Organ donation: Logan's Ellen Eccles Theatre receives a rare Mighty Wurlitzer

LOGAN — When the Capitol Theater was built in Logan in the early 1920s, the goal was to out-elegant the Capitol Theatre in Salt Lake City.

The Thatcher family spared no expense — in the furnishings, in the ornamentation, in the magnificent theater organ installed to provide sound for silent movies and vaudeville acts.

When Logan's Capitol Theater was restored to become the Ellen Eccles Theatre, Michael Ballam — director of the Utah Festival Opera and a driving force involved in the restoration — had one regret. The old organ was no longer there.

"Patience Thatcher sold it off, piece by piece," Ballam said. "We tried to find them, but they were scattered all over the United States."

That was some 14 years ago, but Ballam never gave up his dream of having an organ in the theater. After all, he has managed to amass the country's largest collection of hydraulic player-pianos, including one with a roll on which George Gershwin recorded his "Rhapsody in Blue." "One of these days we're going to roll it out and let George play," said Ballam.

He has also built the largest collection of recordings of the human voice in America. "We have 60,000 recordings. A third of them are vocal recordings. We're in the process of digitizing them so they can be put on the Internet."

So, what's the big deal about one organ?

Well, they're not as easy to come by as you might think, he said. After Al Jolson added sound to "The Jazz Singer" in 1929, "talkies" were in, and theaters couldn't get rid of their no-longer-necessary organs fast enough. Some went to radio stations, where they provided sound effects. Some were collected by private citizens. Some were simply trashed.

So when Ballam got a call earlier this year about a Mighty Wurlitzer organ that a man in Pacific Palisades, Calif., was wanting to donate to a good home — well, "it's enough to make you believe in miracles," Ballam said.

The organ was owned by John and Nancy Schellkopf, who had, quite literally, built their house around it. "They had sound-proof flaps that would come down to cover the windows so the sound wouldn't blow out the neighborhood. And when I heard him play it, it blew my mind. I had just been back to Radio City Music Hall with my daughter, and this was the very same."