For Rosa Rio, it was final curtain call

TAMPA - One day in 2005, Rosa Rio took her friend and fan Bob Smith aside and asked him to pray for her.

The theater organists' convention was coming to Tampa and she wanted to be there, but she was nervous because she was 103.

At first, Smith didn't believe Rio. Later, he realized Tampa Theatre's storied organist had just admitted him to a very exclusive circle: the people who knew her true age.

It was a heavy burden, Smith told Rio's fans as they assembled Saturday at the ornate downtown movie house to give Rio, who died May 13 at 107, a final curtain call.

"I wanted to tell people, but I knew she'd be furious if I did," Smith said.

Rio was known for her dedication to rehearsing and for her love of a dirty joke, friends recalled.

And she wasn't perfect. She tried in vain to learn to type at 104, and she didn't much like George Gershwin's mother.

Saucy and spry, Rio lived a life few can imagine.

Her music career began when she was 10 and spanned silent film, radio and live television.

She knew such entertainment giants as Orson Welles and Bob Hope. She broke barriers for women when music was largely a man's business. She spent her life doing what she loved and getting paid for it.

"Rosa is one of those rare people who truly lived every day of her life," said Tara Schroeder, Tampa Theatre's programming and marketing director.

Rio was born in New Orleans in 1902. She told a Library of Congress interviewer that she found her calling after hearing the pipe organ at a movie house in Cleveland when she was a teenager.

"I was speechless," she said. "When I went out on the street, I looked up at the sky and said, 'Now I know what I want to do.'"

Her skills took her from the Sanger Theater in her hometown to New York City, where she played for Welles' pioneering radio program "The Shadow" as well as other shows. She had her own radio show during World War II. She accompanied soap operas on radio and television, earning her the title "Queen of the Soaps."

After recording technology made her skills obsolete, she lived in Connecticut before eventually retiring with her husband, Bill Yeoman, to Sun City Center in the 1990s. Then the silent films she loved called her back.

She took to Tampa Theatre's 1,400-pipe Mighty Wurlitzer in 1996 and quickly became the theater's most popular attraction, greeting visitors in the lobby after each of her shows.

"Because of her, we were able to cultivate a large audience for silent film, which was dear to her heart," Schroeder said. "She often talked about being grateful for being able to come back to silent films."

In Rio's honor, the crowd at her memorial held a sing-along - a fixture of her performances - and watched "The Play House," her favorite silent film, starring Buster Keaton. Steven Ball, of Ann Arbor, Mich., one of Rio's many proteges, filled in for her on the organ.

As the service ended, the crowd rose for a standing ovation as the Mighty Wurlitzer stood alone in a spotlight on the stage. Three red roses lay across the bench.