed! Without missing a beat both Dave and I yelled in synchronicity “YEA!” The policemen then started laughing as they drove off into the night!

These were very happy and educational times for me. Working with Dave, on an almost daily basis, I became a friend to Dave’s family. Nadine the older daughter and young Cordie were fun to be with. Jennifer was always cooking up something good and I was always welcome to join them. Jennifer always had something funny to say and was quite entertaining to be around. She and Dave were like a comedy team.

Out working in the shop, I got to meet an old friend of Dave’s, Fred Von Helf. He and his wife were over quite a lot. Dave was helping Fred build a huge nickelodeon. It was fascinating to watch Dave coach Fred on just what to do to create a big automatic musical instrument from scratch! Using an old player piano case as the foundation instrument, they were adding a snare drum, bass drum a xylophone and several other percussion instruments. Sometimes, while Dave was in the house spending time with his family, Fred and I would spend many hours working out in the shop on our respective projects.

Now the year was 1976 and Dave was showing me how to rebuild the wooden organ pipes for the Fotoplayer. He showed me how to check the pipes for any cracks in the wood and how to re-leather the stoppers. The stoppers are the plungers that have leather glued on to the four sides of the stopper to make the pipe air tight. The stopper has a handle on it so you can move it up or down to tune the pipe. Any leaks in the pipe through a faulty stopper or a crack can make the pipe hard to tune and not ”speak” properly. Dave showed me how to refinish the pipes. The original finish was orange shellack. We washed down the shellack with denatured alcohol then lightly sanded them. Dave showed me how to spray clear lacquer on the pipes. After several coats with sanding in between the wood looked as good as new! I remember that we had the bass pipes all spread out on a piano tilting dolly. I couldn’t wait for tomorrow as Dave was going to show me how to restore the mouth and voice the pipes to make the restoration complete. As it was getting late and Jennifer had a wonderful spaghetti dinner waiting so we called off the restoration for the night. I remember that dinner and how funny Jennifer was as she was reading odd news reports from the newspaper. Of course, she added her humorous comments to make it funnier than it probably was. I remember as I was driving home that night how lucky I was to have met Dave and Jennifer. I felt as though I had an expanded family.

The next morning came and I couldn’t wait to call up Dave and find out what time I should arrive! When I called, Fred Von Helf’s wife answered the phone. When I asked to speak to Dave she just said in a very somber voice, ”There was a tragedy here last night.”

To be continued…

Do You Have
— EXPERTISE in NON-PROFITS? —

Joe Rinaudo, founder of Silent Cinema Society, is currently forming a non-profit which he calls SCAT —Silent Cinema Art and Technology — to fund the restoration and preservation of the actual machines and media of the silent era.

Advice and suggestions in the area of non-profits are most welcome. Contact Joe Rinaudo here.

Through Silent Cinema Society, which is comprised of you, the fans and supporters of silent cinema, Joe will continue to enlighten and entertain with The Newsreel newsletter; this Silent Cinema Society website; and hopefully soon, live shows where audiences are once again able to wear big hats that block the screen. SCAT, the non-profit, will also support Silent Cinema Society so that information and entertainment will continue to be presented to you, silent cinema fans. Lady, will you please take off that big hat!

By Joe Rinaudo

CHAPTER 1  CHAPTER 2  CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 4    CHAPTER 5

Chapter 6

The next several months working at Dave’s shop was my trial-by-fire learning experience on how to restore an American Fotoplayer. Dave’s knowledge of pneumatic (bellows) design and restoration was vast and it was hard to wrap my brain around this unique technology. I had so many questions on the basic mechanics of the Fotoplayer that the task of restoration was (in my mind) to say the least, daunting!

