October 16, 2016 - David Peckham
The Artist
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David Peckham has been entertaining RTOS audiences since 1974 when he played at our 10th Anniversary Gala at age 13. The upcoming program will mark his 14th appearance on the RTOS organs. David began studying piano, then organ, while in grade school. He studied at the Eastman School of Music with Dr. David Craighead and theatre organ with Don Kinnier.
David has performed on nearly every major theater organ in the US as well as tours of Australia, Canada, and the UK. He has served as house organist on the 4/27 Marr & Colton at the Clemens Center in Elmira since 1977 and has been the organist for the First United Methodist Church in Horseheads, NY since 1985. David owns his own company which services and refurbishes pipe organs throughout western New York and northern Pennsylvania. Most recently David was named 2016 Theatre Organist of the Year by the American Theatre Organ Society (ATOS) at its national convention this past July. |
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The Film
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Wings is a 1927 American silent war film set during the First World War directed by William A. Wellman. It stars Clara Bow, Charles "Buddy" Rogers, Richard Arlen and Gary Cooper appears in a role which helped launch his career in Hollywood.
The film, a romantic action-war picture, was rewritten from a story by John Monk Saunders to accommodate Clara Bow, Paramount's biggest star at the time. Wellman was hired as he had World War I combat pilot experience, although Richard Arlen and Saunders had also served in the war as military aviators. The film was shot on location on a budget of $2 million at Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas. Hundreds of extras and some 300 pilots were involved in the filming, including pilots and planes of the United States Army Air Corps which were brought in for the filming and to provide assistance and supervision. Wellman extensively rehearsed the scenes for the Battle of Saint-Mihiel over ten days with some 3500 infantrymen on a battlefield made for the production on location. |
Although the cast and crew had much spare time during the filming because of weather delays, shooting conditions were intense, and Wellman frequently conflicted with the military officers brought in to supervise the picture.
Acclaimed for its technical prowess and realism upon release, the film became the yardstick against which future aviation films were measured, mainly because of its realistic air-combat sequences. It went on to win the first Academy Award for Best Picture at the first annual Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences award ceremony in 1929, the only fully silent film to do so. It also won the Academy Award for Best Engineering Effects (Roy Pomeroy). Wings was one of the first to show two men kissing (in a fraternal moment between Rogers and Arlen during the deathbed finale), and also one of the first widely released films to show nudity. In 1997, Wings was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", and the film was re-released to Cinemark theaters to coincide with the 85th Anniversary for a limited run in May 2012. The Academy Film Archive preserved Wings in 2002. (Text from Wikipedia, used with permission)
Acclaimed for its technical prowess and realism upon release, the film became the yardstick against which future aviation films were measured, mainly because of its realistic air-combat sequences. It went on to win the first Academy Award for Best Picture at the first annual Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences award ceremony in 1929, the only fully silent film to do so. It also won the Academy Award for Best Engineering Effects (Roy Pomeroy). Wings was one of the first to show two men kissing (in a fraternal moment between Rogers and Arlen during the deathbed finale), and also one of the first widely released films to show nudity. In 1997, Wings was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", and the film was re-released to Cinemark theaters to coincide with the 85th Anniversary for a limited run in May 2012. The Academy Film Archive preserved Wings in 2002. (Text from Wikipedia, used with permission)
