[lbo-talk] silent movies

[Dennis Claxton]

I got this notice yesterday from a local movie house.  The place has 
a great history.  It shut down for a while after proprietor Lawrence 
Austin was murdered in a contract killing 11 years ago (see 
below).  Austin was an old school queen who would promenade down the 
aisle before the show started and introduce the evening's bill.  He 
was marvelous.

When I first got this note it made me think of history, urban 
geography and such.  Then it just warmed my heart.

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Hey everybody,

Just one detail I wanted to add to this weeks screenings, something 
special that's not in our program. When we be play the restored print 
for Metropolis Wednesday night, the organist will be Bob Mitchell. 
Bob, who is 95 and has been playing for silent films off-and-on for 
84 years, starting at a second-run house in Pasadena when he was 11, 
played Metropolis when it first played there in 1928. He knows the 
original score, and loves to play it.  This is gonna be some real 
legit stuff. Check it out.

Hadrian Belove
Head Programmer
The Cinefamily @
Silent Movie Theater

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http://www.notfortourists.com/citySearchMain2.aspx?city=NY&id=40343&category=Landmarks&categories=Landmarks

Silent Movie Theatre

This theater's story is as melodramatic as the films it's been 
showing for more than sixty years. Following the grand opening in 
1941, owner John Hampton was tossed in the klink for protesting the 
war. Hampton reopened four years later, throwing himself into the 
restoration and preservation of silent films. Both processes, 
unfortunately, involved prolonged exposure to toxic chemicals, and 
Hampton succumbed to cancer in 1990. A year later, family friend 
Lawrence Austin revived the theater, only to be gunned down in the 
lobby in front of sixty moviegoers in 1997, a hit engineered by his 
live-in companion, theater projectionist James van Sickle. After a 
protracted battle between Austin's estate and the County of Los 
Angeles, the estate won the right to sell the theater and auction off 
its extensive collection of films and memorabilia to provide for John 
Hampton's widow, Dorothy. In 1999 songwriter Charlie Lustman saw the 
"for sale" sign en route to his favorite falafel stand and bought a 
theater to go with his sandwich. The show has gone on ever since.

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The place has changed hands again since this was written.  Here's the 
website:  http://www.cinefamily.org/