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Legend Is The Show At Theater

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 7, 2007

Updated: 11/05/2007 11:11 pm

There are a lot of well-chronicled reasons to go to the Tampa Theatre. I found two more recently.

One was to escape football. The agony of the defeated Bulls, Gators and Penn State had taken its toll, and I had a premonition about the Bucs gift-wrapping another opponent's victory.

The other was to catch the Rosa Rio show. She's the Wurlitzer icon who performs before and during Tampa Theatre's periodic showings of silent films. Her storied career in radio dates to the 1920s, and she played her first silent-film gig during the William Howard Taft administration of the early 1900s.

Most recently, Rio was playing at a Sunday matinee featuring that haunting 1922 classic "Nosferatu," the first screen version of "Dracula."

Nearly 900 people showed.

"Rosa is a rock star," said Tara Schroeder, Tampa Theatre's programming director. "She has her groupies. They wait for her in the lobby afterwards. They want her autograph, and they buy her CDs."

The audience was an eclectic mix. From high school students curious about silent films and a legendary centenarian to Sun City Center seniors coming to see one of their own.

Given that this was the Sunday before Halloween, Rio's entrance was thematic. After her skeleton-bedecked Wurlitzer had slowly and eerily ascended amid plumes of fog, she arrived separately - in a coffin.

Macabre? More like incongruous.

After tossing her red cape and hood, Rio revealed a

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