The Big Stretch

Note: A version of this piece first appeared in STYLE Weekly as a Back Page in 2002.

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? 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.

If Dorothy Parker's word-smithing wasn’t 
cool, what the hell was?

-- Photo of Albert H. Hill Middle School from RVA Schools 

My Dorothy Parker illustration was done in 2013.

Biograph Times: After Midnight

Midnight Shows

During what some film aficionados like to call "the golden age of repertory cinema," approximately 1967-1978, double features ruled. In that same 12-year span presenting midnight shows was also an integral aspect of the programming for many of those movie houses.

While most of what was done at the Biograph Theatre was standard practice in that time for art houses/repertory cinemas, the formula for how to do midnight shows had yet to be established in Richmond when a twin bill of so-called "underground" films, “Chafed Elbows” (1966) and “Scorpio Rising” (1964), became the first special late-night attraction the Biograph presented. On April 7, 1972, the show actually started at 11:30 p.m. It was simply called a "late show." 

Then, over our initial year of operation, we came to figure out the sort of moving pictures that would appeal to the late crowd. Thus, although “The Godfather” (1972) was a critical success and a popular film the year the Biograph opened, it was not the sort of movie that would draw an audience at midnight. On the other hand, “Fritz the Cat” (1972), released the same year — but barely remembered today — was a good draw. When we premiered “El Topo” (1970) during regular hours in the spring of 1973 it flopped. Yet later, as a midnight show, it did well.

A 16mm bootleg print of “Animal Crackers” (1930), a Marx Brothers romp that had been out of release for decades, played well at midnight. Some rock ’n’ roll movies worked, others didn’t. Same with thrillers and monster flicks. The most successful midnight shows needed a cachet of something slightly forbidden — maybe not allowed during regular hours.

In that light, a Marx Brothers title that couldn’t be seen on television or in a standard movie theater had an extra luster. We rented it from a private collector who had a beautiful 16mm print.

We tended to promote midnight shows with radio spots on WGOE-AM and with handbills posted on utility poles and in shop windows. We relied on little or no newspaper advertising for midnight shows in the early days. We usually didn’t list them in our printed calendar programs, which displayed the titles and some film notes for the movies we exhibited during regular hours.

By showing “Animal Crackers,” we may have been bending some sort of copyright laws. But the Fan District wasn’t Manhattan or Malibu, so no one who had any interest in the obscure battle over the rights to an old Marx Brothers feature film was likely to notice.

In the first couple of years of operation we occasionally rented short subjects, old TV shows and even feature films from private collectors who acted as distributors. Some of those titles were in the public domain, which meant no one actually had the “exclusive rights” to the rent out prints of the movie. “Reefer Madness” (1936) was such a movie. Others were like “Animal Crackers,” which, due to a legal dispute, wasn’t in general release.

My bosses at the Biograph in Georgetown and I talked about the propriety of showing bootleg prints of films with murky rights issues several times. I came to agree with them that we weren’t denying the artists, or rightful distributors any money. Instead, they saw it as liberating those films for people to see. Anyway, we didn’t get caught.

A few years later the issues that had kept “Animal Crackers” out of release were resolved. So we booked a nice 35mm print from the proper distributor. It didn’t perform at the box office as well as it had before, when it was forbidden.

When the Biograph started running midnight shows in 1972 the bars in Richmond closed at midnight, so there was a lot less to do at 12:01 a.m. than when the official cutoff time was extended to 2 a.m. in 1976.

Another reason midnight shows caught on, when they did, was that drive-in theaters, which had done well in the '50s and '60s, were going out of style fast. Some of the low-budget product they had been exhibiting found a new home as late-night entertainment in hardtop theaters. Thus, “Mondo Cane” (1962), “Blood Feast” (1963) and “2,000 Maniacs” (1964) all played the Richmond Biograph as midnight shows. Once into the ’80s that sort of movie began to routinely go straight to video, skipping a theatrical run.

By the time we opened “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” in June of 1978, going to a midnight show was no longer seen as an exotic thing to do in Richmond. Multiplexes in the suburbs ran them all the time. Which ironically made the timing perfect for a kitschy spoof of/tribute to trashy rock ‘n’ roll and monster movies to become the all-time greatest midnight show draw.

The midnight show fad of the ‘70s could only have flourished then, when baby boomers were in their teens and 20s. It came before cable television was widely available and video rental stores had popped up in nearly every neighborhood.

