Richard Simonton

Richard Simonton (1915–1979), 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 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.

Richard Simonton was born in Evanston, 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 Great 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.

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.

In 1939, Simonton went to New York to meet with the founders of the Muzak Corporation, which had been founded some five years before.

As a tremendous fan of theatre organ 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.

During the remainder of his life, he helped preserve and promote theatre organs and the music played upon them.

His home contained two organs, a church-style Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ upstairs which was dedicated by Virgil Fox, 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.

This was one of the touring organs used by Virgil Fox.

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.

Simonton had so enjoyed his trip aboard the boat that he saved the enterprise, buying a controlling interest in 1957–58.

The children convinced him to save the Delta Queen in 1958 when they learned that the boat was in financial distress and was not accepting reservations.

Due to his children's demands, Simonton bought a controlling interest in the company and made it profitable.

He also founded Pacific Network Inc. (PNI) and California Communications (CCI), firms that rented motion picture sound equipment to studios.

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.

In the early 1970s, Simonton had an emergency operation for complications of appendicitis; the operation went wrong and he suffered brain damage.

He spent several years struggling to regain full command of basic skills, including his speech.

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 became a successful businessman and built an elaborate home in Toluca Lake, Los Angeles, 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.

Simonton and his wife Helena had four children: Richard Jr., Robert, Mary, and Margaret.

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.

He died in 1979 from a heart problem, possibly related to the damage sustained in the operation.