Along Grace Street

One afternoon in the mid-1970s, I was walking along, some 20 yards behind a guy heading east on the 800 block of West Grace Street. I think it was summertime, but I don't remember anything in particular about the weather. Anyway, the guy in front of me nonchalantly picked up the Organic Food Store’s hand-painted sandwich board style sign from the sidewalk, put it under his arm and kept walking.

We both kept heading eastward. I don't remember what I first thought, at the time, but I was curious about it and to close the distance between us, I walked a little faster down the red brick sidewalk. By the time we had passed the Biograph Theatre (where I worked), I was pretty sure that he had no honest reason to take the sign. He was a big-haired hippie and I suppose he could have been a student. Or, he might have been a traveling panhandler/opportunist. In those days there were plenty of both in the neighborhood.

Passing by Sally Bell’s Kitchen, in the 700 block, I was within five yards of him when I spoke the lines I had just written for myself. My tone was resolute: “Hey, I saw you take the sign. Just put it down and walk away.”

The thief’s body language announced that he had heard me. He didn’t turn around. Instead he walked faster. I continued following and I said with more force: “Put the sign down. The cops are already on the way. Walk away, while you still can” (or words to that effect).

Without further ado, the wooden sign clattered onto the sidewalk. I was delighted!

The sign thief kept just going without looking back. As I gathered my neighbor’s property, I watched the fleeing hippie break into a sprint. He crossed Grace Street and was last seen going toward Monroe Park at the next corner. By then, it all struck me as funny.

So I carried the recovered property back to the store. Obviously, I don’t really remember exactly what I said in this incident, all those years ago, but what you just read was a faithful recounting of the events and the spirit of what I said. 

What I had done came in part from a sense of righteous indignation. That, together with the spirit of camaraderie that existed among some of the neighborhood’s merchants in that time. There were several of us, then in our mid-to-late-20s, who were operating businesses on that bohemian strip — bars, retail shops, etc. We were friends and we watched out for one another.

My tough guy performance had lasted less than a minute. Now I’m amazed that I used to do such things. Young people can be so sure of their interpretation of what they see. The character I invented was drawn somewhat from Humphrey Bogart, with as much Robert Mitchum as I could muster. 

Hey, since the thief bought the act, he probably felt lucky to have gotten away. Who knows? Maybe he’s still telling this same story, too, but from another angle.

*

This much I know — that quirky milieu on Grace Street in those days was a goldmine of offbeat characters and colorful stories. Chelf’s Drug Store was at the corner of Grace and Shafer. With its antique soda fountain, it had been a hangout for magazine-reading art students for decades. It seemed frozen in time. Maybe the late-1940s?

The original Village Restaurant, a block west of Chelf’s, was a legendary beatnik watering hole, going back to the 1950s. Writer Tom Robbins and artist William Fletcher “Bill” Jones (1930-‘98) hung out there. In the '60s and '70s the same neighborhood was also home to cartoon-like characters, such as the wandering Flashlight Lady and the Grace Street Midget.

By the late-'70s the scene in that neighborhood had evolved. It was meaner and more dangerous. Bars hired badass bouncers to guard their front doors. Style-wise, hippies were gradually being replaced by punks. Cocaine was replacing pot as the most popular recreational drug.   

In 1981, or so, I can also remember another summer day. A day when an angry, red-bearded street beggar with a missing foot was scaring old ladies coming and going from the then-new Dominion Place apartment building on the 1000 block of Grace. He and I were about the same age. 

As I walked by, I said something to him like, "Hey, cut it out. Move on!"

The surly panhandler laughed like a corny villain in a slasher movie and threatened to, “Bite a plug” out of me. And, I'm sure that's exactly what he said. 

Wisely, I didn’t press my case any further. Instead, I moved on.

*

As she moved slowly with tiny steps, getting across a busy street could be difficult for Priscilla. So, beginning sometime back in the 1970s, whenever I’d see her struggling with that problem, routinely, I used to help out by walking her across.

Usually it was West Grace Street or Harrison, somewhere not far from the Biograph. She lived in the neighborhood. The ritual went on for years; I suppose she was some 10-to-12 years my senior.

However, I can still picture her from one particular gray afternoon that I’m guessing was in the late-1980s, during my Slant-publishing days. I was heading west on West Grace Street. Priscilla was standing between two parked cars on the north side of the 900-block. The traffic was heavy. She was crying.

So, I stopped my VW bus and switched on the emergency blinker. Got out and greeted Priscilla. Of course, she knew what would come next, so she smiled through her tears. We both nearly chuckled at the sound of the car horns honking, as we crossed the street at her pace. Maybe that was the last time for our routine.

-- 30 --

-- 30 --

BIOGRAPH TIMES: The Intro to Part One

Actually, he's still Rebus.

Comment from Rebus: 

Rea claims his earliest childhood memory is a moving image of a dog running -- a yellow dog chasing a car. Hence, he decided long ago that's reason enough for him to have a cartoon dog as a sidekick. Anyway, that's about as close as we're going to get to explaining how this narration gig came my way.

To set the stage for Rea's remembrances about the Biograph Theatre, he's starting out with a short subject of a sort. He calls it "The Big Stretch." 

It's an almost funny account of an early experience for Rea in the role of a performance artist. Of having a following, however briefly. In a circuitous way, it tells of his exposure to a good lesson on the nature of cool. 

Following Rea's junior high school anecdote, the Biograph-focused material served up will hopefully provide the reader with some insight into how a certain era passed in Richmond's Fan District. Style-wise in that neighborhood, orbiting around Virginia Commonwealth University, it was from the hippies to the punks. In years, it was approximately 1969-through-'84. 

To be sure, the 1970s was the best-ever decade for repertory cinemas. During the 1980s and 1990s many such movie houses went dark, coast-to-coast.  

Speaking of style, one thing is for sure, some of the events covered in the Biograph Times stories could only have happened in the '70s. Number One on that list has to be the Devil Prank ... more about that later.

*

The Big Stretch 

by F.T. Rea

The prototype was assembled during a lull in seventh grade shop class. After tying some 15 rubber bands together to make a chain, a collaborator held one end of the silly looking contraption as I stepped back to stretch it out for a test. Aiming as best I could, looking along the taut line of connected rubber bands, I let go.

The whole thing gathered itself and shot past the holder. The released tip struck a target, or maybe it was near it, several feet beyond the holder. It worked! While the satisfaction I felt was a rush, the encouragement from the boys who witnessed that launching was glorious.

Through a pleasant sequence of trial-and-error experiments, it wasn't long before I figured out how to best maximize distance and accuracy. Once guys across the schoolroom were getting popped with the bitter end of my brainchild, dubbed the Stretch, the spitballs that routinely flew around such rooms in 1961 at Albert H. Hill Junior High were strictly old news. The next two days of playing with the new sensation of the seventh grade had the effect of transforming me into the leader of a crew, of a sort.

A couple of days later, uncharacteristically, I appeared on the schoolyard an hour before the first bell. Inside a brown paper bag I had was an updated version of my invention. This one was some 60 links long. Of course, it's name was the Big Stretch.

Only trusted henchmen had seen it in its test runs. No one else at school had seen it and naturally, I was only too happy to change that. Once the mind-boggling range of the Big Stretch was demonstrated on the schoolyard, boys were shoving one another, trying to be next in line to act as the holder.

With this new version, early on, most of the time I did the shooting. As the rubber-band wonder whizzed by the holder, it made such a splendid noise that just standing close by was something to talk about. On the asphalt playground, adjacent to the yellow brick school building, each flight was a crowd-pleaser.

The Big Stretch went on to make an appearance at an afternoon football game, where its experienced operators established to the delight of the crowd that cheerleaders doing their routines on the sideline could be zapped on their bouncing butts from 25 yards away with impunity. In my junior high school in 1961 not much could have been cooler than that.

After a couple of days of demonstrations around the neighborhood and at Willow Lawn shopping center, I decided to significantly lengthen the chain of rubber bands. However, the new version, about 100 rubber bands long, was neither as accurate or powerful as the previous model had been. My theory was that it was just too damn heavy for its own good.

A day or so later came the morning a couple of beefy ninth-grade football players insisted on taking a single turn as shooter and holder of the new Big Stretch. OK. Then they demanded a second turn. I said, "No."

Surrounded by seventh-grade devotees of the Big Stretch, I stood my ground, "No!"

But my fair-weather entourage proved to be useless in a pinch. Faced with no good options, I fled with my claim-to-fame in hand. In short order I was cornered and pounded until the determined thieves got the loot they wanted.

The bullies fooled around for a while trying to hit their buddies with it. Eventually, several rubber bands broke and the Big Stretch was literally pulled to pieces and scattered. By then my nose had stopped bleeding, so I gathered what remained of my dignity and decided to shrug off the whole affair, as best I could.

For whatever reasons, I chose not to make another version of the Big Stretch. I don't remember thinking about it. A few days later a couple of other kids copied it, and showed it off, but nobody seemed to care. Just as abruptly as it had gotten underway, the connected-rubber-band craze simply ran out of gas at Hill School. It wasn't cool, anymore.

So, it was over. At that same time, 1961, the slang meaning of “cool” still had an underground cachet. I thought beatniks were cool. The same went for certain musicians and baseball players. Still, I would hardly have known how to convincingly say why.  

Since then I've come to understand that the concept of cool is said to have seeped out of the early bebop scene in Manhattan in the ‘40s. Well, that may be so, but to me the same delightful sense of spontaneity and understated defiance seems abundantly evident in forms of expression that predate the Dizzy Gillespie/Thelonious Monk era at Minton’s, on 118th Street.

Anyway, wasn’t that Round Table scene at the Algonquin Hotel, back in the ‘20s, something akin to cool? If Dorothy Parker's word-smithing wasn’t cool, what the hell was? 

If Dorothy Parker's word-smithing

wasn’t cool, what the hell was?

And, in the decades that preceded the advent of bebop jazz, surely modern art -- with its cubism, surrealism, suprematism and so forth -- was laying down some of the rules for what became known as cool. 

Cool’s zenith as a style had probably been passed by 1961, about the time I was becoming enamored with the Beats, via national magazines. Looking back on that time now I have to think that widespread exposure and cool didn't mix. Significantly, cool -- with its ability to be flippant and profound in the same gesture -- rose and fell without the encouragement of the ruling class.

