Lobo Fine Arts Cinema

Chapter 4
The Lobo Fine Arts Cinema

When Hollywood movies played, the ads gave the name of the cinema as “Lobo.” Once better movies began to predominate, the ads often gave the name of the cinema as the “Lobo Arts Theatre,” or the “Lobo Fine Arts Cinema.” It had some good programming and maybe, maybe, maybe the projectionists were showing the films properly in those days.

Would I ever find the time and patience to document all the Lobo’s bookings? Probably, before century’s end. In the meantime, I can confirm that, during the years when the Lobo was just an ordinary neighborhood cinema, devoted primarily to second and third run, a few exceptional movies did pop up, not by design, at first, but just by chance. Those were the movies that were available, and so they were shipped to the Lobo. There was no intention by the bookers or by the managers or owners to set out to get a particular type of product. They just got whatever the giant wheel happened to dump upon them that particular day. That’s all. But that was not all for long. Audiences turned out for those oddballs, and so Albuquerque Exhibitors got the idea that this was a formula that was working. Hesitantly, they began to bring in more and more. Amidst the standard flood of Lassie and Bonzo and Ma and Pa Kettle, a few interesting items were delivered to the Lobo’s doorstep:

Fri 05 May 1950	Tight Little Island	4 days	Lobo
Thu 25 May 1950	Spring in Park Lane (1st run)	2 days	Lobo
Thu 06 Jul 1950	The Bicycle Thief (1st run)	5 days	Lobo
Thu 13 Jul 1950	The Winslow Boy (1st run)	2 days	Lobo
Wed 22 Sep 1950	The Rocking Horse Winner	2 days	Lobo
Fri 29 Sep 1950	Passport to Pimlico (1st run)	2 days	Lobo
Sun 01 Oct 1950	The Astonished Heart (1st run)	3 days	Lobo
Fri 03 Nov 1950	City Lights	5 days	Lobo
Sun 12 Nov 1950	Kind Hearts and Coronets (1st run)	4 days	Lobo
Thu 16 Nov 1950	Madness of the Heart (1st run)	2 days	Lobo
Sat 18 Nov 1950	Hamlet	4 days	Lobo
Fri 24 Nov 1950	Henry V	5 days	Lobo
Wed 28 Nov 1950	A Run for Your Money (1st run)	2 days	Lobo
Wed 06 Dec 1950	The Barber of Seville	3 days	Lobo
Sun 11 Feb 1951	Macbeth	3 days	Lobo
Wed 28 Feb 1951	Don Quixote (subtitles)	2 days	Lobo
Wed 04 Apr 1951	The Blue Angel (subtitles)	2 days	Lobo
Sun 29 Apr 1951	Bitter Rice	3 days	Lobo
Mon 14 Apr 1952	The Red Shoes	3 days	Lobo
Fri 25 Apr 1952	Rasho-Mon	6 days	Lobo
Thu 05 Jun 1952	The Lavender Hill Mob	7 days	Lobo
Thu 19 Jun 1952	The River	7 days	Lobo
Thu 26 Jun 1952	Tales of Hoffmann	7 days	Lobo
Thu 03 Jul 1952	The Browning Version	7 days	Lobo
Thu 10 Jul 1952	Encore	7 days	Lobo
Thu 17 Jul 1952	Caesar and Cleopatra	7 days	Lobo
Thu 24 Jul 1952	Navajo	7 days	Lobo
Thu 31 Jul 1952	Song of My Heart	7 days	Lobo
Thu 07 Aug 1952	Outcast of the Islands	7 days	Lobo
Thu 14 Aug 1952	Trio	3 days	Lobo
Sun 17 Aug 1952	Quartet	4 days	Lobo
Thu 21 Aug 1952	The Adventuress	3 days	Lobo
Sun 24 Aug 1952	Queen of Spades	4 days	Lobo
Thu 28 Aug 1952	Kind Hearts and Coronets	3 days	Lobo
Sun 31 Aug 1952	Odette	4 days	Lobo
Thu 04 Sep 1952	Her Wonderful Life (Addio Mimí!, 1947)	7 days	Lobo
Thu 11 Sep 1952	The Dancing Years	6 days	Lobo
Wed 17 Sep 1952	Last Holiday	4 days	Lobo
Sun 21 Sep 1952	Faust and the Devil	4 days	Lobo
Thu 25 Sep 1952	The Wild Heart	7 days	Lobo
Thu 02 Oct 1952	Lady Possessed	6 days	Lobo
Wed 08 Oct 1952	Faithful City	4 days	Lobo
Sun 12 Oct 1952	Pardon My French	3 days	Lobo
Wed 15 Oct 1952	The Well	7 days	Lobo
Wed 22 Oct 1952	The Lady Vanishes	4 days	Lobo
Sun 26 Oct 1952	BACK TO NORMAL PROGRAMMING, CONTINUOUS PERFORMANCES	85 days	Lobo
Mon 19 Jan 1953	Pagliacci	4 days	Lobo Arts Theatre
Mon 26 Jan 1953	The Girl in the Painting	4 days	Lobo Arts Theatre
Mon 02 Feb 1953	Her Panelled Door	4 days	Lobo Arts Theatre
Fri 06 Feb 1953	The Man in the White Suit	7 days	Lobo Arts Theatre
Mon 16 Feb 1953	Mad about Opera	2 days	Lobo Arts Theatre
Mon 23 Feb 1953	Pool of London	4 days	Lobo Arts Theatre
Mon 02 Mar 1953	You Can’t Beat the Irish ON STAGE: George Fenley, violin	4 days	Lobo Arts Theatre
Mon 09 Mar 1953	Cry, the Beloved Country ON STAGE: Wilma Tapp, piano	4 days	Lobo Arts Theatre
Mon 16 Mar 1953	Carnegie Hall ON STAGE: John Large, baritone	4 days	Lobo Arts Theatre
Fri 20 Mar 1953	The Four Poster ON STAGE: Vera Rozdestvensky, piano	7 days	Lobo Arts Theatre
Mon 30 Mar 1953	The Member of the Wedding ON STAGE: Marilyn Langmyer, soprano	4 days	Lobo Arts Theatre
Mon 06 Apr 1953	Prelude to Fame ON STAGE: Jo Margaret Gore, violin	4 days	Lobo Arts Theatre
Fri 10 Apr 1953	The Promoter ON STAGE: Ellen Cunningham, soprano, with Joseph Grant	7 days	Lobo Arts Theatre
Mon 20 Apr 1953	The Mikado	7 days	Lobo Arts Theatre