While sometimes a successful midnight show run came along in the nick of time to pay the Biograph's rent, on the other hand, there were times when I bit off more than I could chew. On October 22, 1982, a film about a murder spree, “The Honeymoon Killers” (1969), opened as a midnight show. I had seen it somewhere and become convinced it would appeal to the same crowd that loved absurd comedies by Luis Buñuel and Robert Altman. 

Well, I was dead wrong, because “The Honeymoon Killers” fell flat. Yet, to this day, I still wonder how it would have been received by Biograph midnight show devotees in our first year or two of operation. 

Although movies may still occasionally be screened in theaters at the midnight hour, the cultural significance of midnight shows has been in steady decline since the passing of the '70s.

* 

After-Hours Screenings

Still of Jimmy Cliff as Ivan.

In the fall of 1973, David Levy, then the most active managing partner/owner of the Biograph Theatres in Georgetown and Richmond, asked me to look at a film 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” shipped to me.

In those days we had frequent after-hours screenings of films we came by, one way or another. Usually on short notice, the word would go out that we would be watching a movie at a certain time. These gatherings were essentially impromptu movie parties. A couple of times it was 1940s and '50s 16mm boxing films from a private collection.

Sometimes prints of films that were in town to play at another venue, say a film society, would mysteriously appear in our booth. In such cases the borrowed flicks were always returned before they were missed ... so I was told.

Although I don’t remember any moments, in particular, from that first screening of “The Harder They Come,” 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. I had smoked it over thoroughly with a few friends during and after the screening. Consequently, I told David we ought to have a free, open-to-the-public, sneak preview of the movie. Most importantly, we should use radio exclusively to promote the screening. Because of the significance of the radio campaigns for the Biograph's midnight shows, over the last year, he liked the idea right away.

In this time, 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 while we had a sweet deal -- a dollar-a-holler -- with WGOE-AM, the most popular station for the under-35 set in the Fan District and environs. In the first half of the 1970s, the station at the top of the AM dial, 1590, owned the hippie market. 

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 cut by Jimmy Cliff, the film’s star, from the soundtrack. This pattern was continued maybe three times an hour, leading up to the time of the screening.

Note: “The Harder They Come” (1972): 120 minutes. Color. 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.

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

In previous runs in other markets, “The Harder They Come” had been treated more or less 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 to it that added to its allure. Upon hearing about the test-audience's approval, Levy got excited and wanted to book it to run as a regular feature, rather than as a midnight only show.

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

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

In 1973, watching a virtually unknown low-budget Jamaican film after operating hours in the Biograph had seemed edgy, almost exotic. That night we couldn't have had any idea how popular reggae music was about to become.

Over the next few years reggae music smoothly crossed over from niche to mainstream to ubiquitous. Bob Marley (1945-81) still has a huge following to this day. Reggae's popularity eventually opened the door for the popularity of the fusion sound of the 2 Tone bands, like The Selecter, The Specials, the (English) Beat, Madness, and so forth, in the early-1980s.

Time to Take the Fall

In the classic hard-boiled detective flick, "The Maltese Falcon" (1941), when world-weary Sam Spade is absolutely over and done with femme fatale Brigid O'Shaughnessy's scheming, he tells her so. In the film's last reel, whatever charm her devious, seductive act ever had over him was kaput ... irrevocably. 

So she (Mary Astor) almost begs. He (Humphrey Bogart) breaks the news to her -- she's "taking the fall." 

Spade: You won't need much of anybody's help. You're good. It's chiefly your eyes, I think, and that throb you get in your voice when you say things like 'Be generous, Mr. Spade.'
Brigid: I deserve that. But the lie was in the way I said it. Not at all in what I said. It's my own fault if you can't believe me now.
Spade: [smiling] Now you are dangerous.
Brigid: Don't, Sam. Don't say it even in fun. Ha, ha, ha. Oh, I was frightened for a minute. I really thought...You do such wild and unpredictable things.
Spade: Don't be silly. You're taking the fall.

Then Spade wisely stiff-arms the dangerous O'Shaughnessy's warmed-over advances. He coldly turns her over to the cops. 

* 

Now it's time for one of Trump's top dogs to face the crime and punishment music. Currently, the momentum is running against Trump. Wait until October, then maybe it's too close to election day and a window closes. Timing can be so important.

Take you pick: John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Mark Meadows, Roger Stone, etc. Someone of that visibility level has to be charged with a crime and seen on TV doing the perp-walk.

