Rosa Rio Dies

[Paul E. Gierucki]

By WALT BELCHER | The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 14, 2010

Updated: 10:31 am

TAMPA - Rosa Rio, the beloved Tampa Theatre organist whose professional career spanned more than 90 years, died Thursday at age 107.
"She went peacefully and I miss her already," said Bill Yeoman, her husband and manager.

"She had been fighting intestinal flu and it just wore her out. She told me, 'Daddy, I want to go. Don't stop me.'

"But she was a trooper and she loved show business."

"She will be missed. It's like I lost my best friend," says Tara Schroeder, Tampa Theatre's director of programming and a close friend of Rio.

The theater is planning a memorial celebration of her life, possibly on June 2, which is Rio's birthday.

A child prodigy, Rio began playing music for silent films for a movie theater in her hometown of New Orleans when she was 10.

She played piano and organ for most of her life in a career that took her to Manhattan in the 1930s and '40s, when she became "Queen of the Soaps."

She played organ accompaniment for dozens of soap operas and radio dramas, including "The Shadow" with Orson Welles and "The Bob and Ray Show," "Cavalcade of America," "My True Story" and "The Goldbergs."

Rio had played Tampa Theatre's 1,400-pipe Mighty Wurlitzer Theatre Organ since 1996, shortly after she and Yeoman moved to Tampa to escape the cold winters of Connecticut.

She once said she was fortunate to have been able to bounce back from the end of the silent film era, the end of radio dramas and end of the big band era.

"I love to work, I love to play the organ and I had to eat," she joked in a 1998 Tampa Tribune article.

She was known for her charm, her energy and her sense of humor.

She would meticulously prepare for each performance by watching the silent film several
times and planning for sound effects and the right mood music for each scene.

She once said she memorized the main themes and would improvise as the movie played. Sometimes she injected snippets of modern pop music such as slipping The Beatles' "Yellow Submarine" during a "The Phantom of the Opera" scene in which the phantom is hiding under the water.

She studied music at Oberlin College and silent film accompaniment at The Eastman School of Music. Rio accompanied silent films in movie palaces in New York and New Orleans.

During the 1930s, she was hired by NBC to play in the all-male studio orchestra. She was supposed to be a temporary replacement while they searched for a man.

She stayed for 22 years and even had her own radio show, "Rosa Rio Rhythms," which was broadcast coast to coast and to troops overseas during World War II.

According to the Tampa Theatre website, since 1996, Rosa has performed for more than 30 silent film presentations for full houses. Her last performance was in August 2009.

[Richard M Roberts]

Truly Sad News, because with the loss of both Rosa Rio and Bob Mitchell in the past year, I think we've now lost the whole generation of accompanists who actually played for Silent Films when they were new. But then again, it was amazing to have any of them with us this long.

RICHARD M ROBERTS