by Jim Harrington
Phyllis Janovich has always loved movies. For most of her 43 years in Palo Alto, she's had an ample selection of local theaters where she could sit down and lose herself in a film for a few hours. At 73, she still makes it to the theaters often. She's seen both "The English Patient" and "Shine" at the Palo Alto Square Theatre. If she can find the time, she'd like to see "Shine" again.
"It's just a way of getting away from all your humdrum life," Janovich said.
Such escapes have become more difficult for Janovich. She's seen many Palo Alto and Menlo Park theaters close in the past 20 years. She is especially saddened by the loss of the Fine Arts Theater on California Avenue. The Fine Arts building is now home to an Oriental carpet dealer, but to Janovich, it will always be the place where her late-husband watched movies as a boy.
Many longtime movie fans will tell you the glory days of Palo Alto cinema have long passed. The number of theaters that have closed in Palo Alto and Menlo Park in the last 20 years is the greater than the number that remains open.
Another blow to the Palo Alto movie scene will likely strike within the next year. The Palo Alto Square's days appear to be numbered. The twin-screen complex, built in 1972, was slated for closure in February. It was only saved when Palo Alto city officials convinced the building owners to grant a temporary reprieve. It has been allowed to remain open on a month-to-month basis for an indefinite period.
The Los Angeles-based Landmark Theatres Corp., which runs the Palo Alto Square, would like to find a location for a new "miniplex" cinema to make up for the inevitable loss of The Square. The top choice, according to Landmark president Steve Gilula, is the Stanford Shopping Center. But the most fevered debate on the Peninsula--the possible expansion of Sand Hill Road, which may allow the mall to expand--stands in its way.
For now, for a whole new generation of movie-goers, Peninsula cinema means Redwood City and Mountain View Century multiplexes, not Palo Alto and Menlo Park neighborhood theaters.
But it has not always been that way.
The Oct. 7, 1969, edition of the Palo Alto Times carried an article on an intriguing business trend happening locally. Movie theaters were moving into town, replacing other local businesses. The Aquarius I and II moved into the Tambellini Meat building at 436 Emerson St., and The Menlo theater opened in the old Bank of America building at Santa Cruz Avenue and Doyle Street in Menlo Park. The article concluded that "the two new theaters reflect a current return to the movies by the public."
"This is evident any Friday or Saturday night at theaters on the Midpeninsula, where long lines form waiting to get into the next showing," the article read.
Tuesdays aren't known as big movie-going nights, but the cinema listings for the Tuesday, March 2, 1976, edition of the Times made the Midpeninsula look like an ongoing film festival.
On that night, the Festival Cinema, 475 Hamilton Ave., was scheduled to show Joseph Cotton in "The Third Man" and Fritz Lang's "Ministry of Fear." The Menlo was screening Sean Connery and Michael Caine in "The Man Who Would Be King," while the Fine Arts, 431 California Ave., had Gene Wilder in "Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother."
The Park went with Ingmar Bergman's "The Magic Flute." The Guild was showing the double bill of "Lucky Lady" and "Dixie Dance Kings." Over at the Palo Alto Square, the heavily Oscar-nominated films--"Barry Lyndon" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"--held court.
The Aquarius had two exclusive Peninsula engagements--"The Story of Adele H." and "Swept Away." "The Sunshine Boys" played at The Bijou, 640 Emerson St. "Lies My Father Told Me" went on at the Biograph Cinema, 410 Ramona St. The New Varsity, 456 University Ave., was screening "King of Hearts." The Paris Theatre, 124 University Ave., provided adult-entertainment with "Massage Parlor Wife," a film that was billed as "meet the girls that rub you the right way."
Including the risque Paris film, that's 15 movies playing at 11 theaters. Two years, three months and four days later--on Tuesday, June 6, 1978--21 films were shown at 11 theaters (including the Star Wars spoof "Hardware Wars" and Bob Dylan and Joan Baez in "Renaldo and Clara" at Stanford University's Memorial Auditorium.)
Last night--on a Tuesday roughly 20 years later--six movies played at four theaters in Palo Alto and Menlo Park.
After being reminded of the plethora of film options that existed back in the 1970s, longtime Peninsula film-goer Hilary Hart was depressed. She longs for what she refers to as the "glory days" of Palo Alto cinema.
"It was an exciting (time) because there was so many choices. It was a smorgasbord," said Hart, who is currently working for the San Francisco International Film Festival. "All those (March 2, 1976, films) are incredible choices. You'd have to go to New York City to get that kind of choice now--or Paris."
Hart is an expert on the Palo Alto film scene of the last two decades. She was 24 years old when she started working at the Varsity in 1974 and worked at local theaters until the early 1990s.
"I think I've worked at almost every theater in Palo Alto," she said.
She remembers how big repertory houses were in the 1970s, when people could see revivals of classic films such as "The Third Man." Whereas people used to attend the Varsity to see a classic on a 48-by-24-foot theater screen, she says, they are now staying home and watching the same movie on a 24-inch television screen.
"Video killed the repertory theater. Video was the kiss of death for rep houses," she said. "As the fortunes of the Blockbusters rose, the fortunes of the repertory theaters fell."
RI.P: Paris, Dec. 29, 1977; Menlo, Sept. 16, 1982; Festival, April 18, 1985; Bijou, June 6, 1985; Fine Arts, Oct. 27, 1987; Varsity, July 8, 1994. The theaters may be gone but in the memories of their customers, they remain. The Celluloid images shown on their screens are burned into the minds of the people who sat in the dark theaters, munching popcorn and escaping from their "humdrum" world. Listening to a film-lover describe the first time seeing a favorite movie is a lot like listening to a person tell the story of a first date with someone who turns out to be a life-long companion. Details are remembered. Location is everything.