Please, Merrick Garland, pick the one who is the easiest to convict and just do it. Or, maybe one of the other prosecutors in a state, who's also on this case, needs to act. 

In order for many citizens -- especially those under 30 -- to believe the law and order system in this country still works in 2022, sometime this month, we all need to see one of the key insurrection plotters take the fall.

VCU's A-10 Men's Basketball Schedule

From Chris Kowalczyk, VCU Assistant A.D.:

The VCU Rams will play at least 13 of their Atlantic 10 Conference contests in front of a national TV audience, the league revealed Wednesday. The A-10 also announced that VCU’s home contest with Vanderbilt on Nov. 30 will be televised on CBS Sports Network as part of the league’s national TV package.

The Rams, who own the A-10’s best winning percentage since joining the league prior to the 2012-13 season, will kick off their 11th Atlantic 10 Conference season on Saturday, Dec. 31 when they host La Salle at the Stuart C. Siegel Center.

VCU’s 2023 A-10 slate includes home-and-home series with perennial league contenders Dayton, Saint Louis and Davidson, as well as a first-ever trip to newest conference member Loyola Chicago on Jan. 10.

The Black and Gold will be featured on four of the Atlantic 10’s Friday night ESPN showcase contests: Jan. 13 at Dayton, Jan. 20 at Richmond, Feb. 3 at Saint Louis and Feb. 24 versus Richmond at the Siegel Center. The Rams will appear five times in league play on CBS Sports Network, including Jan. 10 at Loyola, Jan. 28 versus St. Bonaventure, Jan. 31 at Davidson, Feb. 7 versus Dayton and Feb. 28 versus Saint Louis.

VCU is led by sixth-year Head Coach Mike Rhoades, who guided the Rams to a 22-10 record and a postseason NIT berth in 2021-22, as well as a 14-4 Atlantic 10 mark. VCU is 121-51 in A-10 regular season play since 2012-13. 

Additional game times and television information will be announced at a later date.

VCU season tickets are on sale now and can be purchased by visiting VCUAthletics.com/tickets or by calling the VCU Ticket Office at 804-828-RAMS. 

To see VCU's pre-conference November/December schedule at its website click here.

Hank's Cadillac

 

Constructed of Indiana limestone, New Union Station opened for 
operation in 1919. It was later renamed Broad Street Station. 
The building now serves as the Science Museum of 
Virginia. The image is from the VCU Library’s 
Rarely Seen Richmond postcard collection.

The first train is said to have pulled out of the station at 1:07 p.m. on January 6, 1919. Designed by John Russell Pope, what was originally known as New Union Station was constructed on the site of what had been the Hermitage Country Club. A partnership of two railroad companies, the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Railroad and the Atlantic Coast Line, built the station to satisfy the growing city’s needs. Later the station was renamed Broad Street Station and the Norfolk & Western line also came to use it.

Directly across the street, at 2501 West Broad Street, the William Byrd Hotel opened in 1925. The 12-story hotel catered to travelers heading north and south. At the other end of the block the Capitol Theater opened for business a couple of years later. It was the first movie theater in Richmond to be equipped for sound, to screen the new fad -- talkies.

Boasting a first class train station and the new businesses that popped up close by, the area became a cosmopolitan neighborhood. After all, in those days residents of the Fan District lived within easy walking distance of direct access to the entire East Coast.

The William Byrd’s barber shop opened in 1927. Legendary barber Willie Carlton (1926-2013) began looking out of the barber shop’s windows at Davis Avenue in 1948.

Carlton bought the business in the 1950s. Recalling that for many years automobiles parked on the 800 block of Davis at a 45-degree angle facing the barber shop, Carlton chuckled as he described a visit by singer/songwriter Hank Williams (1923-53), who was asleep in a convertible when it was time to open the barber shop.

“Well, he was taking a little nap, out there in his Cadillac,” Carlton the storyteller recalled in a warm tone that seemed to signal that he could still see the picture he was describing.

Apparently, after the hard-living country music great finished sleeping off his road weariness, he got out of his snazzy ride and came inside for his haircut. Carlton says the price of a haircut in those days was 60 cents. Lunch in the hotel’s busy dining room cost about the same.

Although he sold the business in the mid-1990s, until May of 2013 Carlton continued to work at his same barber chair ... when he wasn't playing golf. He died two months later at the age of 87. 

