Pipe Dreams : Pair’s 25-year labor of love pays theatrical tribute to a high and Mighty Wurlitzer. : HEARTS OF THE CITY / Exploring attitudes and issues behind the news

Call it a 25-year labor of love. Two men in love with the grandiose beauty and sound of a rare pipe player organ, who gave up thriving careers to keep a historic movie house alive as it was in the days of silent films and classic talkies.

In fact, at the Old Town Music Hall in El Segundo, it still is the days of those films.

Vintage movies are all that’s shown at the 73-year-old theater, accompanied by the classic music of a 1925 Mighty Wurlitzer pipe player organ that Bill Coffman and Bill Field lovingly restored.

In the years that Coffman and Field have single-handedly run the theater, they have never turned a profit or reaped fame. But they have established an ongoing tribute to the organ and its music.

On the heels of its 25th anniversary this year, the Old Town Music Hall was recognized by the California Assembly as a living museum for silent film, classic talkies and old-time music.

Friends and fellow professional organists, Coffman and Field rented out the Richmond Street movie house for $250 a month in 1968; it had just closed as business moved to newer, bigger theaters. But the first thing on their minds wasn’t movies; it was simply finding a house big enough for a homeless organ 20 feet wide and 30 feet tall.

The two had just purchased the Wurlitzer for $2,000 from the former Fox West Coast Theater in Long Beach. At that time the pipe player organ had long been a part of history. The instruments were widely used during the 1920s in vaudeville shows and as an accompaniment to silent movies, but suffered a sudden death when talkies--films with sound--were produced. The Wurlitzer Organ Co. closed its factory in 1941 and many organs were melted down and used for scrap metal during World War II; those that survived fell into disrepair.

It took the two men nearly a year to rebuild the gigantic one-man band, which imitates the sound of an orchestra by connecting a series of instruments to a console that looks similar to a church organ. The organ has 2,000 pipes, 268 instruments and 244 keys on four keyboards. When everything was tuned, the organists painted each instrument with neon-colored glow-in-the-dark paint to show them off during performances.

“We tried to create an escape from the bombardment of modern-day electronic trauma,” Coffman said. “Organ music does that.”

In 1970 they opened with a series of silent films that play only on weekends. Most Sunday afternoons, there is an organ concert by a visiting musician.

For $6, patrons can view classic silent films with organ accompaniment by Field or Coffman providing the atmosphere. The 1925 version of “Phantom of the Opera,” starring Lon Chaney, calls for eerie glissandos on the organ.

“I try to make the music sink into the background,” Field said. “The music heightens the whole experience, but it’s best when people forget that it’s not part of the movie.”

Ragtime is the primary focus, but sometimes the entertainment gets as modern as the 1930s and ‘40s. Coffman arranges for a few old talkies each year, including “For Me and My Gal” and “Showboat,” and lets the live $12.50 concerts deviate a bit from ragtime.

The theater has never been much of a moneymaker. Most nights, ticket sales barely cover operating costs. On a recent Friday, eight people turned up to see the silent film “Valentino Festival.” Field said 10 people showed up for the Saturday feature and 110 showed up Sunday. It costs $150 to rent the movie from the distributor, who also takes 35% of the total profit, keeping theater revenue at a minimum. Making the rent, which has risen to $900 a month, can be a challenge.

But money has never mattered much to the organ aficionados. Coffman, 69, rents a room in El Segundo and lives on a small musician’s pension fund. Field, 55, said he takes in less than $10,000 earned from organ repair work while living in a home in South-Central Los Angeles that was passed down from his family. The sacrifice, they said, is worth it to be able to keep the organ alive.

“There isn’t another theater like this,” Field said. “If we don’t keep the music around, who will?”

Their accomplishment is commendable, said Marion Flint, a spokeswoman for the American Theater Organ Society in Pennsylvania. The organization keeps track of old theater organs, and Flint said there are fewer than 300 left in public places nationwide and only about five in Los Angeles County. Flint said the music hall’s Mighty Wurlitzer is a true novelty.

During the past year, Coffman and Field have been forced to turn the 188-seat theater into a nonprofit organization to get donations for renovation.

And indeed, far more has come in through donations than the two ever made in ticket sales--nearly $25,000 in the first year.

The patrons who frequent the theater are a faithful group of mostly elderly people who boast about attendance records dating back to the ‘70s.

Cora Mitchell of La Crescenta was recently honored with a plaque of appreciation for 25 years of patronage.

“I come here because you can’t get this kind of entertainment anywhere else,” said Mitchell, 77. “I love it. It’s so nostalgic.”

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The Beat

Today’s centerpiece focuses on two men who have restored an old-time movie house in El Segundo. To help in their effort, or volunteer with other preservation efforts, call:

Old Town Music Hall, (310) 322-2592.

Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, (213) 485-2433.