I think I may just have traced down the very day when the new policy became official:

I won’t swear to it. I need to do more research. Ah. And I did a bit of research. The Lobo officially became an “art house” several times over. The ad above means nothing.

Why oh why am I fully expecting that within the next few weeks at least one other researcher or journalist will make this identical discovery with this identical display ad? When I steal other people’s research, I credit them. Few others are as courteous.

On Wednesday, 1 February 1956, Albuquerque Exhibitors sold its interest in its cinemas to Louis Higdon and Henry J. Griffith’s Frontier Amusements of Dallas, and Frontier renamed the Albuquerque portion of its chain “Alb. Thea. Inc.” Albuquerque Exhibitors, Inc., then dissolved in December 1958. By about 24 May 1968, it appears to me that Commonwealth Amusements of Kansas City gobbled up Frontier, and that’s when the Lobo once again became a standard commercial cinema. There was no longer any consistency to the programming.

Isn’t that odd? Most underground movies were 16mm, but the Lobo was set up only for 35mm. How were these shown? Did the Lobo crop them mercilessly? Incidentally, it was Don Pancho’s that had introduced Albuquerque to midnight showings of underground movies in 1967. The series ended after a year and a half, presumably because the audience tired out. Now the Lobo revived that experiment, for a few weeks, but never listed the titles in the newspaper! After the Lobo gave up on the idea, the Associated Students of the University of New Mexico Film Committee revived the idea once again, at the Union Theatre in the basement of the Student Union Building. The ASUNM brought in a wonderful series — and consistently lost money on it, but kept on regardless, because those kids really believed in this stuff.

The new Commonwealth bookers had apparently heard some vague gossip that college kids tended to like European flicks, and so when a European flick was offered at a low rate, they booked it at the Lobo, regardless of whether it was any good, regardless if it was what college kids wanted to see. There was no outreach to the college crowd. The bookers just chose any random cheap European flick, plopped it at the Lobo and then probably wondered why it sold no tickets. By sheer happenstance, they occasionally got a gem, such as Visconti’s L’innocente, but gem or lemon, the films did no business that I witnessed. Yes, they struck gold when they booked La Cage aux Folles, but that was just dumb luck, dumb luck that was never repeated, as far as I am aware. The programmers were totally clueless.

Yes, after all these decades, I feel I have at long last earned the right to call a spade a spade and use such words as “dunce” and “clueless” when referring to motion-picture professionals such as these.