Underdogs invented cool out of thin air. It was a style that was beyond what money could buy. The artful grasping of a moment’s unique truth was cool every time.

However, just as the one-time-only perfect notes blown in a jam session can’t be duplicated, authentic cool was difficult to harness; even more difficult to mass-produce. By the ‘70s, the mobs of hippies attuned to stadium rock ‘n’ roll shrugged nothing off. Cool was probably too subtle for them to appreciate. The expression subsequently lost its moorings and dissolved into the soup of mainstream vernacular.

Eventually, in targeting self-absorbed baby boomers as a market, Madison Avenue promoted everything under the sun -- including schmaltz, and worse -- as cool. The Disco craze ignored cool. Punk Rockers searched for it in all the wrong places, then caught a mean buzz and gave up. By the mid-'80s nihilism was masquerading as cool ... then it just stopped mattering. 

Since then, when people say, “ku-wul,” usually it's to express their ordinary approval of routine things. Which underlines the lesson that time tends to stretch slang expressions thin, as they are assimilated. 

At Hill School, the process of becoming cool, then popular, then routine, literally pulled the Big Stretch to pieces. Once the edgy, experimental aspect of it was over, it had become just another gimmick. Its coolness was kaput.

*

Rebus returning from Key West in 1991. 

Comment from Rebus:

“Have a good time,” was my first line on a Biograph Theatre midnight show handbill. By the end of the initial year of operation that same advice had become established as the Biograph's slogan, and I was onboard as that movie theater's official spokesdog.

If you're wondering what my name means, a rebus is a puzzle that uses graphic symbols for the sounds of syllables. 

For example, if the viewer sees a line drawing of an open eye, then a plus sign, then the letter “C” and another plus sign, followed by the letter “U,” there's a message in that. Decoded, that simple rebus puzzle means, “I see you.” 

In the first illustration above, that's me as I appeared in a Richmond Times-Dispatch OpEd piece that Rea wrote about the Charlie Hebdo murders in France in January of 2015. If I look vaguely familiar, but you can't place why, you may have seen one of my breakthrough appearances in comic strips published in the Commonwealth Times’ special all-comics issues of Fan Free Funnieback in 1973. Or maybe you saw me on any number of posters promoting rock ‘n‘ roll shows, or various other events down through the years. 

 

First at the Biograph, then afterward in countless projects, I’ve worked for the guy who wrote the stories that follow my foreword comments here. F.T. Rea, who goes by Terry, likes to say he keeps me around because I’m a lucky charm. 

Well, I know Rea is a little superstitious. Still, I think it has more to do with real charm. Although his memory is getting more fuzzy every day, Rea is still smart enough to know that most folks have always liked me better than they liked him. 

Naturally, I told him to put more funny stuff in these stories, but Rea rarely listens to me these days. Mistake. Now he appears to see himself as more of a writer than a cartoonist. Another mistake?

 

Regarding his landing at the Biograph, since the mid-1960s Rea had felt drawn to the beer-fueled, bohemian nightlife atmosphere on West Grace Street. While the theater was being built, in 1971, a few of his friends were already working at businesses in that neighborhood. 

So, given the opportunity, Rea was delighted to parachute into what he saw as Richmond's coolest after-dark scene. Becoming the Biograph's first manager was truly a lucky break, because show biz has always appealed to him more than real life. 

 

And, now it seems I've been installed as the color commentator for an art house cinema's memoir. Have a good time. 

*

The Intro to Part One  

by F.T. Rea

In the fall of 1971 the chance to become the Biograph Theatre's first manager was offered to me. That opportunity appeared some five weeks before my 24th birthday. Since I had never wanted any job as much as I did that one, without hesitation, I accepted. 

 

Soon the role fit like a glove. Promoting the Biograph and guiding it through whatever troubles came along gradually blossomed into an all overshadowing mission. Eventually, the job became who I was.

Naturally, some events -- opening nights for certain first-run movies and a few of the most noteworthy parties -- stand out, owing in part to the yarns such lively happenings spawned. Which means, in some cases my memories of a particular occasion may depend somewhat on how I've crafted the story in telling it over the years, or heard it told by others. Nonetheless, for this project, I'll try my best to steer clear from disseminating fake history.
 

About three-and-a-half months after being told I'd won the competition for the manager job, on February 12, 1972, Richmond's Biograph opened for business at 814 West Grace Street. My bosses in D.C. called our style of operation “repertory cinema.” 

Which, to us, meant a curated mix – a smorgasbord of worthwhile old, new, domestic and foreign flicks. No doubt, dreaming up perfect double features has to have been one of the coolest job duties, ever. 

However, when I pause to remember life in that building, rather that being in the middle of a crowd, I frequently picture being at my desk in the second floor office. Maybe reading about old films in a catalog. Behind a locked door, surrounded by stacks of movie-related paper -- box office records, one-sheets, pressbooks, trade magazines, etc.

Maybe writing a radio commercial. Or perhaps sitting at my drawing table, designing a six-week program of feature attractions, or a handbill for a midnight show. Alone, after hours, with an open can of beer nearby and WRFK-FM on the radio. Secure in my role. 

*

Why write a memoir for a movie theater? 

First of all, to create a record of how it was to manage such a niche cinema in the golden age for repertory cinemas.  Secondly, with this assemblage of stories, I hope to create a context to facilitate a deeper appreciation of that long-gone era. 

Nestled up to VCU, the Biograph was part of an edgy art and music scene in the Fan District, situated in the heart of Richmond. What did we who were part of that scene think we were doing, back then? And, now what do we think we actually did? 

So, I hope reading these words will prompt others who were part of that creative class scene in those days to consider those two questions -- age-old questions each generation eventually faces. In my book, putting what we genuinely believe to be a moment's truth in our art, in our arrangement of words, helps to preserve the role of truth, itself, in our culture. 

Which I see as a good thing. In the last 26 years of being connected to the Internet, l have read plenty of laughably untrue stuff about that aforementioned Fan-centered art and music scene, and the Biograph, in particular. Which means, if I can help set the record straight on a few things, before my time expires, I am glad to do my part. Damn glad. 

  

* 

-- All rights reserved by the artist/writer, F.T. Rea. 

-- 30 --

BIOGRAPH TIMES: Repertory Cinema

Part One 

by F.T. Rea

 

Rebus returning from Key West (1991)

Comment from Rebus  

Rea started getting Biograph paychecks about two-and-a-half months before the theater opened. During that time there were lots of things for him to do, all while the original construction of the building was still underway and the equipment was being installed. 

Among his most important managerial duties prior to the opening was hiring the staff, all except for the projectionists who were furnished by the local union at that time. The original full-time operator in the booth was Howard Powers. The first part-time, relief projectionist was Gary Fisher. 

The first person Rea hired was Chuck Wrenn, who started out as an usher. When Wrenn was promoted a few weeks after the place opened, he then became the Biograph's first assistant manager. Of the many personnel decisions Rea made, during his nearly 12 years as manager, there wasn't one any better than deciding to hire Wrenn.  

* 

Chapter One: Repertory Cinema

On what I remember as a bright morning, it was in early July of 1971, I went to a construction site on the north side of the 800 block of West Grace Street. Mostly, it was a big hole in the orange dirt between two old brick houses.

A friend had tipped me off that she’d been told the owners of the movie house set to rise from that hole in the ground were looking for a manager who knew something about movies and could write about them. She also said they were hoping to hire a local guy. Chasing the sparkle of that opportunity I met David Levy that day at the construction site.

Levy was the Harvard-trained attorney who managed the Biograph Theatre at 2819 "M" Street in Washington. D.C. He was one of a group of five men who, in 1967, had opened Georgetown’s Biograph in an old building that had previously been a car dealership. Although none of them had any experience in show biz, they were hip young movie lovers whose timing had been impeccable -- they caught a pop culture wave. 

The golden age of repertory cinema was happening and they just happened to be living in what was the perfect cosmopolitan metropolis for their venture. They did well right from the start. 

With their success in D.C. to encourage them, a few years later the same five, plus one, looked to expand. In Richmond’s Fan District they thought they had found the right neighborhood for a second repertory-style cinema. 

A pair of local players, energy magnate Morgan Massey and real estate deal-maker Graham “Squirrel” Pembroke, acquired the land. They agreed to construct a cinder block building to house a basic single-auditorium cinema, just a stone’s throw from Virginia Commonwealth University’s academic campus for the young entrepreneurs to rent ($3,000 a month). The "boys in D.C." then had to acquire and install the projection booth equipment, the turnstile (we used tokens, rather than tickets) and the seats, some 515 of them (plus extras for parts). 

*

At the time I was working for a radio station, WRNL, so I gave Levy a few tapes of some lighthearted radio commercials I had made for what had been successful promotions. About 10 weeks after that first meeting with Levy I was offered the manager’s position for the new Biograph. Can't recall all that much about that day, except I was told I beat out a lot of competition. 

Oddly, what I do remember clearly is a brief flash of me sitting in my living room, trying to act nonchalant, so as to not to reveal just how thrilled I was at getting the offer. At 23-years-old, I could hardly have imagined a better job for me existed. At least not in the Fan District, the neighborhood in which I then lived with my wife, Valerie, and 21-month old daughter, Katey.  

This all happened three years after Richmond Professional Institute and the Medical College of Virginia merged to become Virginia Commonwealth University in 1968. However, in the fall of 1971, other than the school's new James Cabell Branch Library, which opened in 1970, there were few visible signs of the dramatic impact the new university would eventually have on Richmond's landscape. 

Although a couple of film societies at VCU were active on campus at that time, other than local film critic Carole Kass' History of Motion Pictures class, the school, itself, was offering little in the way of classes about movies or filmmaking. There were a few cool VCU professors who showed artsy short films and occasional features in their classes. 

Mostly, independent and foreign features just didn’t come to Richmond, pre-Biograph. The dominant movie theater chain, Neighborhood Theatres, would run a half-dozen, or so, European films a year. Thus, in 1971, the coming of the Biograph Theatre to West Grace Street was great news to local film buffs. Generally speaking, it was also seen as another positive sign the neighborhood's nightlife scene was becoming more attractive to the hip young adult market. 

Levy and I got along well. We saw eye-to-eye right away and became friends who trusted one another. He and his partners were all about 10 years my senior. 

