John BeifussMemphis Commercial Appeal
"The picture is one of the best ever shown in Memphis, barring none," raved a movie reviewer credited as "A.M.D." in the Feb. 2, 1926, edition of The Commercial Appeal.
"The acting is flawless throughout. The scenes are full of terror and awe, the gasps and deep breathing of the audience throughout tending to make the picture more realistic."
The movie in question was Universal's "The Phantom of the Opera," an extravagant thriller filmed on huge studio stages that recreated the Paris Opera House and reimagined its sewers and rooftop.
More memorably, "Phantom" enabled silent screen star Lon Chaney — in the wake of his earlier triumph, "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" — to introduce what remains the most indelible of the often tragically grotesque characterizations that established the actor and makeup artist's reputation as "The Man of a Thousand Faces."
"Feast your eyes — glut your soul on my accursed ugliness!" declares the Phantom, after the kidnapped young singer he loves strips a concealing mask from his skull-like face. The famous unmasking scene remains a highlight of horror movie history and helps explain why "Phantom" is today the most familiar of silent movies, a ghastly foundation for Universal's "classic monster" hall of fame (Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, the Wolf Man, et al) and the inspiration for a seemingly endless series of remakes and pastiches that achieved its commercial apotheosis with the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical "The Phantom of the Opera," the longest-running show in Broadway history.
Friday, Aug. 16, Memphians will get another chance to see what the fuss — and the fright — is about when "The Phantom of the Opera" screens at 7 p.m. at the Orpheum, with the "house organist," Tony Thomas, providing musical accompaniment on the "Mighty Wurlitzer."
The pairing makes sense, and not just because the Wurlitzer organ is an ideal instrument for evoking spooky tension, swooning romance and shocking spectacle (in one highlight, the Phantom drops a massive chandelier on the opera audience). Both "Phantom" and the Orpheum Wurlitzer date to the 1920s: "Phantom" was released in late 1925 (even if it didn't reach Memphis until early 1926), while the Wurlitzer debuted in 1928 in the newly reconstructed Orpheum, a palatial theater built on the site of a venue that had burned to the ground. That earlier venue was the city's Grand Opera House — yes, an opera house.
This week's "Phantom" screening is a fundraiser for the ongoing maintenance of the Wurlitzer. A large and complex "electropneumatic" instrument controlled by keyboards, pedals, levers and knobs, the Orpheum's Wurlitzer returned to service in 2020, after two years of painstaking restoration. The "Phantom" job, meanwhile, returns the organ to its original function, since the Wurlitzer was developed to be "what was called a 'unit orchestra,'" said Thomas, 78. It was intended "to do the job a full orchestra could do," making it an efficient investment for silent movie theater owners who craved ambitious soundscapes but didn't want to hire full bands.
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A virtuoso organist who has accompanied the roughly 90-minute "Phantom" twice before (in 1988, at the Orpheum, and in 2007, on Halloween, in the sanctuary of Calvary Episcopal Church), Thomas said he has developed several leitmotifs to accompany the movie's key characters, but will largely improvise, just as a jazz musician might.
"You got to be horrific as hell when the mask comes off, and you've got to come up with something really big for the chandelier," he said.
Thomas — whose credits include the 2023 album "A Very Mighty Christmas," recorded on the Wurlitzer at the Orpheum — said he organized his ideas for this "Phantom" event at home, playing along to a laptop version of the movie on his VTPO, or Virtual Theater Pipe Organ, a three-keyboard rack that uses pipe organ samples to create Wurlitzer-style sounds. He developed "themes or tones or moods that I can play a hundred different ways," with occasional quotes from Gounod's "Faust," the ballet that is presented in the film. The result, Thomas said, is music that is "very vivid," but which won't overwhelm or distract from the action onscreen.
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Thomas said the Phantom is a fascinating character because he is both murderous and lovestruck.
"This is a guy who at the opening of the movie, he's already ensconced himself in the basem*nt of the opera house," Thomas said. "He's a presence that is frightening to people. And now, for God's sake, he's in love."
Even so, "It's kind of funny that we've romanticized it, with the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. I mean, he's demented — he's not a lovable character."
'The Phantom of the Opera'
1925 silent movie classic with live accompaniment by Tony Thomas on the Wurlitzer organ.
7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 16. Doors open at 6 p.m.
The Orpheum, 203 S. Main.
Tickets: suggested $10 donation at the door.
The event is a benefit to help support the preservation and maintenance of the Wurlitzer.
For tickets or more information, visit orpheum-memphis.com.
