Rosa Rio, an organist...

...from the silent film era, died at age 107.

Miss Rio was undoubtedly among the very last to have played the silent-picture houses, accompanying the likes of Chaplin, Keaton and Pickford on the Mighty Wurlitzer amid velvet draperies, gilded rococo walls and vaulted ceilings awash in stars. She was also one of the few women to have made her way in a field dominated by men.

When silents gave way to talkies, she became a ubiquitous presence on the radio; when radio yielded to television, she played for daytime serials.

For eight decades — until her final performance, last year — she built a career as one of the country’s premier theater organists.

At NBC, Miss Rio played for as many as two dozen radio shows a week, often with just 60 seconds between shows to bolt from one studio to another.

Radio of the period was a rough-and-tumble world — a man’s world. Miss Rio gave as good as she got.

As recounted in Leonard Maltin’s book “The Great American Broadcast: A Celebration of Radio’s Golden Age” (Dutton, 1997), she was playing a show at NBC one day when the announcer, Dorian St. George, crept up behind her, undid the buttons down the back of her blouse and unhooked her bra. Miss Rio, performing live before a gallery of visitors, could do nothing but play on.

When the music stopped, Mr. St. George stepped up to the microphone to do a commercial. As he intoned plummily with the gallery looking on, Miss Rio stole up behind him, unbuckled his belt, unzipped his fly and neatly dropped his trousers. Then, according to Mr. Maltin’s book, she started on his undershorts.

What happened next is unrecorded.

I could think of a few cheap puns using the word "organ," but I think I'll pass. It's a family blog.