*

Comment from Rebus:   

Rea's manager’s job was good to him and lasted until 1983. For reasons he will explain in a subsequent chapter, Rea became overwhelmed by the urge to leave the Biograph that summer. So he did.  

In December of 1987, owing to unpaid rent, Grace Street’s Biograph building was seized by Graham Pembroke and the locks were changed. It stayed locked down until 1992. A hundred miles to the north, the Biograph on "M" Street went dark in 1996. A drug store moved into the space.

Today there’s a noodles eatery in the same location that once housed the repertory cinema these stories are about. Now it’s the oldest building on what is truly a storied block -- a section of Grace that has received a complete makeover in the new millennium. Its look of the 1960s/'70s -- small shops and dives in the front rooms of brick town houses -- has faded into the mists. 

*

On the evening of Friday, February 11, 1972, the Biograph adventure got off the ground with a gem of a party. In the lobby the dry champagne flowed steadily, as the tuxedo-wearers and colorfully outfitted hippies mingled happily. 

A trendy art show was hanging all over the walls. The local press was out in force to cover what was an important event for that little commercial strip in the northeast edge of the Fan District. The feature we presented to some 350 invited guests was a delightful French war-mocking comedy — “King of Hearts” (1966). Genevieve Bujold was dazzling opposite the droll Alan Bates. 

In the wake of news stories about the party celebrating the Biograph's arrival, the next night we opened for business with a pretty cool double feature: “King of Hearts“ was paired with “A Thousand Clowns“ (1965). Every show sold out. 

On the opening night's staff were: cashiers Cathy Chapman and Susan Eskey; ushers Bernie Hall and Chuck Wrenn. A few weeks later Susan Kuney was hired as a third cashier and for the first few months that team smiled and sold the tokens for entry through the turnstile and the buckets of popcorn (slathered with a butter-like product). 

The Biograph’s printed schedule, Program No. 1, was heavy on documentaries; it featured the work of Emile de Antonio and D.A. Pennebaker, among others. Also on that first program, which had no particular theme, were several titles by popular European directors, including Michaelangelo Antonioni, Costa-Gavras, Federico Fellini, and Roman Polanski. Like this first edition, each of the next several published programs covered about six weeks and offered mostly double features.

*

In reading everything I could find about which movies were well-respected and popular in art houses, especially in New York and San Francisco, it was easy to gather that the in-crowd viewed most of Hollywood’s then-current product as either laughingly naïve or hopelessly corrupted by the system. The fashion of the day elevated certain foreign movies, selected American classics, a few films from the underground scene, etc., to a level above most of their more accessible Hollywood counterparts. 

In 1972, perhaps the most admired of all foreign films were those considered to have been part of the French New Wave, which began in the late-'50s. Features made by Louis Malle, François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard set the pace. Yet, what my first year on the job eventually taught me was just how few people in Richmond at that time really cared all that much about seeing such films.

After the opening flurry of interest in the new movie theater, with long lines to nearly every show, it was surprising to me when the crowds shrank dramatically in the months that followed. Among other things, that suggested to me how important the publicity running up to the Biograph's opening had been.

As VCU students had been a substantial portion of the theater’s initial crowd the slump was attributed to pretty weather, exams and then summer vacation. In that context, the first summer of operation was opened to experimentation aimed at drawing more customers from beyond the immediate neighborhood. 

That plan gave me an opportunity to do more with a project my bosses had put me in charge of developing, Friday and Saturday midnight shows -- using radio in particular to promote them. By trial and error Chuck and I learned what sort of movies lent themselves to attention-getting promotion and performed well at the box office. 

Early midnight show successes were “Night of the Living Dead” (1968), “Yellow Submarine” (1968), “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” (1971), and an underground twin bill of “Chafed Elbows” (1967) and “Scorpio Rising” (1964). 

The third member of the promotion team was Dave DeWitt, who produced the radio commercials. We happily shared the copy-writing chore. We learned there were two basic and essential elements to midnight show promotions: 

1. Wacky radio spots had to be created and run on WGOE, a popular daytime AM station aimed directly at the hippie listening audience. 

2. Cartoonish handbills/flyers that I created were posted on utility poles, bulletin boards and in shop windows in high-traffic locations. Both elements needed to show a sense of humor. 

In his studio, Dave and I frequently collaborated on the making of those spots with an ample supply of cold Pabst Blue Ribbons and whatnot. Most of the time we went for levity, even cheap laughs. Dave had a classic announcer's baritone voice and he was adept at physically producing radio commercials on reel-to-reel tape. Plus, he was possibly more of a nitpicker for getting it right than I was, so we brought out the creativity in one another and made a good team.

*

On September 13, 1972, a George McGovern-for-president benefit was staged at the Biograph. Former Gov. Doug Wilder, then a state senator, spoke. We showed "Millhouse" (1971), a documentary that put President Richard Nixon in the bad light he deserved. 

Yes, of course, I was warned by volunteer scolds -- some of them well-meaning -- that taking sides in politics was dead wrong for a show business entity in Richmond. Moreover, taking the liberal side only made it worse. 

 

However, the two most active partners who were my bosses, Levy and Rubin (who was a geologist turned artist) were delighted with the notion of doing the benefit. They were used to doing much the same sort of shows up there. So with the full backing of the boys in D.C., I didn't hesitate to reveal my left-leaning stances on matters touching politics.  

Also in September “Performance” (1970), a somewhat overwrought but well-crafted musical melodrama -- starring Mick Jagger -- packed the house at midnight three weekends in a row. Then a campy, docu-drama called “Reefer Madness” (1936) sold out four consecutive weekends. We were clearly on a roll. 

The midnight shows were going over like gangbusters. To follow “Reefer Madness” what was then still a little-known X-rated comedy, “Deep Throat” (1972), was booked as a midnight show. The Georgetown Biograph was already experimenting with playing naughty midnight shows, so we chimed in. In Richmond, we had played a few films, such as "Midnight Cowboy" (1969), that had earned an X-rating. But they had been more artsy than vulgar. 

Thus, this was our first step across the line to hardcore porn. As “Deep Throat” ran only an hour, master prankster Luis Buñuel’s surrealistic classic short film (16 minutes), “Un Chien Andalou” (1929), was added to the bill, just for grins. The staff referred to it as, "The Dog."

It should be noted that "Deep Throat," like Buñuel’s first film, was also called totally obscene in its day. Still, this may have been the first time that particular pair of outlaw flicks ever shared a marquee.

*

A couple of weeks after “Deep Throat” began playing in Richmond, out of the blue, a judge in Manhattan slammed down the gavel and ruled it to be obscene. Suddenly the national media became fascinated with it. The star of "Deep Throat," Linda Lovelace, appeared on network TV talk shows. 

Watching Johnny Carson tiptoe around the premise of her celebrated “talent” made for some giggly late-night television in 1972. Thus, we found ourselves on runaway train of a cultural phenomenon. 

A couple of weeks later, to be sure of getting in to see the Biograph's midnight how, savvy patrons began showing up as early as 11 p.m. It became the thing to do. Standing in line on the brick sidewalk for the trendy X-rated midnight show frequently turned into a party. There were nights parts of the queue resembled a folding-tables tailgating scene at a pro football game. 

 

To issue warnings of hellfire to the patrons waiting in the midnight show line that stretched west on Grace Street, a small but determined band of Jesus Freaks took to standing in a parking lot across the street. Of course, their bullhorn-amplified condemnations only added to the edgy milieu. The midnight show at the Biograph became the chic after-party destination for adventurous couples. And, don't forget, in this time bars in Richmond closed at midnight. 

Playing for 17 consecutive weekends, at midnight only, “Deep Throat” and the Buñuel short subject grossed over $30,000. That was more dough than the entire production budget of "Throat," which was America’s first skin-flick blockbuster. Those timely midnight show grosses conveniently made up for the disappointing performance of an eight-week program of venerable European classics at regular hours. It included ten titles by the celebrated Swedish director, Ingmar Bergman. 

*

Comment from Rebus

During 1972 three businesses were launched that seemed then to be solid indications that Richmond was becoming a more modern city/cosmopolitan market: Poor Richard's (restaurant) opened on January 28; the Biograph Theatre (cinema) opened to the public on February 12; the Richmond Mercury's first issue (weekly news magazine) was published on September 13. 

* 

On the theater's first anniversary I made a list of all the titles we had presented in our first year. A few noteworthy short films were on the list, such as Chris Marker's "La Jetée" (1962), but I omitted most shorts. The list, which I had printed as a handbill to hand out, was over 200 titles long. 

In 52 weeks, to establish what kind of movie house we were and what "repertory" meant, Richmond's new Biograph had presented a lot of films. With all that, what had the management team learned? 

 

Our formula for repertory cinema, patterned after the typical format popular in some of the nation's large markets -- split weeks with doubles features, plus midnight shows -- sure chewed up a lot of product. 

 

*

Note: Here's a small sample of the first year's double features. In this case, I chose to have 12 double features on the list, because that's what was on most of the Biograph Theatre's calendar style programs published that first year.

Feb. 12-14, 1972: 
“King of Hearts” (1966): Color. Directed by Philippe de Broca. Cast: Alan Bates, Geneviève Bujold, Pierre Brasseur. Note: The first movie to play at the Biograph was a zany French comedy, set amid the harsh but crazy realities of too much World War I.
“A Thousand Clowns” (1965): B&W. Directed by Fred Coe. Cast: Jason Robards, Barbara Harris, Martin Balsam. Note: A social worker investigates the rules-bending circumstances in which a boy lives with his iconoclastic uncle, an unemployed writer.

Feb. 21-23, 1972:
“Z”  (1969): Color. Directed by Costa-Gavras. Cast: Yves Montand, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Irene Papas. Note: A political assassination’s cover-up in Greece spawns a compelling based-on-truth whodunit, with sudden plot twists, all told at a furious pace.
"The Battle of Algiers" (1966): B&W. Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. Note: This account of the cruel tactics employed by both warring sides during the Algerian revolution is part documentary, part staged suspenseful recreation. Unforgettable.

