LIFESTYLE cargoshippingtimes 11/04/2025 0 Comments

He does all he can to keep the image actors, the key to early cinema, alive

If you pass by Joe Renado’s house in La Crescenta-Montros, you probably won’t think anything unusual about it. You wouldn’t expect, for example, that it has a 20-seat silent movie theater with a semi-complete organ, a small museum dedicated to silent cinema-era equipment, or a sprawling basement workshop with the sounds of power tools. And you certainly wouldn’t expect Renaud, 74, to sit at a century-old instrument, plucking bridge strings and pressing pedals while the machine in front of him hums and whistles in time.

The device is Renado’s first passion in life, an American invention that was key to the silent movie viewing experience of the early 20th century but has been forgotten by much of the country: the photo player.

A man's hand pulls the levers near the music roll on the picture player.

A cousin to the self-playing player piano, the recorder automatically plays music read from perforated piano rolls. During their heyday—from their invention around 1910 until the 1930s, when the silent film era is thought to have ended—photographers delighted audiences (mostly in the United States) with silent films, particularly Buster Keaton-esque comedies. But then came the conversation, and the photographers were out of a job, slipping out of the public eye as they came onto the scene. Renaudeau, fascinated by these devices and their role in silent cinema, has spent more than half a century tracking down, restoring and sharing the word about old painters and similar devices. And as he ages, Renaud hopes to ensure the preservation of the image player’s legacy by creating a nonprofit organization dedicated to the restoration and education of these devices and silent cinema.

Among the small community of people who love the image player, Renado is something of a patron saint. “When people think of photographers, they think of him.” Nate Otto, an artist in Anoka, Maine, including restoration of player pianos and similar instruments. YouTube videos His game, including a Clip His 2006 post about “California’s Gold Rush” has been viewed 2.6 million times. Renaud is also the central contact person for the dozen or so people who actively restore or play Image Players. “He pretty much knows all the American photographers who are currently recovering, because we’ve all connected with him for one reason or another,” Otto says.

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Joe Renado has spent decades restoring photo players, rare devices that once accompanied silent movies.

“Preserving this part of American culture and passing it on to the younger generation is my life’s work,” says Renaudo. But this is not easy given how little there is today and how little access people have to see. Of the approximately 4,500 instruments produced by the American Photoplayer Company between 1911 and 1926—one of the earliest and most famous photoplayer manufacturers, and the Photoplayer Renado brand is particularly impressive—only about 50 still exist worldwide, and only about a dozen are in playable condition. Only one image player, which Reynaud built and donated to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, is available in the public domain. The rest have been scrapped – some are owned by people like Renaudeau who play them and put them to use, but most are hidden away by private collectors.

Of the known remaining photographers, Renaud has owned or helped restore about six of them over the years — and at one point he owned four at one time.

Born in Santa Monica in 1951, Renaud grew up when silent films still played on his family’s black-and-white television. His parents were piano players in the living room, and at a young age Renado learned how to service them when repairs were needed. As a young man, he thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if a pianist played along with a silent film?” But it wasn’t really doable. Player pianos only have room for one piano roll, so when the track you’re playing ends, you’re forced into a moment of awkward silence as you wait for the instrument’s spool to rewind so you can change to the next track. At first he tried to adjust himself to accommodate the two roles. But then, Renaudeau recalls, “an old timer said, ‘What are you doing this for? Why don’t you hire one of them photographers?’ And I said, ‘What’s a photo player?’

A man examines the parts of a picture player in the living room.

Renaud spent the next few years in search of one, cold-sounding piano dealers, theater owners, and antique shops. When he was 19, he got his first real boss. Word was that the Hyatt Hotel in Portland, Ore., had a photographer and an actor who could put on a show. Renaudo cajoles a friend to drive them around for a weekend in his Volkswagen van. “The hotel was spectacular,” Renaudeau remembers, with a ballroom styled like a 20th-century bar with gas lights. And then there was the photographer.

