Background
The Fox Theatre opened in San Diego on November 8, 1929, one week after the stock market crash of “Black Friday.” The 3,000
seat theater was the third largest on the Pacific coast, and brought glamour along with silent films to San Diego. Four downtown
blocks had to be roped off in order to accommodate the approximately 100,000 people who attended its opening. The films were
accompanied by the $50,000 4-manual/32-rank Robert Morton Theater Organ, which contained 3,000 pipes. Its primary organist
was Edith Ducker Steele, who played accompanying music while comedy, chases, drama and romance filled the screen. When “talking
pictures” established their dominance in 1936, the organ was moved to the back of the stage and forgotten. It was rediscovered
by theater manager William Mauck thirty years later, blanketed in dust and inhabited by mice. In August 1967, seven men came
together, all amateur organists and industrial engineers, to form the San Diego Organ Enthusiasts Guild, later known as the
San Diego Theater Organ Group, Inc. For the next two years, they would be dedicated to restoring the organ at no cost to the
Fox Theatre. These men were Carter “Bob” Lewis, D.P. Snowden, Irving Pinkerton, Paul Cawthorn, Wayne Guthrie, Archie Ellsworth
and Bob Wright. After the restoration was finally complete, Edith Ducker Steele, the original organist, tested the instrument
and declared it “good as new.”