Mar. 17-20, 1972: 
“Gimme Shelter” (1970): Color. Directed by Albert Maysles and David Maysles.  Performers: The Rolling Stones, the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Tina Turner and more. Note: A documentary with much concert footage and one murder.
“T.A.M.I. Show” (1964): B&W. Directed by Steve Binder. Performers: the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, the Supremes, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Lesley Gore and more appear in concert footage.

Apr. 12-13, 1972:
"Bell Du Jour" (1967): Color. Directed by Luis Buñuel. Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Jean Sorel, Michel Piccoli. Note: Beautiful Severine loves her successful husband. With him she’s frigid. Her kinky fantasies lead her to the oldest profession … only by day.
"A Man and a Woman" (1966): Color. Directed by Claude Lelouche. Cast: Anouk Aimée, Jean-Louis Trintignant. Note: A widower and a widow meet by chance at their children's boarding school. As they struggle to deal with their attraction to one another, neither has gotten over their loss.

  

June 1-7, 1972: 
“McCabe & Mrs. Miller” (1969): Color. Directed by Robert Altman. Cast: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie. Note: With Altman, the routine gambling, prostitution and power struggles in the Old West take on a different sort of look. More grit. Less glory. All random.

"Klute" (1971): Color. Directed by Alan J. Pakula. Cast: Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Roy Scheider. Note: Fonda grabbed a Best Actress Oscar for her convincing portrayal of a damaged prostitute who helps a dogged private detective solve a complicated missing person case.

June 14-18, 1972:
“Putney Swope” (1969): Both B&W and color. Directed by Robert Downey Sr. Cast: Stan Gottlieb, Allen Garfield, Archie Russell. Note: This strange but hilarious send-up of Madison Avenue was Downey’s effort to crossover from underground to legit. Probably his most accessible work.
"Trash" (1970): Color. Directed by Paul Morrissey. Cast: Joe Dallesandro, Holly Woodlawn. Note: It was billed as "Andy Warhol's Trash," as he was credited with being the producer of Morrissey's series of undergroundish films. This one reveals the down-and-out urban lifestyle of an oddball couple.

June 29-July 2, 1972: 
"Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (1964): B&W. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Cast: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Slim Pickens. Note: This nuke-mocking black comedy raised eyebrows at the height of the Cold War. Still a laugh riot.
 “M.A.S.H.” (1970): Color. Directed by Robert Altman. Cast: Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, Sally Kellerman. Note: This cynical comedy about doctoring too close to the pointless battles of the Korean War is funnier than the long-running TV show that followed it.

Sept. 21-24, 1972:
"Citizen Kane" (1941): B&W. Directed by Orson Welles. Cast: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore. Note: The meaning of a powerful, lonely man’s last word enlarges into a mystery. Flashbacks reveal a large life driven by obsessions. This classic film is about as American as it gets. 
"The Magnificent Ambersons" (1942): B&W. Directed by Orson Welles. Cast: Tim Holt, Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter. Note. This truncated-by-the-studio version of what the indulgent director had intended follows the meandering story of a prominent family's shifting fortunes.  

Oct. 9-11, 1972:
“The Third Man” (1949): B&W. Directed by Carol Reed. Cast: Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles, Alida Valli. Note: This elegant film noir mystery, set in crumbling post-war Vienna, is pleasing to the eye and stylishly cynical. Hey, no heroes here, but great music. 
"Breathless" (1960): B&W. Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Cast: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg. Note: An opportunistic thief on the lam becomes irresistible to a pretty American journalism student in Paris. Uh-oh, the guy is dangerous. How long can their living in the moment romance last?

Nov. 17-19, 1972:
“Duck Soup” (1933): B&W. Directed by Leo McCarey. Cast: The Four Marx Brothers (Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo), Margaret Dumont. Note: With Rufus T. Firefly as dictator of Freedonia and flush from a fat loan from Mrs. Teasdale, what could hilariously go wrong? How about war?
"Horse Feathers" (1932): B&W. Directed by Norman McLeod. Cast: The Four Marx Brothers, Thelma Todd. Note: The Biograph's secret password that opened doors was "swordfish." The scene that spawned that tradition is seen in this gag-filled send-up of campus life and football.

Dec. 7-10, 1972: 
“The Producers” (1968): Color. Directed by Mel Brooks. Cast: Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Kenneth Mars, Dick Shawn. Note: Brooks’ first feature film laughed at Nazis with what was then a fresh audacity. Mostel and Wilder are so funny it ought to be illegal.
“The Graduate (1967): Color. Directed by Mike Nichols. Cast: Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, Katherine Ross. Note: The mores of upper middle class life in the '60s are laid bare, as a recent college graduate's idleness leads to an affair with the beautiful, but wrong older woman.

Jan. 25-28, 1973:
"The Conformist" (1971): Color. Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. Cast: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, Dominique Sanda, Gastone Moschin. Note: A visually stunning look at fascist Italy, with Mussolini in power and old class distinctions melting away. Betrayal is in the air.
 “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis” (1971): Color. Directed by Vittorio De Sica. Cast: Dominique Sanda, Lino Capolicchio, Fabio Testi. Note: With WWII approaching, why did so many wealthy, well educated Jews stay too long in Germany and Italy? This film provides some answers.

  

*   *   *

All rights reserved by the artist/writer, F.T. Rea.

-- 30 --

BIOGRAPH TIMES: The Devils and the Details

Part One: Chapter Two 

Note: The art above depicts the way the Biograph Theatre's marquee looked on June, 28, 1974, when Roman Polanski's masterpiece, "Chinatown," premiered in Richmond. The art displayed, I did from memory 30-some years later.  

*

Comment from Rebus:  

The avalanche of eye-opening movies that tumbled onto the somewhat cocky local serving as the Biograph's manager in its early stage was an edifying experience. In this same time Rea also began collecting old American magazines (mostly between the late-1800's and early-1900s) by the hundreds. Read some of them, too. Those factors, as well as the new associations Rea made with some pretty smart people, contributed to what amounted to a good schooling in the development of American popular culture.

It's worth noting that in many ways this time period seemed ready to deliver whatever the baby boomer generation wanted. And, it wanted. 

With that thought in mind, during the first year the theater became sort of an after-hours clubhouse/hangout for the staff and friends. Of course that set of wiseass movie-lovers wanted/needed a place in which to gather and socialize over cheap beer, etc. Speaking of cheap, the popcorn was free.  

Chapter Two of Part One of the Biograph's story spotlights one hell of a prank. It also provides selected glimpses at highlights of 1973 and '74. Happenings in the time leading up to the quick and dirty makeover that transformed the Fan District's Biograph into a twin cinema.  

*

The Devils and the Details 

by F.T. Rea

1973: Hand-written on index cards, a record of the theater's daily attendance numbers was kept in a small box in the office. It sat next to the phone on my desk. As of mid-January of 1973, the cumulative record of the first year of the Biograph Theatre's repertory cinema operation in Richmond told a story about disappointment. 

The story's takeaway could be stated succinctly. Our programming system was sputtering. 

After 12 months of mimicking the thought to be tried-and-true format of the six-year-old Biograph Theatre at 2819 "M" Street in Georgetown, it appeared the scheme for selecting the films to play at 814 West Grace Street in Richmond's Fan District needed revamping. Perhaps what we were doing also needed to be promoted better. 

Those two conclusions stood out. It was also evident the Biograph's 25-year-old manager still had a lot to learn. 

Our biggest disappointment, box office-wise, had been the weak performance of an eight-week festival of venerable European classics. It had played throughout most of November and December. Fortunately, over those same two months, in Richmond we had done excellent business with an extended run of the X-rated comedy, "Deep Throat" (1972), playing at midnight on Friday and Saturday nights.

During 1972, "Deep Throat" had been banned in several cities, including New York City and D.C. Yet not in Richmond, where it played on a midnight show twin bill with Luis Buñuel's legendary short film 15 minutes), "Un Chien Andalou" (1929) Although at first glance that might seem an unlikely coupling of films, don't forget, both were banned in their time by the authorities.  

 

As I remember, it was David Levy's idea to put them together. And, yes, the staff enjoyed some  of the  befuddled reactions from patrons who had definitely not come to the midnight show to see the surrealistic short subject that played first. For those in the know, remember that eyeball scene? For those who don't know, I don't want to spoil it for you.   

Over 17 consecutive weekends, through the winter, that pair grossed over $30,000. Nothing else we played in that first year came even close to that figure. 

Note: At this point, Levy was still the only full-time managing partner in D.C. The other two managing partners, Alan Rubin and Lenny Poryles, were then part-timers. In addition, there were three silent partners. That group owned the two Biographs and an ordinary suburban twin cinema in Alexandria. 

At this time, all of the partners were in their mid-30s. Before they opened the Georgetown Biograph, in 1967, none of them had any background in show biz. 

Levy left the group in the mid-'70s to operate his own movie theater in Georgetown -- The Key. Since Alan died on November 6, 2022, now all three of those original managing partners are gone. David in 2004. Lenny in 2018. As bosses, that trio was as good as it gets. To say they gave me a great deal of freedom is an understatement.  

*

Note: On Oct. 21, 2009, the "Fan Free Funnies" piece I wrote for Style Weekly was published. It's about the time in which American underground comics were influential, culturally. The "Fan Free Funnies" piece ran as a sidebar to a feature story about New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly interviewing artist R. Crumb onstage at CenterStage in Richmond. 

Using a slideshow to accompany their witty comments, Mouly and Crumb and did a series of such shows in various cities. And, yes, their show was aimed mostly at a niche audience.

Fan Free Funnies 

During the spring semester of the 1972-1973 school year the student newspaper at Virginia Commonwealth University published three tabloid supplements that were inspired by the irreverent, frequently-salty underground "comix" of that age. The first issue of Fan Free Funnies came out near 1973's St. Valentine's Day.

The timing was perfect for Fan Free Funnies. It was created at the zenith of the hippie era in the Fan District. FFF published my first Rebus strip. Before Rebus even had a name he had been appearing as a spokesdog on my flyers touting midnight shows at the Biograph Theatre, which I managed at the time. Rebus was somewhat influenced by R. Crumb's Mr. Natural, in that I went to school on how Crumb used Mr. Natural as a spokesman, sometimes like a carnival barker. However, Rebus was hardly a holy man. Instead, he was an everyman schlemiel with a dog's head.

