Morris Meyerfeld Chairman of the Board, a largely ceremonial position that ended his day-to-day involvement in the operation. That same year Beck married Meyerfeld's niece, Louise Heims Beck, who was a librarian turned vaudeville singer. She became a close working companion of Beck's, assisting him in his theatrical endeavors and later co-founding the American Theatre Wing. Faced with declining vaudeville audiences, Orpheum Circuit Inc. merged with the Keith-Albee Circuit in 1928 to form a national chain with some two hundred major venues coast-to-coast. Later that year Keith-Albee-Orpheum merged with David Sarnoff's Radio Corporation of America (RCA) to form Radio-Keith-Orpheum Pictures (RKO Pictures). The original Orpheum Theatre was destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and was rebuilt three years later near the same site. This venue remained open until 1937 before becoming a causality of talking motion pictures and the Great Depression. Today the Palace Theatre in Los Angeles, the third Orpheum built in that city, is the oldest remaining theater in the nation that was constructed under Meyerfeld's stewardship; celebrating its centennial year on June 26, 2011. Republican delegate In 1912 Meyerfeld was chosen from California's 4th congressional district as a delegate to the Republican National Convention. A supporter of President William Howard Taft, he was eventually seated after surviving a challenge from backers of former President Theodore Roosevelt. Marriage In 1886 Meyerfeld married Nannie Friedman (1867–1959), a San Francisco native of German-Scottish parents, and the following year became the father of Elizabeth Leslie, his only child. Elizabeth later married Leon Lazare Roos, a Bay Area merchant, and took up residence at a house Meyerfeld had built for the newlyweds. Designed by architect Bernard Maybeck, the Roos home on 3500 Jackson Street cost $36,000 to construct, a princely sum for the time, and is today considered a San Francisco landmark. Death On June 20, 1935, Morris Meyerfeld died at his residence in the Mark Hopkins Hotel on Nob Hill. He was survived by his wife of forty-nine years and daughter. Jesse Meyerfeld later in life opened a restaurant in San Francisco, while Joseph Meyerfeld remained in the cigar business after relocating to Brooklyn, New York. Both brothers most likely died in the 1920s. At the time of his death Morris Meyerfeld's estate was estimated to have a value in the neighborhood of one-million dollars. Sources Source material derived from census records, passport applications, passenger ship manifests, business directories and