john unger may be in chicago as i write this. that was quick.
and now an obit. this is from the lobby poster at the stanford theater in palo alto. like our music box or like the late lamented varsity and parkway, the stanford is a revival theater, a meticulously restored movie palace with a working theater organ. if you have ever seen a classic movie in a movie palace, you been in a time travel machine, experiancing a reality that is almost lost to us, as more and more of these get torn down for malls and condos, like the granada or will rodgers, or rehabbed into yuppie floor show factories like the ford and chicago. i saw buster keaton’s the general at the stanford, with keaton’s original score being played on the organ, with a projector rebuilt so it played at the proper speed. i was able to experiance it the way my grandparents had when the movie was first released. it was wonderfull, and i owe the experiance to Ben Stoltz and David Packard. ben got me there, and packard saved the theater…he also introduced the movies that night, and the owner of chicago’s music box, who was the organist.
HP makes the best calculators in the world, and i owned a few. i’d kill for an old hp 25: i can name you 4 people of the top of my head who regret loosing or selling theirs. i still have trouble using a normal calculator. they were a nice company, they made cool tools, and the money from the company gave us some really cool things, like the stanford theater, and the montarey bay aquarium and research institute. the original apple 1 computer was designed there: wozniak was an employee, and they let him have the rights to it. he didn’t want to quit, had to be bullied into it by jobs when apple was starting up.
from the lobby placard–
Hewlett Packard
1938 — 2002
R.I.P.
The Stanford Theatre still exists today only because of the employees of the Hewlett Packard Company. Without their achievements over the years, there would have been no foundation to purchase and restore this theatre.
Palo Alto might have had one more book store, or perhaps another restaurant. Architects had plans ready for a new “Casablanca Cafe” at this location when the Packard Foundation rescued the theater in 1987.
The Hewlett Packard Company was founded in 1938 in a garage on Addison Street only a few blocks from where you are now standing. Back then, the Stanford Theatre was showing brand new movies. In 1938 you could have seen Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby and Holiday . You could have seen Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood . You could have seen Alice Faye, Don Ameche, Ethel Merman, and Tyrone Power in Alexander’s Ragtime Band . You could have seen Jimmy Stewart and Jean Arthur in Frank Capra’s You Can’t Take It With You . You still can see these same movies at the Stanford Theatre. Our audiences know that they are truly timeless.
The HP Way also touched many people’s lives. Most of us expected that it would last forever — that it would prove as timeless as a Frank Capra movie. But those entrusted with the duty to safeguard it have exercised their legal right to make another choice. Dura lex, sed lex. The law is harsh, but it is the law.
HP employees are now on a new ship, being taken on a new voyage. The company has even changed its stock symbol to HPQ to stress that the “old” HP is gone. For the sake of the surviving employees, of course I hope for a good outcome. But it is hard to imagine that their leaders can invent something better than what they left behind.
David W. Packard
The Stanford Theatre Foundation.