During the station’s peak use, the years of World War II, an average of 57 trains passed through Broad Street Station on a daily basis. During the ensuing decades, rapid outward growth of the city combined with the withering of America’s passenger rail system to gradually change the character of the neighborhood.

In 1975 Broad Street Station was no longer the hub of metropolitan life it had been; the last passenger train left the station at 4:58 a.m., on November 15 of that year.

In 1977 the much-admired building’s second life as the Science Museum of Virginia began.

The distinctive clock on the face of the building.
(my photo circa 2004).

Time Warping, Again

by F.T. Rea

Intro:

In 1955 RKO, which had just changed hands, became the first major Hollywood studio to sell most of the exhibition rights to its library of feature films to the hungry television network interests. Consequently, my early-baby boomer generation grew up watching that studio's well-crafted black and white movies on their TVs. In a way, RKO plays a cameo role in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” (1975).

That particular campy send-up of old science fiction and monster flicks is by far the most significant midnight show attraction of all-time. As such, it needs its own chapter in any proper chronicle of the times at the Biograph Theatre in Richmond, Virginia – a repertory cinema I managed from its early-1972 opening until my departure in mid-1983.

 This photo of Larry Rohr riding up the aisle, during a 
midnight screening of the "The Rocky Horror 
Picture Show," was shot on Mar. 1, 1980. 

"The Rocky Horror Picture Show" (1975) was adapted from the British kitsch-celebrating, gender-bending stage musical, “The Rocky Horror Show.” The play, written in the early-1970s, opened in London in 1973. Its thin plot cashed in on that time's freedom to pursue pleasure, expressed by the hippies' popular trope – “if it feels good, do it.” Two years later the film adaptation was released.

Yet, to Fox's distribution department in 1975, the movie was just weird. It was weird in a way that made it too difficult to pigeonhole, marketing-wise. That factor couldn't have helped in the promotion of its first-run engagements, which were disappointing. Its weakness at the box office eventually prompted Fox to give up and put it on the shelf. 

At Midnight Only

While “Rocky Horror,” the film, became popular in the USA during what might now be seen as the punk era, it wasn't really all that connected to the aesthetic of punk's defiant nonchalance. Style-wise, its music, written by the play's author, Richard O'Brien, was sort of a bubble-gum knockoff of 1950s rock 'n' roll, fused with a measure of 1970s glam rock.

Overall, as pop music goes, the songs probably didn't expand any boundaries. Nonetheless, in the context of the movie the music had it own charm. As a movie musical, "Rocky Horror" was surely no worse than a good deal of the Hollywood musicals of the 1950s and '60s. 

Anyway, it didn't please the critics all that much, either. So when Fox took it out of release, no one could have anticipated the one-of-a-kind cult following it would eventually gather as a midnight show. No one saw its unique cult film status coming. 

Note: “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”: 100 minutes. Color. Directed by Jim Sharman (who had also directed the play). Cast: Tim Curry (as Dr. Frank-N-Furter), Susan Sarandon (as Janet), Barry Bostwick (as Brad), Richard O'Brien (as Riff Raff), Patricia Quinn (as Magenta), Nell Campbell (as Columbia), Meat Loaf (as Eddie), Peter Hinwood (as Rocky).

A little over a year later, the second life for “Rocky Horror” is said to have begun at the legendary Waverly Theater (now the IFC Center) in Greenwich Village. At midnight screenings, a few audience members with the nerve to do it, began calling out sarcastic comeback lines to the film's action and dialogue. The funniest remarks were appreciated, imitated, then eventually topped by an attendee at a subsequent screening.

Thus, the audience reaction that became a thing, wasn't originally some adman's brainchild. It just happened.

It should also be noted that midnight shows had been popular in New York City since the late-'60s. As well, they had been running at selected hip cinemas in other cities and some college towns for a good five years or more. Basically, if a midnight screening went well, it would be held over to the next weekend, which was a departure from calendar house programming. So the midnight show format had already been developed when “Rocky Horror” came along.

In the Richmond Biograph's first couple of years of operation midnight show screenings frequently helped keep the lights on. Some of the midnight show features that were popular enough to run for multiple weekends then were: “Performance” (1970); “Reefer Madness” (1936); “Deep Throat” (1972) w/ “The Andalusian Dog” (1929); “Night of the Living Dead” (1968); “El Topo” (1970); “Putney Swope” (1969); “Magical Mystery Tour” (1967). Routinely, they were promoted using handbills (small posters) and radio spots that ran on WGOE-AM.

