Dennis Wolkowicz was a self-taught pipe organist and silent film aficionado who ran two Northwest Side theaters, the Gateway and the Portage, for many years and was active in efforts to restore the Six Corners shopping area.
Under the stage name Jay Warren, Wolkowicz performed dozens of dates a year around the Chicago area as an accompanist to silent films.
Wolkowicz, 74, died of a heart attack Feb. 24 at the Silent Film Society of Chicago’s offices, 4054 N. Milwaukee Ave., said his wife, Linda Stagner. Wolkowicz, who had lived his entire life in a house in the Northwest Side Irving Park neighborhood, was about to play a gig around the corner at the City News Cafe using a keyboard hooked up to a computer to simulate the sounds of a pipe organ, his wife said.
Wolkowicz was a graduate of Gordon Tech High School and then joined the National Guard. He was in training to become a military policeman when his father died in 1973, leading him to return to Chicago to help run the family’s butcher shop.
Wolkowicz operated the butcher shop until his mother died in 1985, then decided to pursue a career in music. He spent a year working for piano and organ manufacturer Baldwin before “he decided being a salesman wasn’t for him and that he’d rather play the instrument,” his wife said.
Wolkowicz hit upon his next move after meeting a member of the Copernicus Center’s board. The Copernicus Center, a Polish cultural group in Jefferson Park, operates the Gateway Theater, which in 1986 was in need of a manager. Wolkowicz signed on, going on to manage the Gateway for the next 18 years.
“He had to go in there with 2,000 seats, a rotten curtain and no budget and they told him, ‘See what you can do with it,’” Stagner said.
Built in 1930 as a movie palace and designed for sound films, the theater at the time was used mostly for ethnic performing arts events. Under Wolkowicz’s direction, the Gateway began showing silent films sporadically.
“The ambience in here is great,” Wolkowicz told the Tribune in 2003. “You don’t get this vibe at the multiplex.”
Wolkowicz earlier had placed a fully functional, vintage 1927 pipe organ in the Gateway, and he initially hired other organists to play silent films there. Before long, his wife said, “he was like, ‘I can do better than that.’ He said it was harder than it looked, but then he started studying and practicing.”
Wolkowicz had been drawn to organ music from a young age.
“I’m 71 years old. Being a Polish kid from the Northwest Side, we took obligatory accordion lessons,” Wolkowicz told the Tribune in 2022. “I noticed when we were going for lessons, all the cool kids were playing organs. That’s where I wanted to (be). I eventually did.”
In 1998, he co-founded the Silent Film Society of Chicago. He was program director of the group, which coordinated screenings at the Gateway and at the Pickwick Theater in Park Ridge. The group held the first Silent Summer Film Festival in 2000 at the Gateway.
“Our objective with the society is not only the silent film but the whole presentation of the silent film, which is in the grand movie palace with the curtain parting on the opening titles, with the organ roaring out of the orchestra pit,” he told the Tribune in 2001.
Wolkowicz was an evangelist for silent film, which he said provided a “goose bump experience” when paired with proper music.
“Most people have never seen (a silent film) presented correctly,” he told the Tribune in 2002. “But what happens, with live music and the proper venue, people start by laughing at the film. By the end, they are laughing with the film.”
Wolkowicz ended his association with the Gateway in 2004, and two years later took over as manager of the long-dormant Portage Park Theatre, at 4050 N. Milwaukee Ave. He led efforts to revive the 1,300-seat theater, which had closed around 2000, with events including a silent film event, a Polish film fest and a monster film festival with an appearance by Rich Koz as Svengoolie, in addition to classic film screenings.
“He didn’t care if the house was full or just a few people — he would get out there, and with entertainment, he would come to life. He was almost a different person when the show started,” said Joe Angelastri, owner of the nearby City News Cafe and like Wolkowicz a Six Corners Chamber of Commerce board member. “And he just wanted to bring people together — he always was the driving force, and he was very calm, very easygoing and made everybody else comfortable in community meetings.”
Under new ownership, the Portage closed in May 2013. Wolkowicz moved the Summer Silent Film Festival to the Des Plaines Theatre for one year before that theater closed, and then moved it to the Leela Arts Center in Des Plaines.
Wolkowicz played about 60 pipe organ events a year in the Midwest until the COVID-19 pandemic, and he resumed in earnest in recent years.
“He was all over — he played silent films everywhere,” Stagner said. “At one time, he played the Music Box Theatre quite a bit, and lately was playing there again, and he also was playing at the Davis and the Logan and the Arcada. He was hitting the circuit — and also playing silent films in churches all over. It’s exploded. Last year he did 70 dates, and the year before, it was 60. It had been going up 10 dates every year at least.”
Theater pipe organs were designed to replicate the music of an entire orchestra, Stagner said, while a church organ has a different, more narrow tonal quality. So when a silent film was screened in a church, Wolkowicz had to work hard to express a broader sound quality, she said.
“The theater organ was kind of unique because it had better tonal capabilities than the piano did and it was more spontaneous than an orchestra,” Wolkowicz told the Tribune in 2022. “It was a good fit.”
In addition to his wife, Wolkowicz is survived by a brother, Kenneth.
Services were held.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
