From James Hilton’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1934)
Schoolboy: “Have you been to the new cinema, sir? I went with my family the other day. Quite a grand affair for a small place like Brookfield. They’ve got a Wurlitzer.”
Mr. Chips: “And what—umph—on earth—is a Wurlitzer?”
Schoolboy: “It’s an organ, sir—a cinema organ.”
Mr. Chips: “Dear me… I’ve seen the name on the hoardings, but I always—umph—imagined—it must be some kind of—umph—sausage.”
Virgil Fox played his famous version of Toccata and Fugue in D minor on a pipe organ at the Garden Grove Community Church. The organ is famous enough to have a named - “the Hazel Wright organ”
Toccata and Fugue in D minor is believed to have been originally composed at some point in the first half of the 18th century, but was not published until 1833. The piece has long been attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach, though some modern scholars have placed doubt on Bach’s involvement in its composition.
The piece became popular in the 20th century, in particular due to its inclusion in the 1940 Walt Disney film Fantasia, with an orchestral arrangement by Leopold Stokowski. For many people, it is the piece most strongly associated with Bach, particularly when performed on the pipe organ.
“Goldie” is a Wurlitzer pipe organ in Proctor’s Theater in Schenectady, NY. It is still operational, with 32 pedals, 250 stops and 1,400 pipes built into the theater and is used for concerts and as accompaniment for silent films.
They have added modern features, but the original pipe organ still plays without them.
J.S. Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D minor” for the organ was also prominently featured in the 1975 science fiction sports movie Rollerball, starring James Caan, John Houseman and Maud Adams; it played over the opening credits.
The Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet, or as locals call it the boneyard in the SFBA, is about 40 miles northeast of San Francisco. Over the years there have been several dozens of ships there (like in the picture below), to more recently only a hand full.
Here’s a map of it — change to satellite view for a better view.
https://goo.gl/maps/ViFUK2tCwiYMCkQn7
In the wiki picture below from approx 2001, the big battleship USS Iowa (BB-61) is in the second row from the bottom, at the far right. In 2012 it was moved to Los Angeles as a museum ship.
At least two major Hollywood movies have used the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet as a backdrop/set for action sequences. Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry Callahan sequel Magnum Force (1973) has Callahan blowing away vigilante cops on the ghost ships, and then a limping, cane wielding James Caan avenges himself against the treacherous Robert Duvall on a ship during the finale in Sam Peckinpah’s Killer Elite (1975).
Six years ago I took this picture of the USS Iowa, at Los Angeles.
Comment only — I remember that in Rollerball (1975), that was the first time I ever heard Toccata and Fugue in D minor. I was 14 years old and it was powerful, and almost eery.
In one of the highlights of the original Rocky training montage, Sylvester Stallone is seen running along a dockside with a ship in the background. The Rocky director’s commentary remarks that the crew riding alongside Sly in a van were shocked at the incredible burst of speed he was able to put on for this moment when Bill Conti’s song “Gonna Fly Now” hits a high point.
Originally built in 1904, the historic Moshulu is the world’s oldest and largest square rigged sailing vessel still afloat. That ship still exists today, and is now an elegant floating restaurant in Philadelphia offering upscale seafood and steak dinners.
“Sly” is first recorded around 1200, likely from Old Norse sloegr “cunning, crafty, sly.” “Sly-boots”, meaning “a seeming Silly, but subtil Fellow” dates to about 1700.
Query: isn’t USS Constitution square-rigged?
From the restaurant’s website:
“The world’s oldest and largest four-masted tall ship offers unsurpassed views and a unique backdrop for intimate to extraordinary dining and celebrations. From the restaurant, to our private dining rooms, and outdoor open-aired and tented decks, enjoy inventive and contemporary presentations of classic American cuisine combined with impeccable service creating a memorable experience.”
From wikipedia and the first Google entry for “oldest 4-masted tall ship”:
“Moshulu is a four-masted steel barque, built as Kurt by William Hamilton and Company at Port Glasgow in Scotland in 1904. The largest remaining original windjammer, she is currently a floating restaurant docked in Penn’s Landing, Philadelphia, adjacent to the museum ships USS Olympia and USS Becuna.”
The protected cruiser (sometimes mistakenly described as a battleship) USS Olympia, still preserved along the Philadelphia waterfront and open to visitors, is perhaps best known as Commodore George Dewey’s flagship at the 1898 Battle of Manila Bay, but she was also the warship that brought back to the U.S. the remains of the World War I Unknown Soldier from France for eventual burial at Arlington National Cemetery.
Olympia is the state capitol of Washington. With a population of just under 50k, it is the state’s 24th-largest city. Located at the southern end of Puget Sound, it is about 60 miles from downtown Seattle.
The Olympia Brewing Company was located in Tumwater, Washington, in the western part of the state. Its signature product was Olympia Beer; as Olympia was brewed using water from artesian springs, its tagline was “It’s the Water”; the brand had an advertising campaign in the 1980s, in which it was humorously suggested that a secretive group of beings called “Artesians” were responsible for Olympia’s quality.
Although any fan of marijuana can probably tell you that George Washington, a noted and innovative farmer of his day, grew hemp, it was not the same kind of hemp that gives us “wacky tabacky.”
The town of George, Washington bakes the world’s largest cherry pie every 4th of July.
Actress Lynda Day George, now aged 77, was born in San Marcos TX (near Austin). She says she wants to reenter the acting world. She recently said, “With all I’ve been through, I’ve ‘grown up’ and can bring better comprehension and more wisdom to a role,” she explained. “I have a busy life now, but I’m committed to returning to acting and will do whatever it takes to get back.”
Assumedly, then, each year’s pie is bigger than the previous year’s pie?
In play:
On March 26, 1990, Jessica Tandy became the oldest actress to win an Oscar for Best Actress. Tandy was 80 years and 292 days old when she was awarded the prize for her role in the 1989 film Driving Miss Daisy. The previous oldest winner had been Katherine Hepburn, who was 74 when she won the award for her work in the movie On Golden Pond.
The Tandy Pocket Computer was sold in the 1980s. It was about the size of a large calculator, with a 24 digit dot matrix LCD, its CPU speed was 256 kHz, and it had 3 RAM modules of 4 Kbit each. It was programmable in BASIC with a capacity of 1,424 programming steps.
At the battle of Verneuil in 1424, John, Duke of Bedford and brother of Henry V, led the Anglo-Burgundian alliance to victory over a Franco-Scottish alliance. When the English broke the Franco-Scottish line, they gave no quarter, particularly to the Scots.
The Bedford Level experiment proved the Earth was flat … until atmospheric refraction was accounted for.