In that time some local, mostly VCU-trained artists, were making paintings and prints in a style reminiscent of some old animated cartoons of the 1930s and then-current underground funny books. Some of the same young artists also were making short films in Super 8 and 16mm. So the Biograph became a hub of a sort for them.

Not long after FFF came out, my 3-year-old daughter, Katey, asked me a question. “Is Rebus real?”

Rebus hawking an event.

I shrugged. “What do you mean?”

She said, “Like Bugs Bunny and Donald Duck.”

“Sure,” I said, “Rebus is real. But only the cool people know about him.”

The inspirational Crumb was the most celebrated of the underground artists in the days when cartoonists bitterly lampooning the tastes and values of middle class America were making an impact on popular culture. Spontaneously, Crumb launched the movement in 1968, selling his “Zap Comix No. 1” out of a baby carriage on San Francisco sidewalks.

In 1973, in spite of cultural changes that had been in the air for years, mainstream pop culture was still serving up plenty of safe schmaltz and accessible old hat: Billboard's top single of the year was “Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree.” A month after the first issue of FFF was published the Oscar for the Best Picture of 1972 was presented to “The Godfather.” Thus, the term “underground,” as associated with art, film and music, still had a yet-to-be-fully exploited edge to it.

Perhaps the best known of the FFF cartoonists was Phil Trumbo (VCU 1972). “Ed Slipek, the editor of VCU's student newspaper, Commonwealth Times, approached me to help create an underground, comix-style supplement,” Trumbo remembers. “I suppose he contacted me because I had done some independent comics and was exhibiting paintings influenced by comics imagery.”

Each invited artist was instructed by Slipek to create a full page, drawn to proportion, in black and white. Some submitted a page of images set within traditional comic strip frames; others wandered into loose, more avant-garde styles. Scans of the three issues of Richmond's 1973 underground comics can now be seen online at the VCU Libraries Digital Collection.

“The journalism department at VCU didn't see that this was journalism,” recalls Slipek (who is, today, Style's senior contributing writer). “The media [advisory] board questioned the fact that we were doing this, but it was very well-received with the students. I'm proud of it because the Commonwealth Times continued to have comics of some sort — it's a lasting tradition that started with us.”

Trumbo left Richmond in 1984 to pursue a career in animation, which eventually led him to the West Coast and his current position as an art director at Hidden City Games. Along the way he picked up an Emmy Award for his work on “Pee Wee's Playhouse” and has been the art director of more than 100 video games, including “Lord of the Rings” and “Spider-Man.” Also a noteworthy musician, Trumbo recently returned home to play a reunion show with the Orthotonics, the influential Richmond band that he played with during his time here.

Charles Vess (VCU 1974) is another award-winning illustrator who contributed to FFF. Vess' art has since appeared in “Heavy Metal” and “National Lampoon”; he's a World Fantasy Award-winner who has worked for comic book publishers such as Marvel, DC, Dark Horse and Epic. Other contributors to the 1973 series included Bruce Barnes, Eric Bowman, Michael Cody, Greg Kemp, Nancy Meade, Bill Nelson, Trent Nicholas and Ragan Reaves.

“Fan Free Funnies was a really diverse collection, representing vastly different graphic styles and inventive, experimental approaches to sequential storytelling,” Trumbo remembers. “We were all influenced by the amazing work of '60s underground cartoonists, like Robert Crumb, Rick Griffith, S. Clay Wilson and Trina Robbins and the rest.” 

Note: Scans of the art presented in the three issues of Fan Free Funnies can be found here.

* 

After some telephone conference call discussions, the boys in D.C. decided we should experiment by giving the double features of old flicks and contemporary second-runs a brief rest. No split weeks, either. Thus, in the spring of '73, a series of week-to-week bookings of single features was scheduled. 

The Biograph's management team was hoping that by playing some first-run foreign films we might benefit from getting more publicity and beneficial chatter than usual. The hope was such films would be noticed by a wider audience. Serious film buffs in Richmond were accustomed to driving to D.C. to catch trendy first-run imports.     

We led off the spring festival with a charming first-run French picture, "César and Rosalie" (1972). Sure enough, it got good local reviews. It featured two attractive stars -- Romy Schneider and Yves Montand. Nonetheless, it flopped at the box office.

Disney's "Fantasia" (1940) followed. That feature-length cartoon had been out of theatrical release for several years and it drew good sized crowds. We had never had so many children show up before, so we ran out of popcorn. Which meant we held the picture over for an additional week and we bought a lot more popcorn. 

Until then, rather than depart from the published schedule on one of our calendar programs, as soon as it was practical we would bring back a popular movie for a return engagement. By holding "Fantasia" over, we were acting more like a standard movie house that books product on a week-to-week basis, each Monday morning, according to the weekend's box office numbers. 

Note: Which is how most cinemas operated then and probably still do. That style of programming depends heavily on having a healthy sized newspaper advertising budget, with much of the money supplied by the film's distributor. However, back in this time, with the running of old classics and current second-runs, cooperative advertising budgets were extremely rare. So, the promotion burden was left to the theater. 

Next came the centerpiece of the festival, Luis Buñuel's "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" (1972). Incidentally, when I first saw it at the old Cerberus in Georgetown, in the fall of '72, I stayed on and watched it all the way through a second time. 

Critics were praising it as Buñuel's masterpiece. Consequently, there was a demand for it in other cities in the region and only a limited number of 35mm prints were available. Thus, in order to secure a print, when we wanted it, we had to guarantee the distributor its picture would play a minimum of two weeks. Plus, we had to cough up some film rental in advance -- probably $2,000 to $2,500. The reason for those terms was mostly because at that point we simply had no track record with first-run foreign films. 

With this move we were hoping/gambling that it would win the Best Foreign Movie Oscar just a few days before its scheduled premiere in Richmond. Which it did. For the first week "Discreet Charm" drew a decent crowd that loved it. 

Then, rather than good word-of-mouth goosing attendance up during the second week, it dropped off dramatically. Ouch! Levy and I had imagined that attendance for an Oscar-winning Buñuel comedy would justify holding it over for several weeks. After the required two weeks, we packed Buñuel's masterpiece up and Clark Transfer hauled it off. 

All these years later, when I think about this episode, I can still feel the bitter sense of disappointment. We, the owners and the local staff, had wanted to prove to everybody that the Richmond market was changing and the best of foreign films could draw a decent crowd at the Biograph. 

Of course, now it's easy to see that our confidence was based way too much on how much some of us loved the damn film. C'est la vie. 

*

"El Topo" (1970) followed. Then came "Greaser's Palace" (1973). It turned out both were simply too weird for Richmond (and probably most places). Attendance-wise, both drew sparse turnouts. Thus, of the six films in our experimental festival, only the ancient Disney movie had finished in the black. All of the artsy premieres had lost money. 

Note: The reader should understand that in those days the large movie theater chains had all the booking power (and I doubt that has changed much). Which meant that when it came to having access to popular first-run pictures an independent cinema in a medium sized market had no clout. For the most part, in 1973 we could book what the regional chains didn't want. 

In retrospect, I have to say now that our series of post-"Greaser's Palace" telephone conversations probably marked our first real hard look at what we were doing right and doing wrong. David, Alan, Lenny and I had to face it -- there was just more difference between the D.C. market and the Richmond market than we had originally imagined. 

For sure, the Biograph up in D.C. had been competing with other art houses for a share of a substantial, already established sophisticated audience in the metro area. Whereas, in Richmond, the group of the same sort of viewers was much smaller. 

Consequently, the four of us could see that in Richmond we had to make more of an effort to cultivate an audience for our repertory concept. We also needed to do more to promote the theater, itself, to the whole city, not just the Fan.   

Having been exposed to lots of marketing and ratings studies in my previous job, in the radio business, I decided to run some in-house studies to gather information about what our patrons liked. What movies? What radio stations? What print media? 

That sort of thinking launched what soon became a familiar research and marketing tool. Located in the lobby, the Suggestion Box became popular right away. And, frequently, it yielded useful information. 

Then, in June, I was told the Faustian deal had been struck with the same company that distributed "Deep Throat." We agreed to play “The Devil in Miss Jones” (1973), a new film directed by Gerard Damiano, the headline-making director of “Throat.” 

In becoming the USA's first hardcore X-rated flick to attract a significant mainstream audience, "Throat" had received massive national publicity over the previous year. For several months, according to trade journals, it had been one of the top grossing movies in the country. Damiano and Linda Lovelace, the star of "Throat," had been interviewed by national magazines. They had both appeared on television network talk shows. Culturally, because there was a blur in the line between edgy American underground films with nudity and outright porn, the oxymoronic term "porno chic" was briefly in currency. 

Emboldened by the crazy national success of "Throat" the new X-rated picture's distributor imposed terms on the deal that called for it to play as a normal first-run picture. Rather than as a midnight-only attraction on weekends, it had to play at regular show times, seven days a week. That was the deal -- take it or leave it.

When Levy agreed to those terms for "The Devil in Miss Jones" he had to have known we were crossing a line. Still, no one could have anticipated what we were setting in motion by expanding the availability of notorious “adult movies” beyond the midnight hour. 

                                                                             *

Until this point, we had not been promoting any of our midnight shows in the same way we did our regular fare. That had helped cast our midnight shows, such as "Reefer Madness" and "Throat" as sort of playfully forbidden. According to our deal with "The Devil," for the first time the promotional art and copy for a hardcore skin flick was included in a Biograph calendar program. That change didn't go unnoticed. 

Following a friendly, "No comment," from me, an aggressive young TV newsman laughed. Then he took Biograph Program No. 12 downtown to Richmond's new Commonwealth’s Attorney, Aubrey Davis. 

The reporter asked Davis what he was going to do about the Biograph’s brazen plan to run such a scandalous movie, especially in light of the then-freshly-minted Miller Decision on obscenity by the Supreme Court. 

Note: The Miller ruling basically allowed any jurisdiction in the country to set its own standards for obscenity. So, instead of clearing up the picture of what made for "obscenity," it seemed the Court had opened the door to countless different definitions. It was seen then by some wags as a confusion-leads-to-control maneuver by the Court. 

Eventually, the newsman/provocateur and his cameraman got exactly what they wanted from the new CA -- a quote that would fly as an anti-smut sound bite. Other local broadcasters jumped on the bandwagon the next day. 

