Contrary to the Pap article of 1972, none of the original Taft booth equipment was donated. Rather the booth was part of business manager Rollo de Wilton's grand scheme for a fully-equipped theatre, as he states in an April, 1930 Pap interview:
By the time I got to Taft, alterations had been made to the original equipment, which had included turntables at each machine and in the non-sync booth for Vitaphone reproduction. Spyros Skouras, president of Twentieth Century-Fox and father of a Taft boy, provided the funds in 1955 for modernization of the booth to facilitate Cinemascope projection as well as "flat." The original Super simplex projectors, ERRI sound heads and amplifier, and stage horn were retained; the lamphouses were replaced with Peerless Magnarcs, a pair of rectifiers to feed them DC were installed in the booth, retiring the motor-generator set on the floor above. A new picture sheet was installed.
Not the Taft booth, but the same setup, a Super simplex machine with Peerless lamp:
The Kleigl carbon arc (manual feed) booth spotlight referred to by de Wilton, was operable but inefficient, fed from the third floor generator. Also in the generator room was a small unit which supplied exciter light current and field current for the stage horn, below:
In the school year 1969-70, the horn was replaced with an
Altec A-7 and a new picture sheet was installed. Neither were donated.
January 2017