Richard Simonton

Richard Simonton
Born	1915 Evanston, Illinois
Died	1979 (aged 63–64)
Other names	Doug Malloy

Richard Simonton (1915–1979), also known under the pseudonym Doug Malloy, was a Hollywood businessman and entrepreneur, known for his involvement in the Hollywood community, his rescue of the Steamboat Delta Queen, his work in preserving the work of musicians in the Welte-Mignon piano rolls and for founding the American Theatre Organ Society. Among piercing enthusiasts he is also known as an early pioneer of the contemporary resurgence in body piercing.

Richard Simonton was born in Evanston, Illinois, in 1915. His father died when he was three, and his mother subsequently moved to Seattle, where he grew up in the difficult conditions of the Depression. He showed an early aptitude for music and audio engineering, earning money in high school by tuning pipe organs. He later worked for the Masterphone Sound Company, which installed sound systems in silent theatres adapting to the new talking pictures. Always of an inventive and entrepreneurial mindset, before the age of twenty he had patented a circuit for electronic organs. In time he made his way to Southern California, where he was licensed as a professional engineer by the state and worked for Peerless Transformers and subsequently for RCA.

In 1939, Simonton went to New York to meet with the founders of the Muzak Corporation, which had been founded some five years before. He proposed that Muzak begin franchising, which it had not previously done, and ended up buying the franchise for the seven Western states, which he held until the 1970s. On the strength of this success, he began acquiring holdings in TV and radio stations, which included KRKD radio in Los Angeles and KULA radio and TV in Hawaii, the ABC affiliate.

He became a successful businessman and built an elaborate home in Toluca Lake, California, where he lived until his death in 1979 at the age of 64. The house included two organs and a 63-seat home theatre, where he showed movies to large audiences every week for many years. Outgoing and sociable, Simonton was popular in the Hollywood community. Friends and visitors included people such as Groucho Marx, Laurence Olivier, and the composer Aram Khachaturian. His best friend for many years was the silent film star Harold Lloyd; he was a trustee of Lloyd's estate.

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