Mark Noller may be the only person you’ll ever meet who likes his job so much he built a model of the office at home.
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Noller, 58, is the organist at the Music Box, the guy you hear on weekends playing Gershwin tunes and standards like “Blue Moon” before a screening. He lives in a double-wide trailer in Manteno, just off I-57 a few miles south of Peotone. Two years ago he spent 18 months and $50,000 converting his one-and-a-half-car garage into a replica of the Lakeview movie house. In a vestibule between the garage and trailer there’s a kiosk with a marquee atop a tiny, curtained box-office window. It’s decorated with mosaic tile and bedecked with vines. To the left is the “concession stand”–an ordinary kitchen counter and a commercial popcorn machine. Two posters–one for a Music Box tribute to Harold Lloyd, the other for a silent film festival at the Gateway Theatre–hang on a curtained wall. On another wall is a sheet of poster board with the signatures of the 500 or so people who’ve visited since the theater was finished in October 2004.
Born in Gresham, Noller grew up in Roseland, where he started piano lessons at age eight. At ten he took an organ class at Fernwood Methodist, then continued with private lessons. By the time he was a high school freshman he had his first paying job, as an organist at Gresham Methodist Church; he also put in a lot of time playing at the State Theater, Roseland’s first movie house. From 1968 to ’72 Noller served as a navy chaplain’s assistant, playing the organ for all the services on the cruiser USS Columbus. Over the years he’s performed at countless church services (he still plays three every Sunday) and weddings. By his own estimate he plays at a couple hundred funerals a year. “I’ll take a funeral any day over a wedding,” he says. “Weddings are a pain in the butt.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Jon Randolph.
