Born and raised in Portland, Bob Richardson remembers many fun and happy days at the old Organ Grinder Pizza Restaurant on Southeast 82nd Avenue.
He first visited the restaurant with his parents at age 4, shortly after the Organ Grinder opened in 1973, and loved the big, fantastic organ and the environment and even the pizza (although it would never be mistaken for being the best in town).
“It made me an organ nerd,” said Richardson, now 55. “I was immediately hooked not just by the music but just seeing how everything worked. We went regularly. We loved the place.”
So, as he recalled fondly his youth at Organ Grinder, Richardson heard about a 50-year anniversary concert being put on at Cleveland High School last year. The organ wouldn’t be used — it had long been parted out — but the Columbia River Theatre Organ Society provided a Kimball organ for the concert. It would be played by four internationally renowned theater organists who all played on the original.
At the concert, he encountered Dennis Hedberg, the Organ Grinder co-founder who eventually became primary owner. The two talked, and Richardson, a filmmaker/videographer, set up to do an interview with Hedberg about the Organ Grinder.
One thing led to another, and it became a full project for Richardson and his Diaphone Productions. He has done several interviews and photo shoots and accumulated thousands of photos and artifacts (including a 16mm training video), produced a trailer and now hopes to conclude a full documentary called “Pipe Dreams and Pizza Crusts — The Rise and Fall of the Organ Grinder.”
Richardson has a crowdfunding campaign going to further finance the project, and he hopes to finish the documentary — and find a distributor — in 2025. (If you watch the trailer , it’ll only pique your interest.)
“This has turned into a feature documentary for general audiences not just organ nerds like me,” Richardson said.
While attending Oregon State University in Corvallis in 1996, Richardson had heard about the Organ Grinder Restaurant closing for financial reasons. He was glad to get a couple buddies to drive up with him to visit one last time. “It was packed like the old days, people there to say farewells. That was that,” he said.
“I had posters and memorabilia. I try to explain what was so great about it. Fast-forward to the 50-year concert … I realized there was more to the story than the public knew about.”
So, he went about interviewing Hedberg and many others.
“There is a lot of color and drama to the backstory, and it’s definitely in the ‘Keep Portland Weird’ category,” Richardson said.
The documentary will tell of the Organ Grinder’s huge success. Designed by Will Martin (who later designed Pioneer Courthouse Square), the glass building was something to behold. The Wurlitzer Theatre Organ was huge, as owners added enhancements and pipes through the years. It was a tourist attraction.
There were live monkeys at the Organ Grinder; Richardson interviewed the monkey handler, Vicki Buck. The pizza didn’t have the best reputation, but it fed the people lucky enough to make it inside — as the line to get in stretched around the block.
“Amazingly, it claimed to be the largest single outlet of pizza in the world. Their busiest days they were doing over 1,000 pies a day,” Richardson said.
There was a short-lived second location in Denver.
The Portland location (now occupied by a Super King Buffet) had financial issues. Original owners lavished some employees with company cars — Cadillac, Jaguar — and had to lease the land. Revenues weren’t invested into the business, Richardson said.
“Thanks to an outpouring (of customers) in the final two weeks, they were able to finish in the black after 23 years,” he said. “A net profit of $18,000.”
Richardson said the coolest thing about the Organ Grinder Restaurant was certainly the organ.
“We’d wait for a table to open up near (the organ), so we could see the organists feet playing,” he said. “As I got older, one of the controversial things was they converted the mezzanine into a video arcade. As a teenager, I appreciated that.”
Richardson said he still plans to interview some fans and patrons, and visit Denver and Mesa, Arizona (site of pipes used for Organ Grinder’s organ, and an organ-pizza establishment) and original co-founders in Hawaii. He’s interviewed about 90% of the principal people involved with the Organ Grinder (including some remote interviews with people in the United Kingdom and Australia.
It’s been the proverbial passion project for Richardson.
And, “I wouldn’t be able to do this without my husband (Jason Lee) having a steady job.”
For more: PipeDreamsFilm.com .
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