Richard Simonton
Encyclopedia
Richard Simonton also known under the pseudonym
Doug Malloy, was a Hollywood businessman and entrepreneur, known for his involvement in the Hollywood community, his rescue of the steamboat the Delta Queen, his work in preserving the work of musicians in the Welte-Mignon
piano rolls and for founding the American Theatre Organ Society. Among piercing enthusiasts he is also known as an early pioneer of the contemporary resurgence in body piercing
.
, Illinois
, in 1915. His father died when he was three, and his mother subsequently moved to Seattle, where he grew up in the difficult conditions of the Depression
. He showed an early aptitude for music and audio engineering, earning money in high school by tuning pipe organs. He later worked for the Masterphone Sound Company, which installed sound systems in silent theatres adapting to the new talking pictures. Always of an inventive and entrepreneurial mindset, before the age of twenty he had patented a circuit for electronic organs. In time he made his way to Southern California
, where he was licensed as a professional engineer by the state and worked for Peerless Transformers and subsequently for RCA.
In 1939, Simonton went to New York to meet with the founders of the Muzak Corporation, which had been founded some five years before. He proposed that Muzak begin franchising, which it had not previously done, and ended up buying the franchise for the seven Western states, which he held until the 1970s. On the strength of this success, he began acquiring holdings in TV and radio stations, which included KRKD radio in Los Angeles and KULA radio and TV in Hawaii, the ABC affiliate.
He became a successful businessman and built an elaborate home in Toluca Lake, California, where he lived until his death in 1979 at the age of 64. The house included two organs and a 63-seat home theatre, where he showed movies to large audiences every week for many years. Outgoing and sociable, Simonton was popular in the Hollywood community. Friends and visitors included people such as Groucho Marx
, Laurence Olivier
, and the composer Aram Khachaturian
. His best friend for many years was the silent film star Harold Lloyd
; he was a trustee of Lloyd's estate.
In 1958, Simonton purchased a controlling interest in the Mississippi
riverboat
Delta Queen, rescuing the enterprise and turning it towards profitability. He also owned a large part of California Communications, a firm that rented motion picture equipment to studios.
Simonton was married and had four children. He was an involved family man, taking his family to live in Hawaii for some months and on other travels. They regularly spent summers on board the Delta Queen. His older son, Richard Simonton Jr., also an audio engineer, should not be confused with his father. His other children included a younger son and two daughters.
In the early 1970s, Simonton had an emergency operation for complications of appendicitis; the operation went wrong and he suffered brain damage as a result. He spent several years struggling to regain full command of basic skills, including control of his speech. At this point, he largely retired from public life, although in time he was able to continue his love of travel and his wide community of friends. He died in 1979 from a heart problem, likely related to the damage sustained in the operation.
music, Simonton arranged a gathering at his home on February 8, 1955, where he and several other organ enthusiasts founded an association called the American Theatre Organ Enthusiasts, later shortened to the American Theatre Organ Society, which is still highly active today. During the remainder of his life, he was extremely active in the preservation and promotion of theatre organs and the music played upon them. His home contained two organs, a church-style Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ upstairs and a Wurlitzer
theatre organ downstairs in the theatre, which was equipped with professional recording equipment. Film showings at his home were often accompanied by live organ, played by some of the great theatre organists of the day, including Gaylord Carter
, Jesse Crawford
, Gordon Kibbee and Korla Pandit
, all of whom performed and recorded at the house. Simonton also owned a third organ, the Wurlitzer pipe organ from the New York Paramount Theatre, which has been considered the greatest Wurlitzer pipe organ ever built. It had been the favored instrument of Jesse Crawford. Simonton acquired it with the idea of buying the Belmont Theatre in Los Angeles and installing the organ, but the deal for the theatre fell through and the organ was never set up in Los Angeles. It is now in the civic center in Wichita, Kansas. For a time Simonton also owned the Rogers touring organ, perhaps the largest electronic organ ever built, which was so large that it had to be towed by tractor-trailer. This was the touring organ used by Virgil Fox.
Reproducing Piano was a sophisticated cousin of the player piano, a mechanical instrument that could reproduce the subtleties of master pianists' styles by means of paper rolls. Invented by Edwin Welte and his brother-in-law Karl Bockisch in Freiburg, Germany, in 1904, the system was applied to organs with the "Welte Philharmonic-Organ" in 1912. The rolls, recorded between 1904 and 1932, are now historically significant as part of the Welte-Mignon legacy and as unique witnesses to the playing styles of the prominent musicians who played for the originals. These include Mahler, Debussy, Faure, Ravel, Scriabin, and others, playing their own compositions, a historically invaluable resource. (They are particularly interesting when they make mistakes playing their own works.)