For no reason apart from “Cuz!”, I should mention that in 1978 I saw a really interesting movie at the Lobo, a movie that might no longer exist, at least not in 35mm. Some years earlier, in 1972, when I was twelve, I had discovered Peter Sellers. NBC ran this preview, or a variation thereupon, for A Shot in the Dark and it looked like a scream. When did I see that preview? Maybe on Sunday the 10th of December, 1972? Maybe during the Bob Hope Special? Anyway, I watched the movie when it played on Monday, 11 December 1972, and I busted all my stitches. I wanted to see more of this guy. Now, I had already known the name Peter Sellers because I remembered the newspaper and TV advertisements for Where Does It Hurt?, which had run at the Fox Winrock from Friday, 20 October 1972, through Tuesday, 31 October 1972. I had no interest in the movie when it was new, but now, in retrospect, I really wanted to see it. Alas, it was too late. It would never come back, I was certain. Then, on Wednesday, 10 May 1978, it came back! It was reissued and ran at the Lobo through Thursday, 24 May 1978. I must have seen it on the 10th. Weekends were busy as I was working at Don Pancho’s, an epic tragedy we shall get to shortly.

I had by now seen not only A Shot in the Dark, but also Dr. Strangelove (at The Guild, Saturday, 19 July 1975), and, I think, After the Fox, when visiting a friend, on his cable TV. Oh! Yes! How could I forget? I had also seen The Mouse That Roared (at The Guild, 15 or 16 July 1975) and a network TV showing of The World of Henry Orient (probably Wednesday, 5 June 1974, NBC “Wednesday Night at the Movies”), which I thought was cute. There was also The Party, “NBC Late Movie,” Sunday, 28 August 1977. I thought, and still think, that The Party is one of the greatest and funniest movies ever made. The guy was a comic jewel. I was exceptionally lucky to start with his best stuff. (Those who are less fortunate began their experiences with his less-fortunate stuff.) Sellers was one of the most brilliant performers who ever lived, one of the most prodigiously talented funnymen the world has ever seen, who could, off the cuff, invent endless comedy routines, all of them screamingly hilarious. He was also one of the most abusive, hateful, shallow, selfish, petty, arrogant, vindictive, mean-spirited people who ever breathed. The nonstop ciggies, joints, booze, poppers, and cocaine, together with addictions to an insane amount of over-the-counter medications, probably did little to stabilize his mood swings, paranoia, delusions, hallucinations, and routine bursts of physically violent anger. As his friend Spike Milligan remarked, “He causes pain to everyone who gets close to him.”

At the time, knowing nothing about his personal life, I thought he could do no wrong. That is, until Wednesday, 10 May 1978. My father begrudgingly agreed to drop me off to see the movie and then to pick me up after the show. I planned to sit through the movie twice. Small audience. Very small. I doubt it was even 30 people. Not a single laugh. I thought it was one of the worst movies I had ever seen. It was painfully awful, tediously unfunny, a grueling experience. This Rod Amateau guy, who wrote and directed the disaster, should have been ashamed of himself. I thought he was a hack who had no business being anywhere near a camera, or even a pencil. After the 7:45 show, I trudged on up to the booth because I wanted to look at the film print. The projectionist, whom I shall not name, was sitting in his easy chair, entirely uninterested in my presence. I took a look at the framing window just above the film gate. An usher was in the booth at that moment and I invited him to take a look, too. It was near the beginning, with Peter Sellers and Hope Summers in a corridor. On screen, Peter Sellers’s head was at the top of the screen. On the film itself, Peter Seller’s head was a third of the way down on the frame. I told the usher, “Look at the screen, now look at the film, now look at the screen, now look at the film.” The usher did what I told him and his response was, “My god!” That’s all I wanted to know. It was shot with the Silent aperture, or at least parts of it were, but it was framed for the usual 1:1.85 crop. The film was so painfully awful that I could not bring myself to sit through it a second time. I called my father and asked if he could pick me up early. He did.

