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Music box theatre chicago11/21/2023 ![]() During the holidays, there are now more than 30 screenings of the double feature White Christmas and It’s a Wonderful Life, with live music by house organist Scott. They thought holiday classics and a sing-along to the live organ music might draw a crowd. Oestrich said the idea began when the Music Box’s owners were looking for a way to fill seats on Christmas Eve. Now in its 36th year, the annual event has become one of the Music Box’s most popular attractions. ![]() Christmas Double Feature & Sing-A-Long The Music Box’s Santa Sing-A-Long. That made us wonder, what’s the repair budget for the 90-year-old theater? “A lot,” was all Oestrich would say. “We had to rewire and change out every single blue light bulb,” he explained. “So one year, I spent some of our repair budget on getting them fixed,” he said.Īnd the task wasn’t just unscrewing an old bulb and slipping in a new one. Oestrich said when he started at the Music Box about fours years ago, many of the blue lights were burned out. Dozens of twinkling lights on the 30-foot-high ceiling resemble stars across a dark sky with white, wispy clouds. Inside the Music Box’s 700-plus seat main theater, you can settle into one of the red velvet- sometimes wobbly - seats, listen to live organ music, gaze up and be transported to an open-air courtyard. Hard to capture in a photograph, tiny blue lights dot the ceiling to mimic stars. The starry sky The main auditorium at the Music Box, just before an afternoon screening. “We put up our special screen … and we pay our projectionist more money to do 70,” Oestrich said. He added that the theater’s 70-mm film screenings are more expensive to host because of the extra labor required. Running the projector is a much safer job today, Oestrich said, because film stock is no longer as flammable. It’s guarded by a heavy fire door because, according to Oestrich, if the old, highly flammable film stock caught fire “the door would slam shut and burn alive and save the people in the theater.” The original projection booth is still next to the current, temperature controlled set-up on the second floor. Manuel Martinez / WBEZīetween Music Box’s two theaters, there are seven projectors, both digital and reel-to-reel. Antos said he learned how to run reel-to-reel projectors by hanging out in movie theaters when he was growing up. ![]() The projection room Music Box technical director Julian Antos inspects the previews in the projection booth before a show. Scott hopes he’ll still be playing when he’s 87 and the Music Box celebrates the 50th anniversary of its Christmas Sing-A-Long, which he called one of his favorite parts of the job. “Actually, the noisier the more fun it is.” ![]() “I don’t expect people to sit there in rapt silence while I’m playing,” the organist said on a recent Saturday night. That means he plays as theatergoers enter and exit the main theater in between screenings. Scott, 72, plays “double bills” on Friday and Saturday nights and Sunday matinees. The couple bought the organ about four years ago and refurbished it. Kimball and Co., according to Thom Day, husband of house organist Dennis Scott. The organ stationed stage right is a Chicago original. It was rebuilt to run electronically about four years ago. Kimball pipe organ The Music Box Theatre’s organ was built in 1929 by W.W.
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