The Welte firm and its founders suffered heavily in World War II. After the war, Simonton wrote to Edwin Welte in an attempt to locate music rolls for his pipe organ. Welte answered that he had only managed to save about sixteen organ rolls, which he would exchange for food. He added that he and Bockisch had lost nearly everything in the war, but had managed to hide some of the piano rolls in a barn in the Black Forest. In 1948 Simonton travelled to Germany and went with Welte to the remains of the factory, which had been completely destroyed by bombing in 1944. Nothing remained standing; only the hidden master rolls in the Black Forest had survived. Simonton worked with Welte and Bockisch to rescue the legacy of the rolls. They played the rolls on Bockisch's Steinway-Welte piano and Simonton recorded the sound onto a tape recorder, an invention which was also extremely rare at the time. These tapes were released as LPs by Columbia Records in 1950. Welte and Bockisch selected and sold the best of the rolls to Simonton in 1948; some of the boxes arrived with straw from the barn still in them. He bought more from Bockisch's widow in 1952. Simonton remained in correspondence with Welte and Bockisch for many years, sending food parcels and other supplies, and Welte's daughter lived with the Simonton family for a time. After the initial purchase, Welte and Bockisch also found a Steinway-Welte piano for Simonton. Many of the rolls have since been re-recorded from that piano and issued on CD. Simonton ultimately donated the rolls to the music library at the University of Southern California.
, the author of The Science of Mind
and founder of Religious Science
, a metaphysical movement. Throughout his life Simonton was interested in similar topics, travelling to India and the Philippines to explore non-Western ideas. His interest in body piercing
would also have been considered shocking at the time, and as he explored these interests later in life he adopted the name Doug Malloy to preserve his privacy. His family was largely sheltered from his involvement in the piercing movement and in aspects of the gay or bisexual lifestyle newly emerging in the 1970s.
As Doug Malloy, he was an instrumental supporter and patron of the early body modification scene. By 1975, he had published a short, largely fictional autobiography
entitled Diary of a Piercing Freak under his assumed name, which was sold to a fetish publisher and released in softback under the title The Art of Pierced Penises and Decorative Tattoos. He had also established contacts amongst body piercing enthusiasts both in Los Angeles and on a global scale, including London
tattooist Alan Oversby
(also known as Mr. Sebastian), Roland Loomis (also known as Fakir Musafar) and Jim Ward. He and Ward started what they called the T&P Group—short for tattooing and piercing—an association of tattoo
and piercing enthusiasts based primarily in Los Angeles.
The upsurge in interest in body piercing had created enough interest that Simonton advised Jim Ward, who was working as a picture framer at the time, that he should start a body piercing business. In 1975, Simonton advanced Ward the money to start Gauntlet, originally a home based business, and Jim began to produce body piercing jewelry and learn how to pierce. Simonton's experience as an amateur piercer formed the basis of the primitive techniques used at the time and his network of contacts was instrumental in spreading the popularity of body piercing. Ward perfected these techniques which have become industry standard the world over. By 1978, Gauntlet
had a retail location and the world's first body piercing studio was established. Doug also provided extensive notes that were ghostwritten by Ward into full articles for Piercing Fans International Quarterly (PFIQ)
, the first magazine devoted to the subject of body piercing, a Gauntlet publication.
One of Simonton's other notable contributions to the development of body piercing in contemporary society was his pamphlet Body & Genital Piercing in Brief, which is responsible for a large portion of the myths surrounding the origins of many piercings, most notably genital ones. Simonton's personal enthusiasm for body piercing as an erotic practice and his love of the fantastic came together in this document, which contains some fictional and/or speculative information. Many of the theories regarding the practice and origins of various piercings historically have been distorted by the widespread circulation of this document or later documents which quote it.
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
Doug Malloy, was a Hollywood businessman and entrepreneur, known for his involvement in the Hollywood community, his rescue of the steamboat the Delta Queen, his work in preserving the work of musicians in the Welte-Mignon
Welte-Mignon
M. Welte & Sons, Freiburg and New York was a manufacturer of orchestrions, organs and reproducing pianos, established in Vöhrenbach by Michael Welte in 1832.-Overview:...
piano rolls and for founding the American Theatre Organ Society. Among piercing enthusiasts he is also known as an early pioneer of the contemporary resurgence in body piercing
Body piercing
Body piercing, a form of body modification, is the practice of puncturing or cutting a part of the human body, creating an opening in which jewelry may be worn. The word piercing can refer to the act or practice of body piercing, or to an opening in the body created by this act or practice...