Now, here’s what drives me crazy. When I thought back upon the movie a couple of years ago, maybe around 2017, I suddenly realized that it was brilliant. Maybe not good, maybe not entertaining, maybe not enjoyable, but brilliant. There’s a difference but I would have a difficult time explaining that difference. I just had to see it again, and it was finally available on DVD in Australia and then in England and then elsewhere in Europe. I was ready to place an order when I discovered from customer comments that the DVD is cut to ribbons. See also this and this. I read somewhere online that the DVD is taken from a cleaned-up-for-TV print, not from the original. The DVD was never distributed in the US. Rumor has it that the American Medical Association purchased US rights to this movie in order to squelch it in this country. In desperation, I ordered a 16mm print, but the seller told me he had sold it already and that he had simply neglected to remove it from his inventory. I ordered a pirated DVD-R, but it, too, is the cleaned-up version. I distinctly remember Albert T. Hopfnagel counting down on his fingers. That deliberately unfunny moment is now gone. That same link also describes another deliberately tasteless and unfunny gag regarding urine samples that I would not have remembered had the reviewer not jogged my memory. That sequence is nowhere to be found on the DVD. My memory is that Alice Gilligan and Albert T. Hopfnagel had not just one argument over his trysts, but two. My memory is that, in the second argument, Alice insulted the other gal’s physique, but that Albert countered, smilingly and defiantly, that quite the opposite was true, describing his other gal in ethereal terms. If my memory is not playing a trick on me, then that second argument is entirely deleted. During the party at the end, the cleaned-up DVD shows a momentary glimpse of Uschi Digard as she finishes putting her blouse back on. In the original, that shot began when she took off her blouse. If memory serves, she had a good 20 seconds or so of screen time, not just the split second that survives on the DVD. My vague memory is that Hopfnagel made many more racial slurs than he does in the DVD version. I desperately, desperately, want to see the original again.

According to IMDb, this movie is 87 minutes, but I find that difficult to believe. The DVD is 85 minutes, but the transfer was definitely not done at the correct 24fps. It was either speeded up or slowed down. PAL video runs at 25fps. Films, when issued on PAL, are generally run at the overspeeded 25fps to match. That is why, prior to the days of HD transmission, a 100-minute movie would shrink to 96 minutes when shown on European television. Yet if you watch this PAL video frame by frame, you can readily see that many frames are blended and so it is not a 25fps transfer, but something else. There are definitely several scenes missing.

Shall we check some contemporary documentation? The 1978 press sheet (“Campaign Manual”) claims a running time of 90 minutes, and the US Library of Congress agrees. Charles Champlin’s “Cast, Credits” in The Los Ángeles Times, Saturday, 12 August 1972, pt. 3 p. 7, claims 88 minutes. Did he time the movie himself? Remember, you will probably never in your life meet a film projector that runs exactly at 24fps, and you need also to remember that projectionists butchered reel ends and bungled change-overs badly. Some shattered reel ends, a few bungled change-overs, and projectors running a bit fast can easily account for a two-minute discrepancy. What else can we find? The Hill Top Times of Friday, 25 August 1972, p. 31, claims 96 minutes. I doubt it was 96 minutes. Was that a typo? Of course, in some larger cinemas, to compensate for voltage drop, the original ¼hp 1763rpm drive motors were junked and replaced with standard ½hp 1725rpm motors. That was an incredibly stupid solution, but what can I say? If that had happened, the film would have been about one minute longer, but only one minute, not six. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch of Friday, 1 September 1972, p. 2D, claims 87 minutes. Did the reviewer time it?

The movie was released in Sweden on 24 July 1972, with a listed running time of 89 minutes, and was considered suitable for all audiences. The reported length was 2,440 meters, which is rounded to the nearest 10 meters, of course. 2,440 meters is just over 8,005 feet which, at 24fps, comes to 89 minutes almost to the second. A print and cutting continuity are still on file at the Swedish Film Institute.

The Australian Classification board reviewed the film on 1 November 1972 and adjudged it worthy of an “M — The content is moderate in impact,” and noted that the running time was 91 minutes.

Over a decade later, on 1 February 1984, the same Australian Classification board reviewed the home-video version issued by Video Classics, product number T84/1792, 85 minutes, and bestowed upon it the identical M classification. I suspect that the trimming of the film took place immediately before this, probably in 1983, and, like I read somewhere online (and I’ll be darned if I can remember where), the trimming was done to make the film suitable for terrestrial broadcast. That would seem to make sense. So, why was it the trimmed version rather than the original that was released on DVD? For the same tired old showbiz reason that I have been encountering for half a century. The video company licensed the movie, and the rights owners just grabbed any random print off of the shelf and made a new transfer of it. “You ordered Where Does It Hurt? and we gave you Where Does It Hurt? What’s your problem? What’re you griping about? Shut up or we’ll sue you.” And that’s the way showbiz works, and that’s the way showbiz has always worked, and that’s the way showbiz will always work, and there’s nothing you or I or anybody under the sun can do about it. And nobody cares. Showbiz. What is it I say about showbiz?

Video Classics was soon bought out by VCL (Video City Limited) Communications, an Australian subsidiary of a German company called VCL Film + Medien and so, it seems, its catalogue needed to be resubmitted. On 3 April 1985, the Australian Classification board once again reviewed the same tape, with the same T84/1792 product number, now on a new label, and once again granted it the identical M classification. There was no mention of how the 91-minute 35mm print and the 85-minute videotape version differed. Was the tape overspeeded or was it re-edited or both? For both the 35mm version and the home-video version, the “Version” was listed as “Not Specified.”