Jeanne Aufmuth, a film critic for the Weekly and Cable Co-op's "Reel Review" show, has that type of relationship with the memory of her first time seeing "Fanny and Alexander" at the Fine Arts back in 1983.
"It was packed, completely packed," she said. "And it was a real sense of a cinematic event, not just, 'Oh, let's go see a movie.'"
She also has special memories of the old Bijou.
"I was devastated when the Bijou closed. I spent so much time there as a teen-ager," Aufmuth remembered. "I saw 'Harold and Maude' nine times during its run at the Bijou."
Gordon-Biersch Brewery Restaurant now holds court at the old Bijou building, 640 Emerson St., and films like "Harold and Maude" have been replaced by specialty brews and California cuisine.
Folks now purchase the newest Tom Clancy and U2 bestsellers at Borders Books and Music, which was once the Varsity. The old Palo Alto Drive-In Theater, which serviced Cadillacs, convertibles and Capris well into the 1970s, is now Greer Park.
The decline of neighborhood theaters, a phenomenon that has struck almost every town in America, is a simple story of economics. From a business standpoint, movie theaters are funny birds: They require much space and a lot of parking to operate, yet, for the most part, they can't afford to pay the same level of rent that other businesses can.
"Clearly you can rent commercial property for offices of savings and loans or bagel shops for a much higher rent on a square foot basis than you can for a theater," said Henry Breitrose, Stanford University professor of communication. "So economically if what a landlord wants to do is maximize revenue, clearly a theater is not a good investment" in an area where rent is high.
Breitrose, who teaches film at Stanford, points out Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant going into the building that once housed the Bijou as an example of the economics at play. He said that when you compare the two options--"showing movies or selling beer and yuppie lunches all day"--Gordon Biersch is clearly the better economic option.
But if decisions were made solely from a fine arts standpoint, perhaps we would have a different situation. Many believe that when these old theaters are replaced with restaurants, cafes, bars or other businesses, Palo Alto's treasure chest of culture finds itself diminished.
"There's a limit to how many bagels you can eat; how many cappuccinos you can drink," Breitrose said.
In the late-1970s, something would happen that would forever change film-going on the Peninsula. Multiplexes began to open. It started with the opening of the Old Mill 6 theaters off San Antonio Road and California Avenue in 1976. When that theater opened, traffic was backed up onto San Antonio Road nearly every night from crowds trying to get at the new complex.
But the trend of multiple screens did not end there.
Century Theatres opened a 10-screen complex on Nov. 11, 1985, off Shoreline Road in Mountain View. In 1994, the theater would go to 16 screens.
Century 12 opened in Redwood City on Oct. 6, 1989. Nestled between Redwood City and Mountain View on U.S. 101, Palo Alto was still the center of the movie-going universe on the Peninsula--but it was no longer the destination.
More than a few people have pointed their fingers at multiplexes like the Centurys as the reason why single-screen and small theaters have had a difficult time surviving. It became harder for the single-screen houses to get movies. The films were all getting swallowed up by the multiplexes, which had the economic might to get exclusive engagements for most popular movies.
"What happened at the time, in the '80s, the multiplexes started to develop and what they did was start to drain the Hollywood product," Breitrose said.
Aufmuth says that the smaller theaters "are dying because of convenience." She calls the multiplexes "instant-gratification-plexes" and compares them to fast food.
"(Movie-going is) not a cultural experience anymore, it's a quick fix. I don't like that," she said. "It's quick and it's easy."
But Palo Alto and Menlo Park's old theaters have something that the multiplexes don't, according to Aufmuth. They have something that makes a number of locals a tad bit sentimental. "They all had character because they were all small neighborhood theaters, and that is what is slowly ebbing away," she said. "Does anyone feel sentimental about the Centurys? I think not."
But sentiment doesn't operate movie theaters. It takes attendance. And attendance is one thing that the Centurys have.
"The Century Mountain View is consistently in the top five grossing theaters in the nation," said Nancy Klasky, vice president of marketing for the Centurys.
What differentiates the Palo Alto and Menlo Park theaters from the Centurys, as well as other nearby multiplexes such as Redwood City UA 6, is the type of movies that are shown. While the mainstream multiplexes stick chiefly with big budget Hollywood flicks, the theaters in Palo Alto and Menlo Park all show, what is deemed as, art-house films. (The one exception being University Avenue's Stanford Theatre, which shows classic films on its big screen.)
Along with the Palo Alto Square, Landmark Theatres also runs the Aquarius as well as Menlo Park's Guild and Park. Landmark is the nation's largest exhibitor of specialized films, which includes American independent movies, foreign films and nontraditional Hollywood films.
The possible closure of the Square has many film lovers nervous. When art houses close--leaving behind the mainstream multiplexes--it takes away from the variety of the movie scene.
"You are missing some of the most interesting movies made in the world. When you go to the Centurys, you are getting Hollywood product. You are getting Arnold movies," Breitrose said. "In a sense living in a world without these (Landmark-type) films is like living in a world where classical music is only represented by Andrew Lloyd Weber."
Landmark's Steve Gilula has great hopes that a "miniplex" can be built at Stanford Shopping Center. (See related sidebar) And he is not just speaking from a business man's perspective. He's also speaking from the perspective of a big film fan--one with strong ties to the Palo Alto area.
An early 1970s graduate of Stanford University, Gilula clearly remembers when there was a plethora of cinema choices available locally. He recalls watching Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather" at the Palo Alto Square, seeing "Easy Rider" at the Varsity, experiencing "Midnight Cowboy" at the Stanford, and laughing to a Charlie Chaplin film festival at the Paris.
"There were a lot of memories of mine--and certainly thousands of others--that were part of those theaters," he said.
If things go his way, there will plenty more memories to come.
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