.
Early life and professional career
Richard Simonton was born in EvanstonEvanston, Illinois
Evanston is a suburban municipality in Cook County, Illinois 12 miles north of downtown Chicago, bordering Chicago to the south, Skokie to the west, and Wilmette to the north, with an estimated population of 74,360 as of 2003. It is one of the North Shore communities that adjoin Lake Michigan...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, in 1915. His father died when he was three, and his mother subsequently moved to Seattle, where he grew up in the difficult conditions of the Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. He showed an early aptitude for music and audio engineering, earning money in high school by tuning pipe organs. He later worked for the Masterphone Sound Company, which installed sound systems in silent theatres adapting to the new talking pictures. Always of an inventive and entrepreneurial mindset, before the age of twenty he had patented a circuit for electronic organs. In time he made his way to Southern California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, where he was licensed as a professional engineer by the state and worked for Peerless Transformers and subsequently for RCA.
In 1939, Simonton went to New York to meet with the founders of the Muzak Corporation, which had been founded some five years before. He proposed that Muzak begin franchising, which it had not previously done, and ended up buying the franchise for the seven Western states, which he held until the 1970s. On the strength of this success, he began acquiring holdings in TV and radio stations, which included KRKD radio in Los Angeles and KULA radio and TV in Hawaii, the ABC affiliate.
He became a successful businessman and built an elaborate home in Toluca Lake, California, where he lived until his death in 1979 at the age of 64. The house included two organs and a 63-seat home theatre, where he showed movies to large audiences every week for many years. Outgoing and sociable, Simonton was popular in the Hollywood community. Friends and visitors included people such as Groucho Marx
Groucho Marx
Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx was an American comedian and film star famed as a master of wit. His rapid-fire delivery of innuendo-laden patter earned him many admirers. He made 13 feature films with his siblings the Marx Brothers, of whom he was the third-born...
, Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...
, and the composer Aram Khachaturian
Aram Khachaturian
Aram Ilyich Khachaturian was a prominent Soviet composer. Khachaturian's works were often influenced by classical Russian music and Armenian folk music...
. His best friend for many years was the silent film star Harold Lloyd
Harold Lloyd
Harold Clayton Lloyd, Sr. was an American film actor and producer, most famous for his silent comedies....
; he was a trustee of Lloyd's estate.
In 1958, Simonton purchased a controlling interest in the Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
riverboat
Riverboat
A riverboat is a ship built boat designed for inland navigation on lakes, rivers, and artificial waterways. They are generally equipped and outfitted as work boats in one of the carrying trades, for freight or people transport, including luxury units constructed for entertainment enterprises, such...
Delta Queen, rescuing the enterprise and turning it towards profitability. He also owned a large part of California Communications, a firm that rented motion picture equipment to studios.
Simonton was married and had four children. He was an involved family man, taking his family to live in Hawaii for some months and on other travels. They regularly spent summers on board the Delta Queen. His older son, Richard Simonton Jr., also an audio engineer, should not be confused with his father. His other children included a younger son and two daughters.
In the early 1970s, Simonton had an emergency operation for complications of appendicitis; the operation went wrong and he suffered brain damage as a result. He spent several years struggling to regain full command of basic skills, including control of his speech. At this point, he largely retired from public life, although in time he was able to continue his love of travel and his wide community of friends. He died in 1979 from a heart problem, likely related to the damage sustained in the operation.
The American Theatre Organ Society
As a tremendous fan of theatre organTheatre organ
A theatre organ is a pipe organ originally designed specifically for imitation of an orchestra. New designs have tended to be around some of the sounds and blends unique to the instrument itself....
music, Simonton arranged a gathering at his home on February 8, 1955, where he and several other organ enthusiasts founded an association called the American Theatre Organ Enthusiasts, later shortened to the American Theatre Organ Society, which is still highly active today. During the remainder of his life, he was extremely active in the preservation and promotion of theatre organs and the music played upon them. His home contained two organs, a church-style Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ upstairs and a Wurlitzer
Wurlitzer
The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, usually referred to simply as Wurlitzer, was an American company that produced stringed instruments, woodwinds, brass instruments, theatre organs, band organs, orchestrions, electronic organs, electric pianos and jukeboxes....
theatre organ downstairs in the theatre, which was equipped with professional recording equipment. Film showings at his home were often accompanied by live organ, played by some of the great theatre organists of the day, including Gaylord Carter
Gaylord Carter
Gaylord Carter was an American organist and the composer of many film scores that were added to silent movies released on video tape or disks.-Early Life and Musical Beginnings:...