Consequently, by the mid-summer evening of its Richmond premiere, the arrival of “The Devil” was already a well-covered story. In this way, the Biograph had been suddenly transformed into the local cinema that was getting more publicity than all the others in the market, put together. 

The first evening every show sold out and a wild ride began. Matinees were added to the schedule the next day. On the third day all the matinees sold out, too. 

On the fourth day of the run the WRVA-AM traffic-copter was hovering over the Biograph, in drive time, dishing out live updates on the length of the line waiting to get into the theater. The airborne announcer helpfully reminded his listeners of the upcoming show times.

Yeow! that did it. The following morning a local circuit court judge asked for a personal look at what was clearly the talk of the town. The theater's management team cooperated with his honor’s wishes. 

For the convenience of the porn-curious judge, the 35mm print was schlepped down to the Neighborhood Theaters’ private screening room in its offices at 9th and Main Streets. By the way, Judge James M. Lumpkin admitted that he hadn’t seen a movie in a theater since the 1950s. 

Well, as it turned out, this particular moving picture rubbed the judge the wrong way. It wasn't a silly comedy like "Throat." Instead, it was a dark and rather boring film with some porn scenes inserted into it. Literally red-faced after the screening ended, in the hallway the judge glared at Levy and me like we were from another planet.  

The next day Judge Lumpkin filed a complaint with the Commonwealth’s Attorney. Simultaneously, he set the date for a hearing to deal with his decision to issue a Temporary Restraining Order halting all public screenings of "The Devil." Which meant that in four days he would sit on his bench and decide whether the movie would likely cause irreparable damage to the community, while we waited for a full-blown trial to determine if  "The Devil" was in violation of Richmond's so-called "contemporary standard" of decency.  

*

The following afternoon a press conference was staged in the Biograph’s lobby to make an announcement. Most of the news-gathering outfits in town bought the premise enough to send a reporter/representative. They all acted as if what were doing was big news. It seemed to serve their  purposes to to play along by gathering a story about what we all knew was a publicity stunt. 

That was my first press conference. No doubt, I learned something that day about how to go about planting a story.

After Dave DeWitt -- who had been representing the theater as its ad agent -- laid out the ground rules and introduced me to the working press, I read a prepared statement for the cameras and microphones. In my spiel, I said that based on public demand the Biograph planned to fight the TRO in court. Furthermore, the first-run engagement of  “The Devil in Miss Jones” would be extended -- it was being held over for a second week. Boom!

During the lively Q & A session that followed, when Dave scolded an eager scribe for going too far with a follow-up question, it was tough duty holding back the laughing fit that would surely have broken the spell we were casting, as best we could, over the room. 

Because the same Judge Lumpkin still had all the say-so, at the first court hearing the TRO stuck like glue. When the screenings abruptly stopped, “The Devil” had grossed almost $40,000 in its momentous nine-day run. 

Incidentally, all the the legal action was against the movie, itself, rather than anyone at the Biograph. I appreciated that fact every day of this ordeal. The trial opened on Halloween Day. 

Of course, Lumpkin served as the trial judge, too. Once again, I was surprised that the person whose original complaint to the Commonwealth’s Attorney had set the whole process in motion could then sit on the bench to hear the case. Objections to that affront to justice fell on Lumpkin’s deaf ears.

The trial lasted two days. The prosecutor called a handful of witnesses, all from the same neighborhood in the West End. Maybe they all went to the same church, too. 

I testified and we also put a few witnesses on the stand, mostly film and freedom of speech experts. The local media continued to lap it all up.  

Lumpkin's decision came on November 13, 1973. His terse decree put all on notice. Essentially, it said: From now on, if anyone dares to exhibit this “filth” to the public, they should expect criminal prosecution will come their way. 

So it was that “The Devil” was banned by a judge in Richmond, Virginia. The plot to have some fun responding to the judge's decree was hatched a few weeks later. 

*

Also in the autumn of 1973, other things happened. One day Levy asked me to look at a new movie to evaluate its potential. From time to time he did that for various reasons. In this case he had a new 35mm print of “The Harder They Come” (1972) shipped to me, via Clark Transfer.

Note: “The Harder They Come": Color. 120 minutes. Directed by Perry Henzell; Cast: Jimmy Cliff, Janet Bartley, Carl Bradshaw. In this Jamaican production, Cliff plays Ivan, a pop star/criminal on the lam. The music of Cliff, The Maytals, The Melodians and Desmond Dekker is featured.

In those early days we occasionally had after-hours screenings of films we came by, one way or another. For instance, being in the same city as three universities meant access to films that could be borrowed briefly. 

Usually on short notice, the word would go out to friends that we would be watching a particular movie at a certain time. These gatherings were essentially impromptu movie parties. Once it was 1940s and '50s 16mm boxing films from a private collection. The Beatles' then out-of-release "Magical Mystery Tour" (1967) in 16mm was the centerpiece to another one of those parties. 

Although I don’t remember any moments, in particular, from that after-hours “The Harder They Come" watch party, I do recall the gist of my telephone conversation with Levy the next day. After telling him how much I liked the Jamaican movie, he asked me how I would promote it.

Well, I was ready for that question, as I had smoked it over thoroughly with DeWitt and a few friends after the screening. Consequently, I told Levy we ought to have a free, open-to-the-public-on-short-notice, sneak preview of the movie. Most importantly, we should use WGOE exclusively to promote the screening. Because Levy liked the radio campaigns for the Biograph's midnight shows that DeWitt and I had produced over the last year, he went for the idea right away.

Note: In the early-'70s, long before the era of giant corporations owning hundreds of stations, a locally-programmed daytime radio station with a weak signal played a significant role in what success was enjoyed at the Biograph. For a few years we had an especially good business arrangement with WGOE-AM, the station that then owned the hippie market in Richmond. 

Subsequently, on a Friday morning in November the DJs at WGOE began reading announcements of a free showing of “The Harder They Come” that would take place at the Biograph that afternoon at 3 p.m. Then they would play a soundtrack cut by Jimmy Cliff, the film’s star. This pattern was continued maybe three times per hour, leading up to the time of the event. Since we presented it as a "WGOE-presents sneak preview," the announcements cost the Biograph nothing.

Of course, reggae music was being heard in Richmond before our free screening, but it was still mostly on the periphery of popular culture on the East Coast. As I recall, some 300 people showed up that day and the movie was extremely well received.

In a couple of previous runs in other markets, “The Harder They Come” had been handled as an underground movie. As it was shot in 16mm and blown up to 35mm for its American distribution, it had a grainy, documentary look. Upon hearing about the test-audience's approval, Levy got excited and decided to book it to run as a first-run feature, rather than as a midnight only show. 

Levy became a sub-distributor for “The Harder They Come.” He told me that when he rented it to theaters in other cities within his region, he advised them to use the same radio-promoted, free-preview tactic.

While it didn’t set any records for attendance at the Biograph, “The Harder They Come” did fairly well and returned to play several more dates, both at regular hours and as a midnight show. 

As it happened, in late-1973, watching a then-virtually unknown, low-budget Jamaican film after operating hours with a small group of co-workers and friends had seemed somewhat exotic that night. Of course, on that occasion, we had no idea how popular reggae music was about to become, in some part because of that movie's influence. 

*

Photographer Jack Leigh (1948-2004) was a member of the Biograph Theatre’s staff in late-1973/early-1974. While he worked there as an usher, Leigh taught me to play Half-Rubber, a game he said came from his home town, Savannah. For those who don't know, Half-Rubber is a three-man baseball-like game that is played with a broom handle and half of a red rubber ball.

 

Probably Jack’s best known photograph was snapped in 1993, when he shot the photo in a Savannah cemetery that would appear on the cover of what became a bestselling book -- “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” by John Berendt. 

There's a story about the photo-connected business/legal side of Jack's dealings, to do with the movie people. But to avoid a digression let's just say that he got the short end of the stick and, yes, his original graveyard photo is still genuinely cool.

 

When I knew him, Jack was earnest and quick-witted. He liked to play chess and talk about movies. In his Biograph days he was already a very good photographer. At one point we had a show of his hanging in the theater's lobby gallery. The quiet style Jack would use throughout his career was already evident. He eventually authored six books of photographs and text, including "Oystering," which featured a foreword by James Dickey. 

 

Back to Half-Rubber: To kill time before the show one pleasant afternoon, at Jack's prompting a rubber ball was cut in half. And, we separated the sweeping part of a broom from its stick handle. We only needed to broomstick. 

Then I crossed the street with the Half-Rubber instructor and the theater’s assistant manager, Bernie Hall. At the time there were a couple of vacant lots on Grace Street, directly across from the Biograph. With the alley between grace and Franklin Streets behind us, it seemed to be a good open area where we could test out the new game. 

 

Bernie and I soon learned the key to pitching was to throw the half-ball using a side-arm delivery, with the flat part down. That made it curve wildly and soar, somewhat akin to a Frisbee. Hitting it in flight with a broomstick, or catching the damn thing was quite another matter. Oh, and hitting the ball on a bounce was OK, too. 

In fact, it was sometimes better to try to do so, from a strategic standpoint. Runs were scored in a similar fashion to other home run derby-like games. The pitcher threw the half-sphere in the direction of the batter. If the batter swung and missed, and he usually did miss, the catcher did his best to catch it. When the catcher did catch it on the fly, providing the batter had swung, the batter was out. 

Then the pitcher moves to the catching position, and the catcher became the batter, and so forth. That was a similar concept to a baseball-like game called, "Strikeout," that I played as a kid. It was played by two or three players with a baseball bat and a tennis ball. 

 

Anyway, the best reason to play Half-Rubber, other than the laughs stemming from how foolish we looked dealing with the crazy, flat-sided ball, was the kick that came from hitting it squarely. When we connected with that little red devil it left the broomstick bat like a rocket. Smashing it across the lot, across the street and halfway to Broad Street was a gas! 

 

Click here to read more about Jack Leigh.

*

1974: Early in January of 1974, I was in the Biograph's office on the second story, one door west of the projection booth. Having finished with the box-office paperwork for the evening's shows and I was killing time reading about old movies in a 16mm film catalog. The building was probably empty.

Since it was after-hours, the telltale scent of recently-burned cannabis may well have been wafting about when a particular title jumped off the page. “The Devil and Miss Jones.” 

