Organs incidentally shown or heard in media

[Victor Jules]

Here's a thread for reporting the fleeting glimpse (no matter how fleeting!) of an organ in a movie, TV show, periodical or whatever that sends chills up your spine -- but mostly movies. Or for asking what organ or make it was, mebbe what was being played on it -- the works! All organs, every kind that has a keyboard. I report reed organ apparitions in the Reed Organ Restoration Yahoo egroup, but y'all can do so here if you like. There's already a thread here for Hammond sightings, so take your pick on that brand.

It's prompted by my random viewing of a 1952 Joan Crawford movie in Youtube -- Sudden Fear. At 32:53 they're showing a somebody play a large console in what looks like an opulent home

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3eVm8gfroQ

Actual organ location of the era or cinematic mock-up?

[steverose]

https://youtu.be/ivTbd38NtWg
Sunset Blvd

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The living room of the house from the movie Giant with a theater style console. Earlier images in the movie also have pipes on the stair landing flanking the window.


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Free State of Jones.

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https://youtu.be/ZpURq4N8MNs

August Rush

[Organ_Music]

August Rush was awesome! Forgot all about that film until now.

[steverose]

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

[Hamman]

Wow...it looks like that organ morphs into a piano case

[steverose]

https://youtu.be/25WglQiplfs

Farinelli il Castrato

[steverose]

https://youtu.be/qSCUhqsy4Nk

and then of course there is the Simpsons!

[myorgan]

The organ part from The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, starring Don Knotts. Of course August Rush is also an option. I transcribed that at one time.

Michael

[Victor Jules]

What a great clip from Sunset Boulevard! Must get hold of Giant -- my mother liked it. Thanks for these!

[Victor Jules]

In-A-Gadda-da-Vida -- that is hilarious!

According to movies, organs were winded by magic during the baroque era :-)

When I was in high school they showed us the immoral French movie La Symphonie Pastorale. In it a guy launches into Bach's famous Prelude in A minor, playing the whole first part with one hand.

For once in Sunset Boulevard they showed somebody really playing -- not von Stroheim, I'm sure :-)

Sinister organ and piano contraptions were used in several episodes of the original Wild Wild West show. There's a reed organ fakely played at 14:11 in The Night of the Poisonous Posey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJWOrCtG8ck,
.......and an organ case that later fires guns at people.

In The Carpetbaggers Nevada Smith's living room (staircase?) prominently features an authentic-looking organ -- theater IIRC -- but it's never played.

In Hitchcock's first The Man Who Knew Too Much, there's some 'Temple of the Sun' organ playing and hymn singing from 28:30
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND97QZVoAX4
The organ, of indeterminate type, can't alas be seen in this clipped version except fleetingly around 36:10. when it's being played to cover the noise of a brawl. Has anybody ever heard this quaint little hymn tune? You Brits perhaps?

[musikfan]

Don't have a pic, but there's an episode from The Lucy Show called "Lucy the Babysitter" in which a monkey is playing an organ. And of course, The Phantom of the Opera movies that were aired on TV over the past few decades....if someone can find pics, then please post them...

[tbeck]

The English series Midsomer Murders takes place in English villages and there are frequently scenes shown in village churches where the organ is visible and/or being played. Likewise the group of shows based on Inspector Morse, including Endeavor and Lewis take place in Oxford and many organs are seen/heard in the various colleges and churches.

Tom

[AllenAnalog]

The Simpsons clip is priceless. And they even got the animation of her hands on the keys to be reasonably authentic looking. (Had to add this as my 250th post!)

[davidecasteel]

Don't forget Barbarella's stint in the Orgasmatron, an organ-like instrument designed to stimulate physical pleasure. (I confess I saw that movie when quite young, long before I began to boycott Jane Fonda's films.)

David

[Menschenstimme]

Methinks that the "Orgasmatron" was from the Woody Allen "Sleeper" movie and that the "Barbaraella" contraption was simply named the "sex organ".

SIGH & AAMGDU !!

P.S.: AAMGDU = Angels and ministers of grace defend us!

[musikfan]

Methinks that the "Orgasmatron" was from the Woody Allen "Sleeper" movie and that the "Barbaraella" contraption was simply named the "sex organ".

SIGH & AAMGDU !!

P.S.: AAMGDU = Angels and ministers of grace defend us!

You read my mind, Menschenstimme. I was thinking the very same thing when I saw "orgasmatron". That was a really goofy movie, but I believe that Woody Allen actually organized and performed a lot of the musical tracks on that movie. Evidently, he was quite a good musician with his clarinet.

[Victor Jules]

Now you mention it, tbeck, wasn't there an episode of the Avengers in the Diana Rigg period where they were crawling around an organ console in a church hunting the bad guy? I clicked to reply to your post but it sent me to the end of the line.

Then there's the ooky 1962 horror movie Carnival of Souls -- young lady plays an org in the Reuter factory, then goes mental playing one on in a church

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bUePiQJJCI

I think TV guide used to eve note "filmed partly in Lawrence, Kansas"...... always thought the flick ghoulishly evoked the finale to Vierne's 5th Symphony, and found a pal from music school pal who played the fire out of the piece thought the same thing. We both grew up in greater NYC, prolly watching the same showings of the flick on WPIX or whatever. We we both (ndependently) addicted to 1945's The Picture of Dorian Gray, too -- with it's magical use of Chopin's prelude in D minor :-]

[Ben Madison]

You beat me to it on the carnival of souls i discovered it this july and by the looks of it its a good film.