, Jesse Crawford
Jesse Crawford
Jesse Crawford , was a US pianist and organist. He was well known in the 1920s as a theater organist for silent films and was avery popular gramophone record recording artist. In the 1930s, he switched to the Hammond organ and became a freelancer...
, Gordon Kibbee and Korla Pandit
Korla Pandit
Korla Pandit , born John Roland Redd in St. Louis, Missouri, was a musician, composer, pianist, organist and television pioneer. He was known as the Godfather of Exotica.-Early career:...
, all of whom performed and recorded at the house. Simonton also owned a third organ, the Wurlitzer pipe organ from the New York Paramount Theatre, which has been considered the greatest Wurlitzer pipe organ ever built. It had been the favored instrument of Jesse Crawford. Simonton acquired it with the idea of buying the Belmont Theatre in Los Angeles and installing the organ, but the deal for the theatre fell through and the organ was never set up in Los Angeles. It is now in the civic center in Wichita, Kansas. For a time Simonton also owned the Rogers touring organ, perhaps the largest electronic organ ever built, which was so large that it had to be towed by tractor-trailer. This was the touring organ used by Virgil Fox.
The Delta Queen
In 1957, Simonton took his family for a river trip aboard the Delta Queen, a 285-foot steamboat then operating on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. Built in the 1920s, the Delta Queen had begun as a California riverboat operating between San Francisco and Sacramento. After Simonton's cruise, the owners of the Delta Queen found they could not keep the business going. Simonton had so enjoyed his trip aboard the boat that he saved the enterprise, buying a controlling interest in 1957-58. With partners including E. J. Quinby, he turned the enterprise around, and even added an 1897 steam calliope rescued from the sunken Island Queen. For many years the Delta Queen was operated only by obtaining special exemptions from a series of presidents, because U.S. law requires that boats of such a size be made of steel rather than of wood. The Delta Queen was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1970. President Carter campaigned from the Delta Queen and was on it in 1979 on the day that Simonton died.The Welte-Mignon Piano Rolls
The Welte-MignonWelte-Mignon
M. Welte & Sons, Freiburg and New York was a manufacturer of orchestrions, organs and reproducing pianos, established in Vöhrenbach by Michael Welte in 1832.-Overview:...
Reproducing Piano was a sophisticated cousin of the player piano, a mechanical instrument that could reproduce the subtleties of master pianists' styles by means of paper rolls. Invented by Edwin Welte and his brother-in-law Karl Bockisch in Freiburg, Germany, in 1904, the system was applied to organs with the "Welte Philharmonic-Organ" in 1912. The rolls, recorded between 1904 and 1932, are now historically significant as part of the Welte-Mignon legacy and as unique witnesses to the playing styles of the prominent musicians who played for the originals. These include Mahler, Debussy, Faure, Ravel, Scriabin, and others, playing their own compositions, a historically invaluable resource. (They are particularly interesting when they make mistakes playing their own works.)
The Welte firm and its founders suffered heavily in World War II. After the war, Simonton wrote to Edwin Welte in an attempt to locate music rolls for his pipe organ. Welte answered that he had only managed to save about sixteen organ rolls, which he would exchange for food. He added that he and Bockisch had lost nearly everything in the war, but had managed to hide some of the piano rolls in a barn in the Black Forest. In 1948 Simonton travelled to Germany and went with Welte to the remains of the factory, which had been completely destroyed by bombing in 1944. Nothing remained standing; only the hidden master rolls in the Black Forest had survived. Simonton worked with Welte and Bockisch to rescue the legacy of the rolls. They played the rolls on Bockisch's Steinway-Welte piano and Simonton recorded the sound onto a tape recorder, an invention which was also extremely rare at the time. These tapes were released as LPs by Columbia Records in 1950. Welte and Bockisch selected and sold the best of the rolls to Simonton in 1948; some of the boxes arrived with straw from the barn still in them. He bought more from Bockisch's widow in 1952. Simonton remained in correspondence with Welte and Bockisch for many years, sending food parcels and other supplies, and Welte's daughter lived with the Simonton family for a time. After the initial purchase, Welte and Bockisch also found a Steinway-Welte piano for Simonton. Many of the rolls have since been re-recorded from that piano and issued on CD. Simonton ultimately donated the rolls to the music library at the University of Southern California.
