Silent Cinema Society

By Joe Rinaudo
Edited by Wendy Greene

I recently found out that my best friend and mentor, Dave Hartman, has been ill, which brings to mind all of the wonderful things that I have learned from him over our forty-eight year friendship.

Chapter 1

I first met Dave in the late 1960’s when he was working for Dick Carty at the Carty Piano Company. Carty Piano was responsible for the rebuilding of over three thousand player pianos over the years.

At the time I first met Dave, he and the team at Carty Piano were in the midst of rebuilding many of the fantastic mechanical musical instruments for the famed Nethercutt Museum in Sylmar, California. I remember that Dave was very kind to me, and as a shy teenager I was very intimidated by this gentle giant they called Dave! When I told him I was there to buy piano rolls for my parents’ player piano he asked if it needed any thing done to it. When I told him that it was missing a small brass plate that protected the wooden spool box when the roll is rewound, he took me upstairs and pulled out a box of them and said “like this?” He then took it over to a polishing wheel and after polishing it he clear coated it for me with lacquer. He said “consider this a gift from me and Carty Piano but don’t tell Dick!” It amazed me to see how simple he made this process look. Little did I know that a few years later, when we would meet again, he would teach me all about polishing and clear coating!

Carty Staff 1962 — Carty Piano team, 1962, l to r: John Murera, Dave Hartman, Ramsey Carter, Jim Braun, Dick Carty.

He took me into another room and showed me a huge pile of parts and a piano with no strings. He said that this belongs to Mr. J.B. Nethercutt and it is something called a Photoplayer! Dick Carty put Dave in charge of figuring out what all the jumble of parts did and how they went together. What a puzzle! When I asked Dave what a Photoplayer is, he told me that it was a mechanical piano-organ with sound effects used as the music for silent films! I told Dave that I love and collect silent films and I would like to come back to hear it play. Dave said to ask Dick Carty (but there would be no problem).

Later when I was paying Dick Carty for the piano rolls that I had purchased, I asked if I might hear the Photoplayer when finished, as I collect silent films and have never heard of such a machine. Dick said how would you like to show one of your silent films when we demonstrate it for Mr. Nethercutt? When Dick asked how much I might charge for my services (still feeling guilty for the reroll plate in my pocket) I said that I would love to do it. No charge!

Well, the big day came. I had an older friend drive me down as I was too young to drive by myself. When I was setting up the projector Dick Carty told me not to speak to Mr. Nethercutt as he was their biggest client and didn’t want anything to go wrong. I saw Dave setting up the Photoplayer. Dressed in, what I would later come to find out, his finest attire: tennis shoes, blue jeans and an un. tucked Pendelton shirt. They brought in a man from a neighboring music store to play the Photoplayer. Dave said queue up the film and let’s give it a run through! When I started the 16mm projector with a short but very wild Mack Sennett comedy, this thing called a Photoplayer burst forth with powerful music like I have never heard before! I was swept away to another world and had a greater appreciation for the Sennett film.