Interview: Organist Dennis Scott on Music Box Theatre and Chicago Movies
In Maker’s Dozen, we ask folks in and around the film industry 12 questions and have them ask one of us.
Dennis Scott is the house organist for the historic Music Box Theatre in Chicago, where he has accompanied silent films and sing-alongs since 1992. He frequently accompanies silent films in other venues around the Midwest and is the official organist for the International Buster Keaton Society.
In this interview, Dennis talks about his favorite Music Box memory, surprising organ facts, favorite Chicago movies, and more!
This interview has been edited for content and clarity.
1. What’s the Dennis Scott origin story?
I grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I took organ lessons as a kid but did not have enough training to be allowed into music programs at the university level. So I majored in and have a degree in journalism.
2. Was there an a-ha moment that made you say “I want to be an organist”?
My father bought a small electronic organ for himself. He worked nights, so I would sit down and play it after he left for work. Largely self-taught with around two years of trading in the back room of a music store, I soon began playing for organ clubs and was being hired to play for conventions and various other events.
3. In your opinion, what makes the Music Box Theatre such a unique and beloved place?
What has made us successful is the combination of a movie palace (one of the few surviving in Chicago), clever programmers who provide a wide variety of new, independent, classic, and occasionally silent films, and a faithful audience base who we consider as family. The organ plays a part in preserving the classic moviegoing experience.
4. What is your earliest moviegoing memory?
My parents took me to the movies when I was just a toddler. From my earliest memory, my older siblings and I went to the movies every Saturday, and often on Sundays. It has been a lifelong interest.
5. What is your favorite Music Box memory to date?
Our annual Christmas sing-alongs and double feature of White Christmas and It’s A Wonderful Life become more precious by the year. I’ve had hundreds of people tell me that I have become part of their family’s Christmas tradition as organist for these events for so many years.
[See our story: How ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ (and Chicago’s Music Box Theatre) Saved Christmas]
6. What’s one fact about the pipe organ that most people would find surprising?
At the Music Box, people are most surprised by the fact that the organ is not a pipe organ at all, but plays using digital samples of an actual theatre pipe organ. My husband Thom Day and I restored a 1929 Kimball theatre pipe organ console, built in Chicago in 1929, the same year the Music Box opened. I designed the stop specification and Thom did all of the wiring to create 24 audio channels of 200 watt per channel sound. We installed it in 2018. There’s over 1,500 feet of wiring between the console and the two organ chambers on either side of the proscenium.
7. For cinephiles with 24 hours to spend in Chicago, what should they do and see?
They should definitely visit the Music Box. There’s always something interesting to see in the main theatre, our smaller Theatre 2 or, during the warm months, films on the patio behind our Music Box Lounge. They will see films presented with opening and closing curtains and dimming house lights. In the main “atmospheric” auditorium, they will see twinkling stars and floating clouds on the ceiling.
8. What is your favorite movie?
I don’t have a single favorite movie. Being my age and a lifelong moviegoer, I have way too many favorites to list. I love the whole moviegoing experience.
9. What is your favorite movie set in Chicago?
Again, there are too many. I have accompanied silent films set in Chicago. The Sting was set in Chicago, though not filmed here. Parts of The Untouchables were actually filmed here. One of my all-time favorite films, Billy Wilder’s classic Some Like It Hot, has a storyline that begins in Chicago but, again, not filmed here.
10. What’s a perfect musical score?
I couldn’t possibly narrow it down. There were too many brilliant movie composers over the last century. The Music Box recently showed Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, with a fabulous score by Bernard Herrmann which is nearly perfect. But then, what about Max Steiner, Alfred Newman, Randy Newman, Victor Young, John Williams, Erich Korngold, Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, Leonard Bernstein, Nino Rota, Franz Waxman, Lalo Schifrin, Michel Legrand, Marvin Hamlisch… and so many others?
11. If you could be best friends with one movie character, who would you choose?
Fred Astaire. He was close friends with the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, and Cole Porter, all who wrote songs specifically for him, when even he realized he didn’t have a great singing voice. He also appeared in so many of our greatest films with a wide range of co-stars from The Golden Age.
12. What one fact about your life today would most surprise your 5-year-old self?
It would surprise me that I ever became a professional musician. My parents were not creative people and would never have wanted me to go into music as a way of making a living. I had a great aunt who had lived through the Great Depression and owned a corner grocery store. She always told me: “When you grow up, drive a bread truck. People will always eat bread.”
+1. What’s your question for us?
What is your favorite guilty pleasure/feel good movie?
Kevin: I’m in spooky season mode, and my go-to comfort movie this time of year is M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village. Wildly underrated and a warm bath for the senses this time of year.