Body piercing innovator and promoter
Richard Simonton is best known in certain communities for his interest in alternative lifestyles. In 1932, he met and became inspired by Ernest HolmesErnest Holmes
Ernest Shurtleff Holmes was an American writer and spiritual teacher. He was the founder of a Spiritual movement known as Religious Science, a part of the greater New Thought movement, whose spiritual philosophy is known as "The Science of Mind." He was the author of The Science of Mind and...
, the author of The Science of Mind
The Science of Mind
The Science of Mind is a book by Ernest Holmes. It proposes a science with a new relationship between humans and God. Holmes, the founder of Religious Science, originally published it in 1926. A revised version was completed by Holmes and Maude Latham and published in 1937.Holmes' writing details...
and founder of Religious Science
Religious Science
Religious Science, also known as Science of Mind, was established in 1927 by Ernest Holmes and is a spiritual, philosophical and metaphysical religious movement within the New Thought movement. In general, the term "Science of Mind" applies to the teachings, while the term "Religious Science"...
, a metaphysical movement. Throughout his life Simonton was interested in similar topics, travelling to India and the Philippines to explore non-Western ideas. His interest in body piercing
Body piercing
Body piercing, a form of body modification, is the practice of puncturing or cutting a part of the human body, creating an opening in which jewelry may be worn. The word piercing can refer to the act or practice of body piercing, or to an opening in the body created by this act or practice...
would also have been considered shocking at the time, and as he explored these interests later in life he adopted the name Doug Malloy to preserve his privacy. His family was largely sheltered from his involvement in the piercing movement and in aspects of the gay or bisexual lifestyle newly emerging in the 1970s.
As Doug Malloy, he was an instrumental supporter and patron of the early body modification scene. By 1975, he had published a short, largely fictional autobiography
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
entitled Diary of a Piercing Freak under his assumed name, which was sold to a fetish publisher and released in softback under the title The Art of Pierced Penises and Decorative Tattoos. He had also established contacts amongst body piercing enthusiasts both in Los Angeles and on a global scale, including London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
tattooist Alan Oversby
Alan Oversby
Alan Oversby was one of the primary figures in the development of contemporary body piercing in Europe. He was better known by his professional name Mr. Sebastian....
(also known as Mr. Sebastian), Roland Loomis (also known as Fakir Musafar) and Jim Ward. He and Ward started what they called the T&P Group—short for tattooing and piercing—an association of tattoo
Tattoo
A tattoo is made by inserting indelible ink into the dermis layer of the skin to change the pigment. Tattoos on humans are a type of body modification, and tattoos on other animals are most commonly used for identification purposes...
and piercing enthusiasts based primarily in Los Angeles.
The upsurge in interest in body piercing had created enough interest that Simonton advised Jim Ward, who was working as a picture framer at the time, that he should start a body piercing business. In 1975, Simonton advanced Ward the money to start Gauntlet, originally a home based business, and Jim began to produce body piercing jewelry and learn how to pierce. Simonton's experience as an amateur piercer formed the basis of the primitive techniques used at the time and his network of contacts was instrumental in spreading the popularity of body piercing. Ward perfected these techniques which have become industry standard the world over. By 1978, Gauntlet
Gauntlet (body piercing studio)
The Gauntlet, also known as Gauntlet Enterprises, was a business founded in November 1975 by Jim Ward that pioneered the field of body piercing in North America. It was inspired by Ward's friend and mentor, Doug Malloy...
had a retail location and the world's first body piercing studio was established. Doug also provided extensive notes that were ghostwritten by Ward into full articles for Piercing Fans International Quarterly (PFIQ)
PFIQ
PFIQ is the acronym and common name for a publication known as Piercing Fans International Quarterly, which was published by Jim Ward from 1977 to 1997...
, the first magazine devoted to the subject of body piercing, a Gauntlet publication.
One of Simonton's other notable contributions to the development of body piercing in contemporary society was his pamphlet Body & Genital Piercing in Brief, which is responsible for a large portion of the myths surrounding the origins of many piercings, most notably genital ones. Simonton's personal enthusiasm for body piercing as an erotic practice and his love of the fantastic came together in this document, which contains some fictional and/or speculative information. Many of the theories regarding the practice and origins of various piercings historically have been distorted by the widespread circulation of this document or later documents which quote it.
External links
- The Wurlitzer that Made Hi-Fi American Theatre Organ Society article
- The Many Faces of Korla Pandit June 2001 Los Angeles Magazine article