Initially, it said to me the title of that 1941 RKO screwball comedy had surely been the inspiration for the banned X-rated movie’s title -- “The Devil in Miss Jones.” Next, I pondered the obvious "what-ifs?" that occurred to me. Then boom! I answered my own question. 

Of course it would work! 

 

Don't remember if I cracked open a fresh can of beer to celebrate the inspiration for a caper that was unfolding in my head. If there was one handy, for sure I did. 

Yes! A lot of people would see exactly what they wanted to see in the title. Especially if they saw it up on the Biograph's marquee, or maybe on a printed page. Even more so, if they heard about it in a neighborhood dive.   

 

Given my habit then, I'm sure I started scribbling the Devil Prank's plans on a yellow legal pad. So, to get started, I might have written: 1. Use the theater's upcoming second anniversary as camouflage. 2. Can the staff keep such a secret? And, so forth. 

 

Note: As background, the reader should know that in early-1974, the public had yet to be subjected to the endless puns and referential lowbrowisms the skin-flick industry would soon come to use for titles. Hardcore adults-only features became popular as mainstream entertainment in movie theaters from the mid-'70s until the early-'80s, when the video rental business promptly captured most of that market, such as it was. 

The next day, when I told the boys in D.C. about the idea doing something with the title similarity, with no hesitation they loved it. Subsequently, after more plotting with them on  the phone, we decided to show "The Devil and Miss Jones" twice on the evening of February 11, 1974. 

 

Early on, Dave DeWitt and Bernie were also in on the scheming/brainstorming in the office. Then, in a deft stroke -- suggested by Alan -- a Disney nature short subject, “Beaver Valley” (1950), was added to the February 11th program, to flesh it out. 

Moreover, we figured to make the whole shebang into a second anniversary birthday party, open to the public; first come, first serve. Free admittance. Free beer (we lacked a license to sell it. And, sell a lot of popcorn and candy. Make some new friends. 

 

Obviously, the stunt's highest hurdle to clear was security. After  all, the scheme rested entirely on the precarious notion that the one-word difference in the two titles, which spoke literally of the Devil's proximity to Miss Jones, simply wouldn’t be noticed if handled with care. 

After some coaching, the staff came to grasp that the slightest whiff of a ruse was likely to be our undoing. Thus, realizing how much fun it would be to pull it off, they dutifully accepted that absolutely no one outside our group of insiders could be told anything. 

 

No one. Our close friends were told about the party, but not the juicy part about what we really were up to. 

The Biograph announced in a press release on DeWitt’s ad agency letterhead that its upcoming second anniversary celebration would offer a free admission show -- first come, first serve. The titles, “The Devil and Miss Jones” and “Beaver Valley,” were listed with no accompanying release dates in parenthesis or film notes of any sort. 

 

Somehow, a rumor began to circulate that the Biograph might be cleverly outmaneuvering the court’s decree by not charging admission for entrance. That helpful rumor even found its way into print -- the street gossip section of the Richmond Mercury. I can't say if anyone on its staff knew or suspected what all was going on. 

On February 10, the day before the event, the busy staff fielded all inquires, in person or over the telephone, by politely reciting the official spiel, which amounted to: “We can tell you the titles and the show times. The admission will be free. No, we have no idea when the line to get in will start forming. No further details are available.” 

Limiting the information we made available was at the heart of our strategy. We just let people think what they wanted to think, if we told them nothing about the movies. Which, as planned, only stoked the prank's momentum. It was something like hiding in plain sight. 

On Devil Prank's Eve, a few reporters were snooping about. One, in particular, stuck around late, hoping to claw his way toward the mystery's key. As I stood at my familiar post in the lobby, next to the turnstile, in a hushed voice he said: “I think maybe it has something to do with the title, but what?”

Uh-oh! He was getting too close.

Note: Good thing Google hadn't been invented.

 

To fend off his inquiry, I decided on the spot to take a chance with an oblique move for an answer. Talking like one spy to another, I told the newsman that what was going to happen the next day would be a far better news story than a short item about spoiling it the day before. 

That is ... IF there really is a stunt aspect to what's in the works. Finally, I just asked him to leave it alone and trust that once it all unfolded, he wouldn't regret it. 

Fortunately, for whatever reasons, he agreed to say nothing ... and he kept his word, as far as I know. That day I also agreed not to reveal his cooperation role. 

Thus, the reporter's identity was held as a secret until his death in 2015. Now I can write that it was Don Dale, who, after his news reporter stint at Channel 6, went on to be a longtime publicist for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Thanks to Don Dale, right up to when the box office opened, no one else outside of a tight circle appeared to have had an inkling of what was going to happen. Amazing as it may sound, effectively, the caper’s security was airtight. 

The staff did its part to set up the event flawlessly. Then they performed like pros during the event. It was absolutely beautiful teamwork, under pressure.

*

In the afternoon before the 6:30 p.m. show, the staff decorated the lobby with streamers and balloons. We laid out the birthday cake (made by a friend, Wendy Andriot). Naturally, we tested the keg of beer, just to make sure it was fit to serve to our thirsty patrons. 

 

Perhaps spurred on by hopes the Biograph was about to defy a court order, by lunch time the end of the line to get in along Grace Street was already reaching Chelf's Drug Store at the corner of Shafer and Grace Streets.  

 

Experience told me, that was roughly 500 people, which amazed me because that was about six hours before show time. In February!

It was suggested to me that afternoon that we could eventually have a riot on our hands. What would happen if we lost control of the situation? 

 

Nobody knew. That was clearly a sweet part of what made it so exhilarating to be on the inside of the joke. I'm sure Alan Rubin was there that day; I think Lenny was, too. About 1 p.m., after a confab with them, I agreed to call Aubrey Davis to tip him off. I didn't want him to be tempted to crack down and do something he might regret. 

 

Davis thanked me and I asked him not to tell anybody. Don't remember if I tipped off Carole Kass, the Richmond Times-Dispatch entertainment writer. She was there that night and I trusted her, so I probably told her the full story at some point in advance, maybe that afternoon. 

 

My collaborators on the staff that night were: Bernie Hall (assistant manager); Karen Dale, Anne Peet and Cherie Watson (cashiers); Tom Campagnoli and Trent Nicholas (ushers); Gary Fisher (projectionist). Some of them dressed up in costumes. 

The box-office for the 6:30 p.m. show opened at 6 p.m. By then, the line of gullible people stretched three-fourths around the block. It took every bit of a half-hour to fill our 500-seat auditorium. Then we turned away several times that number. 

As the house lights in the auditorium began to fade, the sense of anticipation in the air was thick enough to cut with a knife. Outside, on the sidewalk, plenty of those who couldn't get in to the first show chose to stay in line for what would be the second show at 9 p.m.

For the most part, the reaction to the prank played out in three layers. Some attendees caught on right away and left while “Beaver Valley” was running. Most stayed at least through the first few minutes of “The Devil in Miss Jones.” Only about a third of the 6:30 show attendees remained in their seats through both movies. 

Afterward, there were lots of folks who said it was the funniest prank that had ever happened in Richmond. That sort of comment was good for a free beer refill. 

Of course, a few knuckleheads got peeved. Yet, since admission had been free, as well as the beer and cake, well, there was only so much they could say.

Even though those in line for the second show were told all about the joke by people leaving the first show, nonetheless, the second show packed the house. By then, it seemed a lot of people just wanted to be in on a unique event, curious to see what would happen. 

Later, as the second show's audience spilled out of the auditorium, the staff and a giddy gaggle of friends, directed our efforts toward polishing off the keg of beer. Come to think of it, I believe it was two kegs.

After the second show's audience left, for the first time all day long, the staff could relax. The plan had worked, the execution had been smooth. Lingering around that second keg of Pabst Blue Ribbon, to gloat about the utter success of it all, was about as good as it gets in the prank business.

*

Meanwhile, a bunch of thoroughly amused reporters were filing their stories about the surprise that had happened at Richmond's repertory cinema. The next day the wire services and broadcast networks picked up the unusual story. Then I was interviewed by a reporter for NPR’s All Things Considered. In the studio the interviewer went so far as to mention the Biograph’s birthday party prank in the same breath with Orson Welles’ legendary 1938 radio hoax. 

 

Which was fun to hear. But thankfully, I had the good sense to point out that by comparison our stunt was "strictly small potatoes." And, at the theater, it was back to business as usual, with an Andy Warhol double feature. And, I'm sure I got in a plug for it. 

 

Through the rest of  February congratulatory phone calls and mail came in from near and far. Later that same month we went back to work on "Matinee Madcap," a 16mm short film project-in-production. Trent Nicholas shared the directing credit with me. The rest of the staff and several of the Biograph’s regulars appeared as players. 

Stills from "Matinee Madcap" (1974)

The plot, calling for a good deal of slapstick chase-scene footage, conveniently set all the action in the movie theater. I finished editing the nine-minute black and white romp in the Biograph's office during March of 1974. A sound track was added a month or so later in DeWitt's sound studio.   

Although post-prank life seemed to fall back into what was a familiar routine, in the big picture momentous changes were on the horizon. The last American combat troops left Vietnam in 1973. Since the horrors of the Vietnam War had loomed over our political and cultural landscape for a decade, in 1974 the absence of war soon made for a different vibe. 

However, of the many changes that were in the air during 1974, the one that stayed at the top of the news was the steady unraveling of Richard Nixon's presidency. For antiwar 20-something hippies the temptation to celebrate having been right about Vietnam and Nixon was irresistible. 

So it became an excellent year to have parties. At that same time, Richmond's rock 'n' roll scene started bubbling.

*

While some of 1974's changes were fairly predictable, others seemed to come from out of the blue. For instance, not many of us foresaw the most popular gesture of civil disobedience and group defiance on campus during the '60s and early-'70s -- the protest march -- would mutate into impromptu gatherings to cheer on naked people running by. Well, in the spring of '74, streaking on college campuses suddenly, including VCU, became a national phenomenon.

During 1974, Richmond's Biograph made a lot of news, local and elsewhere. That process revealed to me just how much most of the local press seemed to want to help the Biograph succeed. In those times, I suppose the advertising and media pros in most cities tended to like art house cinemas. The same went for art and communications professors at colleges.

