R.I.P. Lou DiCrescenzo

[Jay Schwartz]

I received the sad news that Lou DiCrescenzo died on Friday night, following heart surgery. He had been suffering from assorted health problems for the last several years.

Lou previously had a huge film collection, and donated many nitrate rarities to the Library of Congress, vintage equipment to the American Museum of the Moving Image, and donated films and equipment to the Renew Theaters chain in the Philadelphia suburbs. He had been a professional projectionist since the 1960s, and also had a large collection of vintage phonograph machines and records.

I'm guessing that some of you knew him, as I did.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

So sorry to be reading this. I talked to Lou on the phone several times regarding vintage prints. In particuluar a print of Spartacus I had at the time. Turns out he said there exist three versions and I had the second (slightly shortened version) well, no one else with knowledge of the movie knew there were three versions, everyone else only knew of two versions.

Anyway, Lou will be missed for sure. I wish he could have written books on different film aspects....

[Steve Guttag]

I, normally, do not write into these sorts of threads. It just isn't my thing and, with ever increasing frequency, as I age, they come more often. But for Lou, I'll make an exception as he was exceptional.

Lou was one of those guys that most people never knew but probably really wish that they had. He was an avid collector and historian of motion picture films, equipment as well as music and radio. Unlike many collector of things, he didn't just collect film prints (or the media), he collected the things that made them or ran them. He had Vitaphone #1...the one that ran The Jazz Singer. He had a radio show for decades (the last station he was on was WBCB) under the stage name of "Smilin' Lou Powers." With the Powers coming from the Powers projectors.

When I was doing research for setting up some silent film presentations and I wanted to get some definitive answers for the aspect ratio and aperture size...that sort of thing. Lou made actual projectors from the era available. This isn't some out-of-a-book theoretics, or the ever untrustworthy recollection of some person that heard from some old-timer of an old-timer...this was the actual equipment (different makes and models)...he had it all and I was able to measure the actual apertures in those projectors and get something more of a definitive answer and let the equipment speak for itself.

In numerous conversations I had with Lou, one of his biggest fears was that all of this history was going to be forgotten. That the era of the first half of the 20th century (with respect to music and film) would become forgotten knowledge as it all fades away. He'd have to cringe has saw or heard someone post/state something that simply was incorrect about a topic based on what they had heard or merely rationalized themselves. He told me...you can't correct them because then you get someone with hurt feelings, that doesn't believe you anyway. But that is how factual information about an era drifts away. It's like a game of "telephone" (that is what we called it) where you sit in a circle and one person starts with a simple message/phrase and one by one you tell the next person until you get all of the way around and then compare what you have versus what you started with.

His enthusiasm never seemed to wane. He was always interested in learning or discovering new things too. His ego was never such that if you found something out that may even contradict what he had believed, it was perfectly on the table (but please come with something better than "I heard from this guy...etc").

With Lou, you had someone with the knowledge and the actual equipment and media to back it up. You could learn from and marvel at it all. Do you want to know what Gone with the Wind looked like in its original nitrate? Yeah, he had that. Vitaphone needles? Sure. Wanna talk about Big Band...he had the goods there too.

I hope the people that he has entrusted with his materials and a portion of his knowledge will continue the charge to not let that technology fade away.

He was a pleasant person that you always felt better for having talked to or met with. He is someone that I will miss dearly.