Greetings family and friends! Today's rambling focuses on our "Uncle Jim" and his connection with Oakland's nearly century old Grand Lake Theatre. Thank you to Wendy for handling most of the research! Bill
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Memorable Character
“UNCLE JIM” - GRAND LAKE ORGANIST
We remember Uncle Jim as an irascible tease and frightening deliverer of surprise tickle bombs, and as a smiling wiry mustached man who loved entertaining his neighbors by playing his organ in the living room of his modest Oakland home. James Vivian and his wife Clara along with her two sisters, Florence and Laura were transplants to Oakland from Pennsylvania in the 1920’s. Before the move West, Jim was employed by the Remington Company, manufacturer of munitions for WW l, leaving in 1917 to register for the draft. After the war the reunited family found employment and raised their young families in the East Bay. Dad’s mother Florence worked for the Edison Company in the City, Clara was a clerical worker for a fire protection company, and Uncle Jim entertained audiences at Oakland’s opulent Grand Lake theatre as the organist on the thundering Wurlitzer. The seventeen hundred seat Neoclassical Grand Lake opened in 1926 near Oakland’s Lake Merritt and it’s giant illuminated rooftop sign with 2800 electric lights bulbs could be seen for miles. The theatre offered current silent films and presented traveling vaudeville acts to eager Bay Area audiences. The movie palace with Corinthian columns, monumental urns, classical frescoes, cornices, sumptuous drapes and domed ceiling featured a 3- manual, 11-rank Wurlitzer organ that raised and lowered from the orchestra pit on a power lift with the tuxedo adorned organist facing the screen with his back to the audience.
The nearly century old Grand Lake survived the “talkies”, a couple wars, COVID, and being split into two auditoriums. The theatre organ has been downsized and the 2800 light bulbs replaced with LEDS, but we can still picture our dapper Uncle Jim in his tux at the mighty Wurlitzer rising from the Orchestra Pit and playing for countless silent movies, performing during intermissions, providing musical accompaniment for famous, and not so famous vaudevillians…..and in his later years seated at his Hammond Organ playing for neighbors.
-Bill 11/23
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