“My dad let me stay up and watch The Day the Earth Stood Still and that was it for me,” says 41-year-old Steven Martin, recalling how he became interested in the theremin. “I just ran around the house making sounds like that.”
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The theremin was originally intended for concert-hall recitals, not for cheesy 50s science fiction flicks. In the late 20s Leon Theremin’s Carnegie Hall performances garnered headlines like “Soviet Edison Takes Music From Air” and “Hands Create Radio Music.” Musicians played his theremin by waving their hands through an electric field generated by radio tubes. The tremulous tones it emitted were amplified by loudspeakers. “It’s an air guitar for real–you have to get into a real weird head space in order to play one,” says Martin.
Theremin stopped performing, but Hollywood used his device in movies like Spellbound (1945), The Lost Weekend (1945), and It Came From Outer Space (1953). Martin’s documentary includes clips of a theremin recital on The Mickey Mouse Club and of Jerry Lewis bumbling into a plugged-in theremin in The Delicate Delinquent (1957). The film also shows how the theremin found its way into rock ‘n’ roll in the 1960s. Brian Wilson incorporated it into songs on the Beach Boys album Pet Sounds and on the hit “Good Vibrations.” Martin films rocker Todd Rundgren simulating the hand motions of a theremin player while mouthing the sounds of the instrument.
