Richard Simonton (April 29, 1915 – August 22, 1979), also known under the pseudonym Doug Malloy, was a Hollywood businessman and entrepreneur, known for his involvement in the Hollywood community, his rescue of the steamboat Delta Queen, his work in preserving the work of musicians in the Welte-Mignon piano rolls and for founding the American Theatre Organ Society.

His father died when he was three, and his mother subsequently moved to Seattle, where he grew up in the difficult conditions of the Great Depression.

He showed an early aptitude for music and audio engineering, earning money in high school by tuning pipe organs.

[citation needed] In time he made his way to Southern California, where he was licensed as a professional engineer by the state and worked for Peerless Transformers and subsequently for RCA.

[citation needed] He became a successful businessman and built an elaborate home in Toluca Lake, Los Angeles, where he lived until his death in 1979 at the age of 64.

The children convinced him to save the Delta Queen in 1958 when they learned that the boat was in financial distress and was not accepting reservations.

He also founded Pacific Network Inc. (PNI) and California Communications (CCI), firms that rented motion picture sound equipment to studios.

Film showings at his home were often accompanied by live organ, played by some of the great theatre organists of the day, including Gaylord Carter, Jesse Crawford, Gordon Kibbee and Korla Pandit, all of whom performed and recorded at the house.

With partners including E. J. Quinby, he turned the enterprise around, and even added an 1897 steam calliope rescued from the sunken Island Queen.

Bill Muster and company vice president Betty Blake led the effort to list the Delta Queen on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970.

These include Mahler, Debussy, Fauré, Ravel, Scriabin, and others, playing their own compositions, a historically invaluable resource.

After the war, Simonton wrote to Edwin Welte in an attempt to locate music rolls for his pipe organ.

He added that he and Bockisch had lost nearly everything in the war, but had managed to hide some of the piano rolls in a barn in the Black Forest.

Throughout his life Simonton was interested in similar topics, travelling to India and the Philippines to explore non-Western ideas.

He had also established contacts amongst body piercing enthusiasts both in Los Angeles and on a global scale, including London tattooist Alan Oversby (also known as Mr. Sebastian), Roland Loomis (also known as Fakir Musafar), Sailor Sid Diller, and Jim Ward.

[2][3][4] Simonton's experience as an amateur piercer formed the basis of the primitive techniques used at the time and his network of contacts was instrumental in spreading the popularity of body piercing.

Simonton's personal enthusiasm for body piercing as an erotic practice and his love of the fantastic came together in this document, which contains some fictional and/or speculative information.