To that particular community the Biograph's image had become that of the risk-taking good guys of the local film scene. Thus, after a couple of years of learning on the fly how to steer the direction of Richmond's repertory cinema, I could see that in order to succeed at the box office often enough to keep the place open, I had to get better at making it easy for those same influential people help us.

On August 12, 1974, the Biograph closed for four weeks to be converted into a rather awkward twin cinema. With construction workers toiling round-the-clock that feat remains a story of extremes, all to itself. Of the construction crew, one of their speed-and-alcohol-fueled, 3 a.m. Liar's Poker sessions -- with at least 15 players in each game -- would make a great scene in a neo-noir flick, set in the anything-goes '70s.      

After the construction work was completed, with two projection booths and a connecting hallway between them, automating the change-overs from one 35mm projector to the other was essential to controlling costs. Until then, we had been doing changeovers manually. Among other things that necessitated switching from carbon arc lamps to Xenon lamps, which were high intensity bulbs that could be automatically ignited by switches. 

 

Then there was the day I got to see the same scene projected with the two different lamps. The old light was whiter and the picture sparkled more. 

 

The difference was subtle, but noticeable. The new light, which was cheaper to use in the long run, had a slight yellow cast to it. The new layout with two auditoriums; one seating some 285, the other about 150.

With two screens to fill, the manager’s job became at least twice as complicated. It wasn’t always easy to rent enough good art-house product to fill two screens. Which came to mean that some lofty aspects of the original repertory mission concept became more blurred.

Meanwhile, as the edgy punk style began replacing the hippie culture that had ruled the Grace Street strip for the better part of a decade, I doubt any of us working at the Biograph Theatre suspected that the apex of repertory cinema's popularity, nationally, was already in the rear view mirror. 

*

Note: Here's a list of some other standout events that occurred in 1974, a year marked by sweeping changes, both predictable and not:

Jan. 2: To conserve precious gasoline in an oil shortage crisis, President Richard Nixon signed a new federal law, mandating a 55 mph speed limit, coast-to-coast. 

Jan. 12: After narrowly defeating Henry Howell in the general election, Mills Godwin was sworn in for his second term as governor of Virginia. He had been elected governor as a Democrat in 1965. As it turned out, he was the last of the string of Byrd Machine Democrats to serve as governor. In 1973, for his second term, Godwin won as a Republican.

In this time it was fashionable for conservative Southern Democrats to cross over, to sit on the other side of the aisle. Virginia's Republican Party, which had previously been the more liberal of the Commonwealth's two political parties on some issues, suddenly absorbed a flock of right-wing politicians who had once been a part of the deplorable Massive Resistance movement that had attempted to fight off the integration of Virginia's public schools.

Feb. 4: Patty Hearst was abducted. Eight days later a group calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Army told the extremely well-to-do Hearst family it had to donate $230 million in food aid to the poor. Negotiations ensued.

Mar. 2: President Nixon was named as a "co-conspirator" in the Watergate cover-up by a federal grand jury. Later on, the public learned about how damn crazy Nixon got in his last months in office. Yet, it was still hard to see that he wasn't going to last out the year.

Mar. 29: After flying by and photographing Venus in February, the Mariner 10 reached its closest point to Mercury. Photos of Mercury beamed back to NASA revealed a barren landscape not unlike the Earth's moon.

Apr. 2: Robert Opel streaked across the stage of the 46th Academy Awards ceremony at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. On the live broadcast, as Opel ran by, flashing a peace sign with his hand, the upstaged host, David Niven, promptly jabbed: "The only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings."

Apr. 8: Playing for the Atlanta Braves, outfielder Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s supposedly "unbreakable" career home run record with his 715th round-tripper. Eventually, the public was told about the many sick messages, including death threats, Aaron had received leading up to his feat. Once again, it was obvious that for some dyed-in-the-wool racists nothing would ever change.

Apr. 15: According to photographic evidence Patty Hurst seemed to be helping her captors rob a bank at gunpoint. It was hard to know what to make of it. And, apparently she had changed her name to "Tania."

April 27: At the Cherry Blossom Music Festival, staged at Richmond's City Stadium, club-wielding peace officers and pissed off hippies made national news. Headlined by the Steve Miller Band and Boz Scaggs that well-attended event (which I did not attend) turned out to be when the ongoing feud between the kids and the cops finally boiled over. Accounts agreed that things got totally out of hand when a team of police officers attempted to arrest some pot-smoking members of the festival's audience. Several police cars were destroyed during what turned into a four-hour battle. In all, 76 people were arrested.

 

A friend shot some color 16mm film of the scene. Later on, projected onto the Biograph's screen (after hours) it looked like news footage from a third world country. The fallout from this unprecedented melee put the kibosh on any open-to-the-public, outdoor rock 'n' roll shows in Richmond -- with alcohol available on the site -- for several years.

May 10: A great offbeat thriller, "The Conversation," began a two-week run at the Biograph. The booking owed to a lucky quirk of business that allowed us to play some of Paramount's top first-run pictures that year. Paramount (the distributor) and Neighborhood Theatres (the dominant local chain) weren't speaking for a few months.

May 15: Richmond-based A.H. Robins Co. yielded to pressure from the feds to take its contraceptive device, the Dalkon Shield, off the market.

May 17: A tongue-in-cheek article published in New Times magazine, penned by Nina Totenberg, listed the 10 dumbest people in Congress. Virginia's Sen. William Scott was put atop the list. A week later Scott called a press conference to deny the charge. Scott: "I'm not a dunce."

June 28: "Chinatown," another Paramount first-run picture, premiered at the Biograph. It ran five weeks. The games the staff played using lines from the movie were fun. During that five-week run it became my all-time favorite movie. I was never happier with what was being presented at the Biograph than I was for those five weeks.

My favorite line in "Chinatown" is spoken by Noah Cross (John Huston), who says: "Course I'm respectable. I'm old. Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough." 

 

The older I get the more Huston's line makes perfect sense. The quality first-run Paramount films we played during this period of our third year of operation did much to bring in new customers; some of which became regulars. Using the distributor's money to buy large display newspaper ads was a big help in attracting those fresh faces.

July 27: The House Judiciary Committee voted 27-11 to impeach Nixon. Three days later the Supreme Court said Nixon had to surrender tape recordings of White House meetings that had been sought by the Watergate investigation’s special prosecutor. By then, Nixon's presidency was surely in a death spiral, but he continued to vow that he would never resign.

Aug. 9: Nixon resigned. Gerald Ford was immediately sworn in as president.

Sept. 8: Ford pardoned Nixon, which didn't come as much of a surprise, but it still frustrated a lot of people who wanted to see him to face the music.

Oct. 29: Muhammad Ali regained the world heavyweight boxing crown he had lost by refusing to be drafted into the army in 1967. In Zaire, Ali defeated the heavily favored champion, George Foreman, by a knockout in the eighth round.

Nov. 13: Yasir Arafat, the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, addressed the UN with a pistol strapped to his waist. Supporters of Israel cringed. Israel's enemies puffed up their chests. Lovers of peace weren't necessarily encouraged, but hoped for the best.

Nov. 24: The 3.2 million-year-old skeleton of an early human ancestor was discovered in Ethiopia. The scientists who found it named the skeleton, “Lucy.”

Dec. 10: "Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones," a first-run concert film, began a four-week engagement at the Biograph in No. 1 (the larger auditorium). A special sound system was brought in to beef up the surround sound to rock 'n' roll concert level.

Dec. 19: The former governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller, a moderate Republican, was sworn in as Vice President.

Dec. 28: The last published Billboard Top 100 list of 1974 revealed that the No. 1 pop single of the year was Barbra Streisand's "The Way We Were."

*

Comment from Rebus: 

The masthead to Program 53 in 1980

Here's an offbeat story about Rea few people know about:

At the aforementioned "Devil in Miss Jones" press conference in the Biograph’s lobby, in the summer of '73, Rea looked into the camera and asked for the public to weigh in on the freedom of speech angle. "Send me your opinions," he openly requested of his news audience. 

Well, over 100 letters, cards, etc., came in. Most were mailed to the theater, others were dropped off. The majority of them were supportive, but not all. There were a few letters that were quite entertaining. So, figuring they might be useful down the road, Rea collected what he saw as the best of them in a cardboard box that may have once contained  boxes of the licorice-flavored Good & Plenty. 

 

Into the same box went lots of clippings about the tumultuous run of “The Devil in Miss Jones” and the Biograph’s news-making days in court. Later on, several stories about the prank from various periodicals, local and national, were added to the collection. Then, after the dust had settled for about a year, the chief prankster, himself, had a sudden change of heart. 

Caught up in a spell of melancholia, Rea got to dwelling on what had become a nagging conclusion -- no matter how hard he ever worked to put over the greatest of films, most people in Richmond would go on blithely ignoring them, in great part because they aren't heavily promoted.

On top of that (in Rea's view), too many Richmonders were habitually distrusting of anything new, which the Biograph Theatre still was. Plus, a year's worth of prank-driven attaboys suddenly felt like an overdose to him. Stewing over the thought that his name would always be connected with a somewhat creepy, even pretentious, porno movie wasn't setting well with him on that day, either. 

At 26, he probably already suspected the Terry Rea of the future might develop an embarrassing tendency to wallow in nostalgia. And, then, just like that, he decided to throw away all the stuff in the Devil Box. 

Yes, he knew he was tossing out artifacts he would probably want back. Some day. He told  me that was part of why he did it. Yes, it was to play a trick on himself ... in the future.

Perhaps the bitter need his precious Biograph had developed to show trashy movies, in order to be allowed to also show totally worthwhile movies, grossed him out a little extra on that particular winter’s day in early-1975. 

 

Into the nearly empty back alley dumpster the Devil Box went. It landed with a satisfying thump. 

Walking away from the dumpster, Rea laughed as he crossed the cobblestone alley behind the theater. He probably felt good for the first time that day. 

A few years later, Rea ran across an Associated Press article about the prank that appeared in an out-of-town newspaper. It included a photo of the line of film buffs stretched along the 800-block of West Grace Street, all waiting to join the festivities and see a free screening of a pre-WWII light comedy, starring Jean Arthur. 

Somehow that one clipping had escaped the Devil Box purge. Naturally, he had it framed. Last time I looked it was hanging over his desk.

 

  

-- All rights reserved by the artist/writer, F.T. Rea.

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