This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: October 10, 2008 - Stan Kann was a man rich in talent and loaded with friends.
A renowned theater organist who spent decades working at the Fox Theater, an accidental comic, a collector of vacuum cleaners and gadgets, Kann's sweet nature earned him an array of loyal friends that included prominent names from Hollywood and St. Louis.
Friends and fans from as far as Puerto Rico came in force to the Fox Theater on Sunday to remember Kann, who died Sept. 29 in St. Louis following a heart procedure.
"They came out to say goodbye," said Mary Strauss, an owner of the Fox, who estimates that 700 people attended the hour-and-a-half remembrance during which the mighty Wurlitzer rose from the orchestra pit for the native St. Louisan one more time, this time topped with a casket-size bouquet of flowers.
Strauss, who befriended Kann in the early 1980s when she hired him to work at the restored Fox, said that he was a man of immense talent who was funny just in the way he lived.
"His mind always went faster than his mouth, so he would always stutter and his words were sliding around his mouth. If you went out with Stan, you knew something funny was going to happen," she said, mentioning incidents where Kann would spill food or just accidentally cause mayhem. "It was just the way he lived life."
And he was fun. "He liked everybody, and everyone liked him," Strauss said.
Words and gadgets sometimes proved to be a challenge for Kann, but it was his musical talent that flowed easily. Over the years, Kann played the Fox's mighty Wurlitzer in several stints. He restored the old organ while getting his bachelor's degree in music as a Washington University student in the 1950s, and then spent the next 22 years as the house organist.
Kann had moved to California in 1975, but Strauss brought him back to play for silent movies and special events. He returned to St. Louis 10 years ago for hip surgery, and stayed to helm the popular Fox Theater tours.
"I think it was a wonderful thing for him to come back," said Strauss. "Everyone still remembered him, he was playing at the Fox, he saw his public."
"He was a consummate musician. And that's something that really wasn't brought out nationally, when he would tour," she said. "He had a knack, and it's a forgotten art of how to score a silent film."
Norman Delaney, a close friend and sometimes manager, knew Kann for more than 50 years and easily remembers the Fourth of July in 1957 when Jerry Berger brought him to a party.
"Not only was he a fabulous organist, but he had a unique comedic talent," said Delaney, noting that Kann so impressed Phyllis Diller that she urged Johnny Carson to have him on.
He eventually appeared on Carson's show 77 times.
"That was a great romance," said Diller, from her home in California.
Kann also went on The Mike Douglas Show 88 times, and appeared with Bill Cosby and even Cher.
"He was simply wanted on every show," Diller said.
Like most of Kann's longtime friends, Diller had a story about her old friend. She recalled one night she and Kann were being driven in a limousine after an appearance and it was pouring rain. The limousine driver told the pair that he was sleepy, so Kann insisted on driving and took over. Diller said the short Kann could barely see over the hood of the large car, and that it wasn't much safer than the sleepy limo driver.
"He was serious, and still funny, and dangerous," she said.
Judy Feinberg Brilliant, who met Kann in the late 1950s when she was a teenager living with her family in the Central West End, had a long and close friendship with him that included helping him track down vacuum cleaners and gadgets to show on TV, and helping him with his makeup for local appearances.
When Kann worked at Stan Musial's restaurant, Brilliant recalled him saying that people would come in and ask: "Is Stan here?" And the doorman would reply, "Stan the Man, or Stan the Kann?"
"I was the one who encouraged him to find junk to demonstrate, and of course, he couldn't," Brilliant said. "He just messed it up perfectly."
Kann was a popular man, who was often stopped at airports during his years of appearing on television.
So Brilliant was not surprised when, while traveling with him to England for a 2004 concert, fans approached him while they were in the line to see the Crown Jewels. And then while waiting to see the Queen emerge at Westminster Abbey, three more people came up to him and asked him if he were Stan Kann.
But Brilliant knew him in a more personal way.
"Stanley and I had a triangle - Stanley, his eyebrows and me," she said. Kann had bushy eyebrows that required some maintenance, and after some mishaps at the barber, he convinced Brilliant to help him. "He knew they were out of whack," she said. "He would come over, and I would mess with the tweezers and the scissors. He didn't let anybody mess with them except me."
"He fumbled with everything but the organ," she said.
Miriam Moynihan recently returned to St. Louis after working for the Houston Chronicle for years.