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ANN LEAF is only twenty-four years old. She's four feet eleven. Her friends call her "Little Organ Annie"
ANN LEAF is another bit of evidence to support the old theory that the best things come in small pack¬ ages. She is just four feet and eleven inches tall and weighs under one hundred pounds.
It is hard to believe that, if you are listening to her expert manipulation of the console. There is so much sound — all at the command of her fingertips — and such a volume of music that it seems incredible for so tiny a lady to be the mistress of it all. And the pedals — how does she manage to work them ? Perhaps you’ve wondered when you listened to her Nocturnal program.
Her friends kid her about her size. They have many cute names which they scream from one end of the studio to the other. Her cheeriest smile always answers them. “Sweet and Lowdown” is one monicker; so are “Little Organ Annie,’’ “Little by Little,” and “Mitey.”
She was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1906. Even then, she was tinier than most babies. But she grew up into a strong kid.
Ann’s parents were wise people. When she showed an interest in the piano at the age of five, they did not insist
that she give up her gay atternoons with the school kids . . . but they did make her practice early every morning. It was there in Omaha that the tiny girl learned the basis of the art that now makes her one of the two or three greatest organists on the air.
When she was eleven, a concert orchestra invited her to play with it. She was terrified, naturally. An orchestra, fifty men with instruments behind her, the whitefaced, unsmiling audience — it seemed an impossible task. But again her parents directed her until she was so enthusias¬ tic about it that nothing could have prevented her playing. She played a Mozart concerto — and did it creditably.
After high school in Omaha, she attended the Damrosch Institute of Musical Art in New York. Her only interest was in the piano until one day she played on a small home organ. It was just a tiny box of pipes but she became enthusiastic about it. When she went out for a job — it was for that of organist.
A Los Angeles movie house was the scene of her first success. As her fame spread she moved into other and bigger theatres. And the radio became her medium when CBS officials chose her to finish the day with an organ nocturne.
The installation of sound in so many theatres was a tragedy to many coffipetent organists. Thrown out of their jobs, for which they had spent years in training, their plight was indeed sad. But Ann Leaf had very wisely investigated another source of income.
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