“I was blown away by the sound coming out of him,” Reinaudeau says. “People were singing and screaming – it was just unbelievable. And I thought, ‘I’ve got to have one of these’.”

When Hyatt closed a year later, the same image player was put up for auction. Rinaudo bounced back, but sold out at $8,600 (limited because he was under 20 years of earnings). A year later, he found a man who wanted to sell him a video player for $5,000. He went to look, but again he “just couldn’t afford it.”

But Providence continued to capitalize on Renado’s chances. A year later, the seller of the picture came back to Renaudeau and offered him $3,500. Renado’s first camera was saved, and he would spend the next two years restoring the device in the living room of his parents’ home. “At first they were a little worried about how he was spending his time and the chaos in their house, but they came around,” she says. To figure out how to restore his device, Renault enlisted the help of a mechanic friend who taught him how to adjust all the valves, gears, pipes and bells. (For work, using the skills he learned, Renaud entered the automotive business, but later left to start his own lighting business, which he still operates.)

As soon as his mirror player became playable, Renaudo sat down and practiced every day. Now, “I don’t know of any other player who can do it like me,” he says. And when a photo player is performed live, “the whole room vibrates,” says Bruce Newman, a restorer of pneumatic instruments, including photo players, in Oregon who had the pleasure of seeing Renado play in his home about 25 years ago. “You feel it in the core of your body and it’s delicious.”

Over the years, Renaudeau continued to search for photographers, constantly calling out to anyone who had heard of the pioneer. He eventually purchased the Hyatt Hotel Photo Player, which wound up in Arizona. Other trips included a trip to a warehouse in Seattle, but he couldn’t afford the asking price; fetching a price at a Las Vegas auction; driving to an old theater in Fresno where a photographer is said to have been, only to find that the building had been torn down; After rummaging through antique shops in Bakersfield; And searching for an old 19th-century San Diego hotel and coming up empty.

An old movie camera inside the dining room.

“One time, a guy said to me, ‘There’s a photographer buried in the basement of the Regent Theater in downtown Los Angeles,'” Renado says. He tracked down the owner in 1969, who brought him into the dark, rat-infested building with a sledgehammer. The owner tore through the stage, but there were no photographers. “It was one of the wildest beasts I had to go through, because you never know,” Reinaudeau says. “It was like I was on a hunt, or an archaeological dig.”

As he searched through the years, Renaud found a community of rebuilders who shared leadership, expertise and parts. He made a reputation. “I see him as an authority,” Newman says. “If I have trouble figuring something out, I call Joe and he can help me figure it out.” And when YouTube came along, Renado began sharing videos of himself doing it, which many photography enthusiasts, including Newman and Otto, credit as their introduction to the medium. Several thousand loyal followers keep track of Renado’s work and actions facebook or through him Silent Cinema Society Blog posts and newsletter.

Despite its fans, whether the photographer will survive in the coming decades is questionable. Most restoratives are related to Raynaud’s age. At 61, Bruce Newman is on the young side, and at 36, Otto—who Renado calls “the future”—is the youngest yet. As Renaudeau sees it, image players are meant to be played and enjoyed, but while his videos have undoubtedly helped grow global awareness and interest for image players, the pool of restorers has not. And the future of the device’s playability is at stake.

“I took it upon myself to carry that torch,” Reinaudeau says. To this end, he and a few friends and colleagues started a non-profit group, Silent Cinema Art and Technology, dedicated to the preservation and education of silent films and devices such as photo players. The hope is that this organization will be a continuing means of raising money to fund future renovations. Reynaudeau plans to use his home theater and museum space — a temple to his passion — to host exhibitions and screenings for benefactors and offer limited group tours and educational opportunities for children. He hopes the nonprofit can maintain the theater and museum and use it even after he’s gone.

“It’s an invitation,” Renado says, referring to the desire to share the picture player’s gospel and keep the history of silent cinema alive. “My father always told me, ‘You have to leave this earth in better shape than it is,'” he says. “Everybody has to find their own way to do it, and I hope I’ve found it. I think I have.”