By the way, it seems that by the time it opened in France on or about 4 December 1974, it had already been slashed away to 87 minutes. Confusing.

Why didn’t I like the movie when I was 18? Because Sellers was not doing a Strangelove or a Clouseau or any of his inimitable comical inventions. He was following a script that was not written for him, playing a part that any competent actor could have handled. He did no improvisations. Comedies generally have something likable and warm. In this movie, nothing is likable, nothing is warm, and the characters, without exception, are shallow and despicable. The jokes and gags, without exception, are deliberately unfunny. When I was 18, I thought that was a failure in the script. Now I see that there was a reason for that: Since the characters are humorless, their jokes are humorless. I mostly like good-natured stories, but there was nothing good-natured about this story. The film was not so much a comedy as an all-out attack, vicious from the first frame to the last. At age 18, I could not believe that a hospital, or any business for that matter, could possibly be run like this. That, to me, was the failure of the story. If you’re going to make a satire, you should satirize reality, not an impossibility. Then, over the next 25 years, I found myself working for numerous businesses that were even worse than what this film depicts. I mean, heck, one of my employers, renowned the world over as a kindly ethicist, made Hopfnagel look like a guardian angel, a paragon of virtue in comparison. That is why I now have a different opinion of this movie. IMDb users gwcohn-1, rlillig, i002492, and elevatormusicman claim to have recorded-off-of-TV or purchased-from-eBay copies of this movie, prior to the censoring. IMDb has unfortunately removed its messaging function and so I have no idea how to reach these people.

1978 reissue one-sheet.

P.S. Got it. I spent an insane amount of money to get a 16mm dupe negative and then another insane amount of money to have a video service scan it for me. The complete, uncensored film is a few seconds shy of 88 minutes. There is no scene of urine samples, and the film is so tightly structured that I don’s see where such a scene could possibly fit in. I suppose it was never there. False memory. I am, unfortunately, human, and therefore all too susceptible to false memories. If anybody would like to purchase this dupe negative, please contact me. Thanks! Just after I got the 16mm dupe neg, I also got a PAL VHS with Greek subtitles. When it pours it rains. The irony? I just watched the scan of the dupe negative, and, to my surprise, I enjoyed it. Thoroughly. It’s an excellent flick, through and through, but I doubt that most people would ever agree.

I just ordered the 35mm preview and the 16mm TV spot, which popped up on eBay. The seller sent me a little extra: some trims from the 35mm print, trims that show Uschi Digard without her blouse! Apparently a censor somewhere ordered those few feet deleted from the print, and, fortunately, the projectionist souvenired them! So, why is this exciting? Because it shows that, at some time circa 1972 or circa 1978, some censor somewhere ordered a change, a change that made its way into the video editions. I wish I had the full story: Where? When? Who? How did some local censor board influence the subsequent video history of this movie?

Oh my heavens! Look what I just found! Somebody from a group called Nob Hill Main Street posted this photo on Facebook. This is the Lobo in 2018. Wow.

I am stunned! See the bottom of that screen? That seems to be a new screen, not the one I saw, but it is about the same size. When I was at the Lobo in the 1970’s and early 1980’s, there was a false stage floor raised almost to the height of the bottom of the screen! I always found that odd and I was convinced that, beneath the false stage floor, there must have been a real one. I was right! I am so glad that the new owners took that fake one out.

A Google search revealed another Facebook photo, this one by Nicole Pals, from 2016, taken from the balcony.

Someone from a group called “Spotlight On” took this shot from the stage.
When I was first in the building in 1974, it was just barely inviting.
When I was back just two or three years later, much of the décor had been removed from the lobby.
When I see these and other recent photos, I am a bit saddened
that what tiny hint of character that the building ever had has since been streamlined away.

Why was that fake stage ever installed to begin with? Not only was the fake stage too high to crawl up onto from the auditorium, it also had a protruding lip, making it nearly impossible to scale. Therein, I guess, lies the answer to my query. I bet some kids walked onto the real stage and did some damage. The management then built a false stage atop it to prevent such damage from happening ever again. Is that a good guess? I don’t know, but what else could have been the reason?

The stage is not deep, as we can see from the outside, and it is not rectangular either. It is a trapezoid, with stage left deeper than stage right. Here’s a satellite’s-eye view from Google Maps:

Now let’s take a look at the Sanborn map:

Now that I’ve got Albuquerque on my mind again, let’s take a little tour through a few other Albuquerque cinemas.

Continue to the next chapter.