During 1977 at the Waverly the role the audience played in the midnight shows enlarged to make the screenings into events with costumes and choreography, as the traditional wall between the screen and the viewers continued dissolving. When that unprecedented interaction phenomenon jumped from Manhattan to other markets where “Rocky Horror” was playing as a midnight show, such as Austin and Los Angeles, it became even more puzzling.

By the winter of 1977/78 “Rocky Horror” was playing to enthusiastic crowds in several cities. Yet, curiously, it had not caught on at others. What would eventually become a popular culture marvel was still flying below the radar for most of America.

As the spring of '78 approached, Alan Rubin, one of my two bosses at the Biograph in Georgetown, asked Fox once again about booking it for Richmond's Biograph. It was already playing at the rival Key Theatre in Georgetown, because Rubin's ex-partner, David Levy, had beaten him to the punch. Alan was told there still weren't any prints available.

Then, during a trip to Los Angles in May, I heard about the elaborate goings-on at the Tiffany Theatre to do with “Rocky Horror.” Upon my return to Richmond I told Alan and his partner, Lenny Poryles, what I'd learned about its growing popularity in LA. Subsequently, during a conference call with one of the guys at Fox, Alan, Lenny and I were told there was just no enthusiasm at his end for the picture’s prospects in Richmond. 

The Deal

To be fair, in those days Richmond was generally seen by most movie distributors as a rather weak market – not a place to waste resources. Besides, no one at Fox seemed to understand why the audience participation following for the picture had blossomed in the first place, or more importantly – what was making the movie's cult following catch on in some cities, but not at all in others. So they were holding off on ordering any new prints. Which meant there was no telling how long we might have to wait. It does seem funny now to recall how unconvinced the Fox folks were they had something that was new and old rules didn't apply.

Alan, Lenny and I continued our telephone conversation after the distributor's representative got off the line. That led us to agreeing to a plan: We would offer to front the cost of a new 35mm print, some $5,000, as I remember it, which would stand as an advance against standard film rental fees. There were two provisos: 1. The Biograph would continue hold the exclusive rights to exhibit “Rocky Horror” in the Richmond market as long as we held onto that print. 2. That I would promote it as I saw fit, creating my own materials, rather than rely on Fox's standard press kit stuff (which I was accustomed to doing when situations called for it).

When we called the Fox distributor's office back, it went smoothly. With nothing to lose, they went for the deal. After all, if anything, the Biograph had earned a reputation for being a pretty good venue for midnight shows.

Next, for research, I questioned a couple of publicity people at Fox a little more about how it had been promoted in various situations. Strangely, there was no consensus about what had prompted the successes or failures. However, Fox had encouraged a few exhibitors to call for attendees who would recite certain lines and dance in the aisles, etc. But when they tried to prime the pump in that way it hadn't worked.

After viewing the film, I decided it would be better not to over-promote it. That way there would be less risk of drawing the sort of general audience which might include too many unsatisfied customers – folks who might leave the theater bad-mouthing it. My strategy called for first getting the attention of the kids who had already been seeing “Rocky Horror” screenings at the Waverly or the Key, as well as a few of the most determined of local taste-makers who must see anything edgy first, so they can opine about it.

Accordingly, at WGOE's studio I produced a radio commercial using about 20 seconds of the film's signature song, “Time Warp.” The only ad copy came at the very end with a tag line. The listener heard my voice say, “Get in the act … midnight at the Biograph.”

There was no explanation of what the music was, or what the 30-second spot was even about. At that time the soundtrack for “Rocky Horror” still hadn't become all that well known. The hook was that the spot didn't offer listeners as much information as they expected, which hopefully added somewhat to its underground allure. The same less-is-more approach was used in the print materials.

The Floor Show

“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” opened in Richmond on June 30, 1978. It drew a decent crowd, but it was well short of a sell-out. Some of those who attended did occasionally call out wisecrack lines. Most did not. As I recall, a handful of people dressed up in costumes. As hoped, over the next few weeks a following for “Rocky Horror” steadily grew, as did the audience participation.

At the center of that following was a troupe that became the regulars who turned midnight screenings into performance-art adventures. John Porter, a VCU theater major, emerged as the leader of that group; they called themselves the Floor Show. Outfitted in his Frank-N-Furter get-up, Porter missed few, if any, midnight screenings for the next couple of years.

