Thanks to Bhob Stewart for providing a link to this great 9-minute video about the late Rosa Rio who had a career as one of the country’s premier theater organists. Ms. Rio died in 2010, just a few weeks before her 108th birthday; she had played her final concert the previous year. From her New York Times obituary:
Miss Rio was undoubtedly 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. She was also one of the few women to have made her way in a field dominated by men…
[Later] She provided live music for a spate of popular shows, including “The Shadow,” starring a trim Orson Welles, and “The Bob and Ray Show.” Her television credits include “As the World Turns” and the “Today” show…
In recent years, long after television dispensed with live organists, Miss Rio accompanied silent films at some of the nation’s tenderly restored movie houses. She was most closely associated with the Tampa Theater in Florida, a lavish picture palace built in 1926.
Several times a year Miss Rio would rise from beneath the stage there, seated at the organ in sequined evening gown, diamond rings and gold lamé slippers. As she wafted majestically upward, the room shook with her signature tune, “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” or, as she much preferred to call it, “Everything’s Coming Up Rosa.”
