Stuart Oderman: talking to the piano player

November 23, 10:45 PMSF Silent Movie ExaminerThomas Gladysz

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Stuart Oderman's

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By Thomas Gladysz
SF Silent Film Examiner

Stuart Oderman is an unsung hero of the silent cinema.

For more than 50 years, Oderman has accompanied silent films in venues across the United States (including San Francisco). And for 40 years, he has served as the official pianist at screenings of silent films at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. A well travelled virtuoso, Oderman has also in the last half-century performed in theaters and universities in Canada and Europe. A long time friend and correspondent of Lillian Gish, Oderman has also played for her films with the actress in attendance on more than a few occasions.

Oderman’s accompaniment to silent films can be heard on various VHS and DVD releases. Of them, one stands out. This reviewer considers Oderman’s accompaniment to the Home Vision Cinema release of Pandora’s Box one of the finest soundtracks of all time.

More than a musician, Oderman is also an author - and a champion of the actors and actress of the silent and early sound era. Though born well after the advent of talkies, Oderman is still partial to silent film. He considers it “pure film.” The pianist has published articles chronicling the artists important to the time, and has turned his enthusiasms and knowledge into five books.

Those books are Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle: A Biography of The Silent Film Comedian, 1887-1933 (McFarland), Lillian Gish: A Life on Stage and Screen (McFarland), The Keystone Krowd (BearManor), and Talking to the Piano Player (BearManor). This later book contains reminisces of encounters and friendships with Colleen Moore, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Anita Loos, Marlene Dietrich, Frank Capra, Jackie Coogan, Madge Bellamy, Aileen Pringle, Allan Dwan, Adela Rogers St. Johns, Betty Bronson, Lois Wilson, Constance Talmadge and others.

Oderman’s latest is Talking to the Piano Player 2 (BearManor). This new book is a second collection of profiles and reminisces – or what the author terms personal interviews. His subjects are prominent past personalities from music and film including Joan Blondell, Lita Grey, Louise Brooks, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Tallulah Bankhead, Artie Shaw, Harry Richman, Ann Miller, Veronica Lake, Marie Windsor, Vivian Blaine, and others.

One of the most poignant profiles contained in the book is of Harry Richman (1895-1972), the popular American entertainer of the 1920s and 1930s. Oderman encountered the then retired bandleader, singer and actor in Santa Monica in 1970.

As he tells it, Oderman came across Richman’s out-of-print autobiography in a thrift store for 50 cents, and the clerk who rang the sale mentioned the book’s author lived nearby and sometimes went to the “House of Pies or to Zucky’s Delicatessen late at night by himself.”

Finding Richman in the phone book, Oderman telephoned and was invited to the entertainer’s tiny white bungalow. They spoke at length on a few occasions, with Oderman mentally recording their conversations while noting the impoverishment of the singer who made “Puttin on the Ritz” a smash hit. On top of Richman’s piano, we are told, were signed vintage glossies of Lenore Ulric, Clara Bow, and Jean Harlow – three women with whom the entertainer was once romantically involved.

Similar circumstances brought Oderman and Veronica Lake (1922-1973) together. By chance, Oderman encountered the film noir femme fatale with the peek-a-boo hairstyle early one morning in 1963. Long out of the public spotlight and trying to make end’s meet, Lake was bartending at the Martha Washington, a women’s residence hotel in New York City.

Ever the plucky though sincere fan, Oderman approached Lake and asked her to breakfast. “We order coffee and juice, and the Early Breakfast Special: eggs, home fries, and toast.” “She wants to speak for no other reason than to dispel any myth that she is an easy pickup who waits for film buffs to list her credits, although I tried not to say . . . .” Oderman’s observations depict an actress with a keen mind coming to terms with her past.

Another once forgotten actress Oderman encountered was Louise Brooks (1906-1985). The pianist met her in 1967 after a screening of Pandora’s Box at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York.

Oderman’s six page portrait of Brooks includes her observations on not only aspects of her own life and career (the Ziegfeld Follies, G.W. Pabst, Marion Davies, Charlie Chaplin, etc…), but also contemporary figures (Grace Kelly, and Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof). It complements the portrait of the actress in her later years as revealed in Jan Wahl’s recent book, Dear Stinkpot: Letters from Louise Brooks.

Along with other often poignant and revealing profiles, Talking to the Piano Player 2 includes photographs taken at the time Oderman became acquainted with his subjects, as well as other rare photographs from the author's personal collection. All together, it is interesting and enjoyable read.

More info: Earlier this year, Stuart Oderman was the subject of a profile in the New York Times, as well as half-hour radio interview on WNYC. Visit the BearManor page for further details on this new book. Talking to the Piano Player 2 is available on-line and at better book stores.