Plenty of crazy things happened in dealing with the “Rocky Horror” audience twice a week. There was the Saturday night an entire full house was thrown out, because some bare-chested roughnecks had run amuck. They were hosing down the crowd, using our fire extinguishers. Fights were underway. So after a stern warning from me to the crowd, to stop-or-else did no good, I pulled the plug. One by one, they all got their money back.

Interestingly, after that night we never had much trouble with violence to do with “Rocky Horror” again. The Floor Show kids helped to monitor the situation, to make it uncool to go too far. Porter’s leadership was a key to keeping it fun, but not out of control. For his part, John was given a lifetime pass to the Biograph.

There was no stranger episode than the night a man breathed his last, as he sat in the small auditorium (Theatre No. 2) watching “F.I.S.T” (1978). Yes, that lame Sylvester Stallone vehicle was hard to watch, but who knew it could be lethal?

Sitting upright in an aisle seat the dead man’s expressionless face offered no clues to his final thoughts. His eyes were open. He was about 30, which was my age.

The rescue squad guys jerked him out of his seat and threw him onto the floor. As jolts of electricity shot through the dead man’s body, down in Theater No. 1 “Rocky Horror” was on the Biograph’s larger screen delighting the audience. Walking back and forth between the two auditoriums, absorbing the bizarre juxtaposition of those scenes in the same building, was a strange trip, to say the least.

A brief item about the death appeared in the newspaper. It said he had been in bad health. Don't remember his name.

Looking on the bright side, after six-and-a-half years of showing screwball comedies, French New Wave films, rock 'n' roll movies, film noirs, and so forth, the Biograph had earned the chance to have what any theater needs to become fully-fledged – a ghost.

Chasing Dignity

On one of those busy nights early in the run of “Rocky Horror (I can't be sure of the date) a battle broke out in the middle of West Grace Street in front of the theater. Rocks, bottles and whatnot were flying back and forth between two factions of young men. Both squads consisted of four or five participants.

As I later discovered, the fight was between members of a VCU fraternity and an Oregon Hill crew. The most alarming angle of the fraught incident was that it was unfolding a perilous 30 yards from the cinemascopic, all-glass front of the Biograph. 

Yikes!

The box office had just closed and the cashier was in the midst of count-up duties. At the same time a small group of friends was in the lobby. Some of them were my Biograph Swordfish softball teammates. A few of us were playing a pinball machine. As the manager of the theater I felt obliged to fend off the danger. Accordingly, I asked the cashier to call the cops. 

I opened one of the twin exit doors, to step onto the sidewalk and yell at the kids. In so many words I told them to scram. As an added incentive I mentioned that the cops were already on the way. 

Well, that was good enough for the frat-boy team. They scampered off. Meanwhile, rather than pursue their enemies, the Oregon Hill gang promptly switched over to aiming their missiles at me. A rock hit the curb. A tumbling bottle shattered on the sidewalk, which prompted me to duck back inside.

A second or two later an incoming piece of red brick crashed through the door's lowest glass panel. It struck my right shin. That particular moment of this story stands out sharply in my memory. There were seven, maybe eight men running in the impromptu posse of employees and pinball players that went after the scattering hooligans. 

However, my focus was totally on the guy who had plunked me. I chased him as he headed west. Suddenly hemmed in by three of us in a public parking lot at the intersection of Shafer and Grace, he faked one way, then cut to the other. When his traction gave way in the gravel paving he stumbled to regain his balance. 

That was when I tackled him by the legs. The others in his group got away.

With some help from my friends – two of them held his arms – we marched the brick-thrower back toward the theater. During that trek I suppose there was some conversation. Don't recall any of what was said, but something the captured culprit said as we passed Grace Place (an excellent vegetarian restaurant) provoked one guy in my group to punch him in the jaw without warning.

One of the policemen in the assembled group of cops in front of the theater sarcastically complimented the puncher for his prisoner-escorting “technique.” Shortly thereafter the punchee was hauled off in the paddy wagon. Back in the lobby I told the puncher he had overreached in hitting the kid unnecessarily, especially while he was helpless.

Caught off-guard by my reaction, my softball teammate laughed. He disagreed, saying essentially that his summary punishment would likely be the only price the guy would ever pay for his assault. Another in the group quickly agreed with him. Others saw it my way, or said nothing.

Then we probably resumed the ongoing pinball game. More importantly, it's quite likely I went across the lobby to the theater's refrigerator in a closet and pulled out enough cans of cold beer to say, “thank you” to each member of the posse.

