Special to The Columbus Dispatch
For one program each summer, Ohio Theatre organist Clark Wilson sits down to make silent movies sing.
Whether accompanying a comedy classic starring Charlie Chaplin or an old-fashioned romance with Mary Pickford, Wilson always gets a workout: As the movie unspools, Wilson is asked to play nonstop — providing auditory accents to every pratfall or lovers’ embrace — at the console of the Ohio Theatre’s famed “Mighty Morton” pipe organ.
“I always tell people, when Clark finishes a silent film, we lower him in the pit, he falls to the ground, we put the robe on him and we give him a towel,” said Rich Corsi, vice president of programming at CAPA.