Every day (when I was not working at my job) was spent traveling the 11 miles to Dave’s house with a new restoration project for my Fotoplayer. Sometimes I would stay as late as 11:00 p.m. (as my passion to finish the project was very high). On several occasions Dave would invite me into his house for dinner or bring me a hamburger while I was working in his shop. Dave’s wife, Jennifer, was a great cook and made the best spaghetti and meatballs! After dinner Dave would show me how to restore the tracking devices (the things that made the piano roll line up evenly with the holes on the piano’s tracker bar). The tracker bar is the brass bar on the piano that has holes in it that must line up correctly with the holes in the paper piano roll.  We also restored the wind motors (which drive the piano roll over the tracker bar). In a Fotoplayer there are two trackers and two wind motors as a Fotoplayer has to have one for the top and bottom tracker bars. Several more weeks were spent restoring all of the related pneumatics that regulated the speed and volume of the piano as well as the expression pneumatics and control linkage which gave the operator full control of the piano’s performance.

This shows the double roll playing mechanism, used on all American Fotoplayers. The tracker bars are the horizontal brass items in the center. All the pneumatics were rebuilt at Dave’s shop. Wine-colored motorcloth was used to restore the bellows.
But electric blue pullcords? Read on…

During a recent show I had pulled on the original leather cord and it snapped, somersaulting me back over the seat and onto the floor. Then it happened again with another cord (this time there were no acrobatics). Replacement leather pullcords were not to be found, so I asked around what material to use so the cords wouldn’t break, and the solution was mountain-climbing rope, and the only color available was vibrant blue. (I could pull with a force of 2500 pounds and it would not snap.) That remained on the Fotoplayer until I finally found the same rope in black, which has been crashing symbols and activating other sound effects to this day. Leather cord (strong enough for the purpose, anyway) simply doesn’t exist anymore.

Working at Dave’s shop was usually an interesting experience. His work bench, which sat in the middle of his shop, was always piled high with so many projects and tools that it was almost impossible to find any place (on it) to work. When I would arrive with my next project and ask Dave “Where might I work?”  he would always say (with a sly smile), “On the bench of course.” This meant my time would be spent excavating a small clearing in the mountain so I would have a small cavity to work in. This also meant that I would have to ask Dave where this tool, wood, cloth or glue bottle should go. Pretty soon I knew where items should live and would automatically perform this daily duty. Of course, when I would return the next day, my clearing would be gone! Like the shifting sands of the Sahara my work space would be only a memory.  Sometimes I think that Dave liked having me at his shop for two reasons. Reason one: to make a “clearing” for him to work in when I was not there. Reason two: To put his tools away!

This is Dave’s workbench today. Nothing’s changed in over 45 years, except it was piled even higher back then.

I remember that one day while I was working in the shop with Dave, the phone rang. I watched as Dave answered the call and listened for a short time then put the phone receiver down on a table and went back to work. After a few minutes he would go back to the phone pick it up off the table listen for a while and say “uh- ha” and put the receiver back on the table. I could hear someone talking very loudly on the phone while Dave was elsewhere in the shop working on something. After a few more minutes Dave would pick up the receiver and listen for a while then say “uh- ha, uh- ha, oh!” then put the receiver back down and make a pot of coffee (Dave always had a pot of coffee brewing in his shop).   This process with the receiver would be repeated a few more times. Then Dave would pick up the receiver and say, ”I gotta go! The shops on fire!” With that he would say a few more uh-ha’s and hang up the phone!  I said, “What in the hell was that all about?”  Dave told me that it was a customer who could talk nonstop forever and a day without taking a breath! Dave told me that the caller was a good customer and Dave didn’t want to insult him by trying to get off the phone too quickly. I asked Dave how did he know how long to make the intervals before he came back to listen? Dave said that this guy always asks the same question three times in three slightly different ways. “So, I listen in every 4 minutes or so to get the idea of how much longer the ordeal will last.” I then asked, “Have you ever been caught by not getting back quickly enough?” Dave said no, that he always positioned the work that he would do (while he was away) near enough to hear if the talking ever stopped. If it ever did, he said that he would rush back and wing it!