They had helped protect the Biograph from a menace. And, yes, it was satisfying to have at least caught the one who had just bloodied my shin. The next day I got a tetanus shot.

It wasn’t long after that night I found myself poring over a 1931 essay by F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Echoes of the Jazz Age.” Here is the last paragraph of that evocative piece:

“…Now once more the belt is tight and we summon the proper expression of horror as we look back at our wasted youth. Sometimes, though, there is a ghostly rumble among the drums, an asthmatic whisper in the trombones that swings me back into the early twenties when we drank wood alcohol and every day in every way grew better and better, and there was a first abortive shortening of the skirts, and girls all looked alike in sweater dresses, and people you didn’t want to know said ‘Yes, we have no bananas,’ and it seemed only a question of a few years before the older people would step aside and let the world be run by those who saw things as they were — and it all seems rosy and romantic to us who were young then, because we will never feel quite so intensely about our surroundings any more.”

During that reading, seated at my desk in the theater's office, it hit me that the shattering of the Biograph's glass door had been the sound to accompany the hippie era ending. Its trends, causes and distinctive styles had arrived in the late-'60s and they soon would be seen as nostalgia. In some ways the hippie decade had been similar to the Roaring ’20s.

Moreover, it seemed then that the peace-loving, pot-smoking, anti-establishment elements of my generation hadn't changed the world all that much in any enduring ways. Ending the Vietnam War and getting rid of Nixon just hadn't solved as many problems as our slogans had promised.

In the summer of '78, it was also time to admit to myself the neighborhood surrounding the Biograph was getting meaner. Which made little sense, even at the time, since it was adjacent to VCU's burgeoning academic campus. Still, for whatever reason the university didn't seem to care about it then, or for years after this.

A month later, in General District Court, I agreed to a proposal to drop the assault charge, providing the brick-thrower was convicted of a misdemeanor for breaking the glass and that he would reimburse the Biograph for the cost of the repairs. A payment schedule was set up.

As we spoke several times after that day in court I came to see the 19-year-old “hooligan” wasn’t really such a bad guy. His payments were made on a timely basis. With his last payment he asked for the name of the man who’d punched him.

While withholding the name, I agreed with him that regardless of my friend's intentions his adrenaline-fueled punch had mostly been a cheap shot. With the money aspect of the debt paid, we shook hands.

Debt and Irony

About a year later, during a Wednesday matinee the Biograph cashier, Gussie Armeniox, was counting a stack of one dollar bills when an opportunistic thief bolted in and snatched them from her hands. Although I was only a few feet away, behind the candy counter in the lobby, my back was turned. When I looked around, it was alarming to see the robber scurrying out the front door. 

Gussie's wide-eyed, frightened look was unforgettable. It boosted the intensity of the sense of violation. As I got to the sidewalk the thief was already a half-a-block away. 

Nonetheless, in spite of his foot speed it turned out he wasn't so good at avoiding capture. Instead of just running to the west, to put plenty of distance between us, he ducked between the buildings, trying to hide. He did it a couple of times, then, when I would find him and get close, he'd take off again.

During the chasing and searching I received some unexpected help from a total stranger. A young man slammed on his brakes and jumped out of his pickup truck. After that reinforcement it took less than five minutes to corner the thief in the men's room of a fast food restaurant. By then a policeman in a cruiser had showed up. Fortunately, that meant I didn't have to go into that men's room to drag the perpetrator out. The cops did it for me.

Of course, I thanked the volunteer and asked him why he’d stopped to help out. He told me he knew I was the Biograph’s manager, because a buddy of his had pointed me out to him. His friend?

It was the same Oregon Hill street-fighter I’d tackled a year before. My assistant thief-chaser said his friend told him the story about the broken glass and the assault charge being dropped. Then he said I'd dealt fairly with him. Consequently, a favor was owed to me.

Before he got back in his truck, my collaborator said that in his neighborhood the guys tend to stick together. Thus, he had supported me in my time of need, because of his friend’s debt. I was grateful and flabbergasted.

It now seems to me the sort of obligation he felt and acted upon has been evaporating out of the culture for some time, maybe since the time of this chase scene. The thief turned out to be a repeat offender, so the judge gave him six months for stealing 37 dollar bills.

Looking back on this story what connects those two chase scenes has become increasingly more satisfying. No doubt, that’s partly because in dealing with bad luck and other ordinary tests of character, too many times I’ve done nothing to brag about – even the wrong thing.

