The Mighty Morton

As printed in “Stockton’s Crown Jewel, The Bob Hope/Fox California” (2005) by Sylvia Sun Minnick:

Stockton’s first noted theater organ was a Wurlitzer Automatic Organ installed at the Idle Hour in 1910.  When the T&D opened in 1917 it featured a fine 9 rank Wurlitzer which was later removed and installed in the new Fox California in 1930.  It was expanded by addition of Morton pipes from the Tivoli Theater in San Francisco.  It was sold in the 1950s and has disappeared.  As a replacement, Friends of the Fox found and purchased a Robert Morton organ originally installed in the Seattle Fox in 1928.  Devoted volunteers spent thousands of man hours restoring the Morton, and with the addition of five additional ranks, it is a superb instrument, worthy of its new home.