Dave and Jennifer had a little Pekinese dog named Tinker. Of course, Dave called her Stinker, my peek-and-sneeze! Sometimes in the wintertime, when I would be working late in the shop, Tinker would come in silently and lay on my feet. She kept my feet warm. I guess Tinker thought my feet seemed better than her dog house. This was mutually beneficial for both of us.

One time while I was working in Dave’s shop alone while he ran an errand. An older man walks into the shop, and without saying a word begins wiping saw dust off the table saw and then starts quietly sweeping the entire shop! Since the man never introduced himself, I thought it would be only fitting to inquire as to the purpose of his efforts. The man said that his name was Jim Sloan. Jim was Dave’s neighbor who was retired from the movie industry. So, when he was bored he would come over to the shop to clean and organize. Jim said that he knew that he always had a job at Dave’s shop. Jim said that the general confusion of this place guarantees him a lifetime of work! Jim had a funny accent. I asked him where he was from. Jim said that he was born in Minnesota. He said that his father had a general store and Jim always had chores to do like stocking shelves or chopping several cords of wood during winter for the store’s potbellied stove which was located in the middle of the store. He said that he had this work ethic which kept him always wanting to do something with his time.

I asked Jim what part of the movie industry he was in. He said that he was an assistant cameraman at M.G.M. Studios. I asked how did he get his start. Jim said that in the 1930’s he was the register boy at the sign in shack at the M.G.M. studio main gate. I said “You must have some interesting stories about your work.” Jim said that he got to meet some very famous actors at the sign in shack. I said that I love Laurel & Hardy and that I knew that the Hal Roach studios (which was next door to M.G.M.) used some of the sound stages at M.G.M. to film some of the Laurel & Hardy films. Jim said that one day he was at his sign-in station and here comes Laurel & Hardy in full costume! He said that they were in line with everybody else and when it came to their time to sign-in they caused quite a funny commotion. First Ollie comes up to the register, takes off his hat, twiddles his tie and smiles at the young Jim. With the other hand he takes the pen and with a great swirling of it in the air begins to sign with great flourish while Stan is dumbly looking on! Now everybody in the shack is laughing! When it is Stan’s time to sign, Stan looks puzzled at the prospect and begins to grab the log-in register and stares intently at it. Ollie slaps him on the shoulder and motions Stan to remove his hat. More laughing from the crowd. Stan removes his hat and begins a struggle with his body to get into just the right position to sign. The gyrations and contortions keep up so Stan can obtain just the right position to make what seems will be the signature of the century! With that he turns to a new page and drops a huge ink blot on it from the fountain pen. Rips out the damaged page placing it in his pocket and looks around sheepishly (hoping that no one is looking). Then proceeds to make a giant “X” on the new page. By this time Jim and everyone was laughing so hard that Laurel and & Hardy knew it was now time to make their exit. So, they tip their hats and slowly back out the exit door and then run away! Jim said “They were funny bastards! The funniest bastards that I had ever known!”  

By this time Dave had returned and the mood was what did get done in his absence? I was beginning to learn that being at Dave’s shop is teaching me more than just how to restore a Fotoplayer.

To be continued…

Do You Have
— EXPERTISE in NON-PROFITS? —

Joe Rinaudo, founder of Silent Cinema Society, is currently forming a non-profit which he calls SCAT —Silent Cinema Art and Technology — to fund the restoration and preservation of the actual machines and media of the silent era.

Advice and suggestions in the area of non-profits are most welcome. Contact Joe Rinaudo here.

Through Silent Cinema Society, which is comprised of you, the fans and supporters of silent cinema, Joe will continue to enlighten and entertain with The Newsreel newsletter; this Silent Cinema Society website; and hopefully soon, live shows where audiences are once again able to wear big hats that block the screen. SCAT, the non-profit, will also support Silent Cinema Society so that information and entertainment will continue to be presented to you, silent cinema fans. Lady, will you please take off that big hat!