American Painting Contractor

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May 30, 2025

Bringing Back Bertha

Restoring a Wurlitzer organ from the silent film age

Birmingham, Alabama

Lazenby Decorative Arts – “To be perfectly honest, the biggest challenge that I had to overcome was self-doubt.”

The Alabama Theater in Birmingham, nicknamed “The Showplace of the South,” is a piece of cinema history. Designed in the Spanish Baroque style, the theater is adorned with lavish decorations, including elaborate plasterwork and a Might Wurlitzer organ affectionately known as “Big Bertha.”

Big Bertha provided the background music for silent films. With 32 ranks of pipes, The Mighty Wurlitzer can mimic the sound of an entire orchestra as well as provide sound effects to bring films to life.

The keeper of Big Bertha, a gentleman named Larry Donaldson, approached Rik Lazenby to restore the intricate designs from almost a century past.

“To be perfectly honest, the biggest challenge that I had to overcome was self-doubt,” Rik Lazenby said. “Even though I am a practiced artist with a master’s degree and 25 years of experience as a decorative artist, I was still intimidated by the 97-year-old Wurlitzer organ with a wonderful history.”

The first step was retrieving the five top and back panels, along with the two benches, from storage and transporting them to his studio. He thoroughly cleaned and degreased all the surfaces using Krud Kutter and a green scrub pad. Once the panels were dry, Lazenby used a denatured alcohol mixture to remove areas of dark glaze that had been applied in two areas by another artist.

There were 29 pieces of the gold and wood appliques that were chipped or otherwise missing. Lazenby had to meticulously repair each missing chunk using Magic-Sculpt Epoxy Clay and an engraving tool.

To paint the gold appliques, Lazenby hand-mixed a metallic gold paint, adding Royal Gold Mica Powder to the mix. “This gave the metallic gold the ‘pop’ I felt was needed,” he said.

All told, it took nine weeks to complete the project with two workers: Rik and his daughter Jennifer.

When it was over, Rik went back to the Alabama Theater to watch a showing of The Phantom of the Opera, the 1925 silent film.

“The best part of this project was sitting in the audience watching ‘Big Bertha’ being played as an accompaniment to the original black and white movie,” Rik said. “When the audience gave the performance a standing ovation, I almost wanted to take a bow.”

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