Maybe in this two-part adventure I came close to getting it right. In my view, both chases had something to do with pursuing justice and preserving something. Dignity perhaps.

The Exploding Motorcycle

On Friday, March 1, 1980, with its 88th consecutive week, “Rocky Horror” established a new record for longevity in Richmond. It broke the record of 87 weeks, established by “The Sound of Music” (1965), during its first-run engagement at the Willow Lawn Theater.

To celebrate Porter and I dressed in tuxedos to stand before the full house. He held up a “Sound of Music” soundtrack album and I smashed it with a hammer. It went over quite well. Now, thinking of how late in the evening it was, I am somewhat amazed that John trusted me to wield that hammer safely. 

The record-breaking ceremony prior to the screening.

In a nice touch to underline the special night‘s theme, a couple of the regulars came dressed as Julie Andrews. The late Carole Kass, the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s sweetheart of a entertainment writer/movie critic, wrote up a nice feature on what was basically hokum.

That same night Larry Rohr rode his motorcycle through the auditorium’s aisles at the point in the movie when Meat Loaf’s character in the film, Eddie, rides his motorcycle. Rohr’s careful but noisy rides happened only on a few special occasions, such as the record-breaking night. We were lucky nothing bad ever happened.

A few months later, I had a dream that the motorcycle exploded and blew the roof off of the theater (like a cartoon!). The nightmare scared me so much the motorcycle rides were discontinued. Anyway, that's what I told people about why we stopped. Yes, now it seems crazy as hell that I ever facilitated such risky shenanigans. Maybe I was somewhat carried away by the aforementioned wide-open permission that went along with the '70s.

With no more motorcycle rides, various Floor Show members sometimes rode a tricycle up and down the aisles. The way members of that group adapted playfully to whatever was said or done in previous weeks was an integral aspect of the fun. They were like players in a story that had new chapters being written for it, on the fly, each weekend.

However, while “Rocky Horror” had an underground cachet in the first year, even the second, eventually its status began to go sour. That was especially so in the eyes of the staff and Biograph regulars who hung out there. The rice, toast and all sorts of other stuff that got tossed around had to be cleaned up each and every time by the grumbling janitors, who naturally grew to detest the movie. To keep the peace they got “Rocky Horror” bonuses — a few extra bucks for their weekend shifts.

Once into the winter of 1980/81 the turnout for the screenings of “Rocky Horror” began a gradual withering. By then many of the originals had stopped coming every weekend. Much of the audience seemed to be made up of sightseers from the suburbs. The fast crowd in the artsy, black leather jacket scene were ignoring it, although the movie was still doing enough business to justify holding onto that original print.

In the summer of 1982 “Rocky Horror” celebrated its fourth anniversary at the Biograph. That same summer, for Program No. 60, I booked a six-week festival offering 12 RKO double features.

The Biograph's record-setting midnight show run of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” ended on June 25, 1983. Although it had helped pay the rent (set at $3,000 a month), no one was happier to see that well-used 35mm print shipped out than those of us who had been warped by the “Rocky Horror” experience for five long years.

Outro:

In the Biograph lobby I always got a kick out of listening to enthusiastic new film buffs tell me why the old movie he or she had just watched was cool. Still cool! 

Of course, in agreeing with them I was mostly just doing my job. Anywhere, any time, stimulating a greater appreciation of good films made in previous times was an integral part of the Biograph Theatre manager's job. In a way, I've never gotten over feeling like it's my duty.

Speaking of time warps, here are the titles for that 1982 RKO fest, listed in the order in which they played: “Top Hat” (1935) and “Damsel in Distress” (1936); “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1939) and “The Informer” (1935); “King Kong” (1933) and “Mighty Joe Young” (1949); “Suspicion” (1941) and “They Live By Night” (1948); “Sylvia Scarlett” (1936) and “Mister Blandings Builds His Dream House” (1948); “Murder My Sweet” (1945) and “Macao” (1952); “The Mexican Spitfire” (1939) and “Room Service” (1938); “Journey Into Fear” (1942) and “This Land Is Mine” (1943); “The Thing” (1951) and “Cat People” (1942); “The Boy With Green Hair” (1948) and “Woman on the Beach” (1947); “Citizen Kane” (1941) and “Fort Apache” (1948); “The Curse of the Cat People” (1944) and “The Body Snatcher” (1945).

--  Photos by Ernie Brooks

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