Chapter 8
Don Pancho’s Art Theatre
Don Pancho’s Art Theatre
Louis K. Sher, undated publicity photo
By early August 1962, Louis K. Sher’s
Art Theatre Guild of America, Inc., purchased the building and business
and placed it under the managership first of Bart Miller (of Albuquerque?) and then of Edgar Lowrance of Yellow Springs, Ohio.
The name was soon changed slightly from Don Pancho’s Arts Theater to Don Pancho’s Art Theatre.
Was there a connection between the Catholic Church’s Newman Center and Don Pancho’s?
The Birth of a Nation in widescreen?
Thunderbird was not the Thunderbird that you’re thinking of, not the Thunderbird that distributed
16mm
prints of The Birth of a Nation.
(Tom
Dunnahoo,
Thunderbird
Films,
PO Box 65157, Los Ángeles CA 90065).
The Thunderbird that rented Don Pancho’s was UNM’s literary magazine.
Probably the only reason that Thunderbird rented Don Pancho’s rather than one of the auditoriums at UNM
was simply because no auditorium at UNM had 35mm equipment.
So, this would have been the Albuquerque première of the 1930 reissue.
So the Thunderbird series was 35mm, I’m almost certain.
Thunderbird soon after also booked a movie by Jonas Mekas,
Guns of the Trees (1961), which, to my surprise, was shot in 35mm, and the image filled the Academy 1:1.375 frame, corner to corner.
Any cropping, no matter how slight, would completely wreck the film.
I never learned when the lamps were converted to xenon
and when the 6,000' reel arms and automation and open rewinder were installed,
and when the change-over bells were removed, or on whose orders.
My hunch is that the conversion happened from 19–23 January 1973.
It’s more than a hunch.
I simply cannot imagine when else that conversion would have or could have taken place.
It could not have been earlier and it could not have been later.
(A xenon bulb consists of electrodes in a high-pressure ionized xenon gas, encased in quartz glass.
US pronunciation ZEE-nahn, UK pronunciation ZEH-nən ,
from the ancient Greek ξένος,
meaning “stranger” or “foreigner” or “guest,” which matches neither English pronunciation.
Two thousand five hundred years ago, it was pronounced with an e as in ebony and an o as in the Spanish nosotros:
kse with a pitch ever so slightly higher than nos,
equal stress on both syllables, or, sometimes, the slightest, nearly imperceptible stress on nos.
Despite what nearly every scholar says, back in those days the acute accent almost never took the stress,
even though in Modern Greek it always takes the stress.
The language changed drastically and almost overnight about 2,300 years ago.
Greek, especially in its earliest surviving stage, is the lightest language I have ever heard; English and Russian are the heaviest.
Xenon bulbs are clean and efficient, usually, but they have problems.)
Oh, I should point something out.
Other cinemas that ran 6,000' reels purchased metal cabinets to hold those reels when not in use.
Not Donald Pancho’s! Oh no.
Donald Pancho’s built its own wooden box to hold the reels.
That reminds me of something else.
At any other cinema that ran 2,000' reels, as Donald Pancho’s did from the beginning
and continued to do, off and on, for the remainder of its days,
there was a cabinet to hold a dozen 2,000' reels,
and there was a handle that the projectionist would move from one reel drawer to the next
as the film progressed.
I don’t know the official name for that little handle.
Donald Pancho’s must have lost that little handle.
We just made sure the leaders would hang a little bit outside each drawer,
and that’s how we knew at a glance which reel was next.
The Eureka in Eureka, California. The 2,000' film cabinet is on the left.
That booth is dreamily spacious. What I wouldn’t have given to have had such a spacious booth!
SOLD by 1stDibs.
Two cabinets, one resting atop the other, minus the handle,
with leaders dangling out to indicate to the projectionist which reel is next.
Ah. After days and days and days of searching, I finally found an image of some 6,000' film cabinets.
They are the larger ones, at the bottom.
This image is taken from Steve Guttag, “AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center, Silver Spring, Maryland,”
Even after the automation was installed, the hand rewinder was still there.
It was built for 2,000' reels only, but it was moved to a tiny wooden case that was pulled back from the wall,
so that we could shove 6,000' reels onto it.
Rewinding a 6,000' reel on a pair of hand rewinders that were designed for 2,000' was BRUTAL!
Because the hand rewinder was positioned so inconveniently,
we could not use it to inspect films.
Inspection could be done only on the motorized open rewinder, which I did not like at all.
When I inspect a film, I like to crank it myself and I like to inspect 2,000' reels on a 6,000' hand rewinder, which has much better torque.
That’s the only way I can feel every imperfection.
With a hand rewinder, I can stop instantly, go back, speed up, slow down, as the film damage requires.
That is so much more difficult to do on a motorized rewinder.
No other projectionist on earth agrees with me,
but when I use a motorized rewinder, I never feel as though I am catching everything.
By 1973, when I had first entered the building,
the Gents’ was filled with images clipped from pressbooks that were lacquered to the walls.
One was an odd advertisement for a reissue of Chaplin’s City Lights,
from 1972, with an MPAA rating that never existed: “E, For Everybody.”
Another was an ad for Ján Kadár’s
Adrift.
I do not remember any of the others.
Four years later, I was in the Ladies’ only once (just before the house opened, on assignment, I don’t remember why),
and I was amused to see that it, too, was filled with ads clipped from pressbooks lacquered to the walls.
They all emphasized beefcake.
Oh! I just remembered something!
The first few times I attended Don Pancho’s, in 1974,
the tickets and concessions were NOT in that central protrusion.
They were behind a really tiny counter on the house-right side of the lobby.
That’s not a big deal.
That is not of monumental significance in the greater scheme of the universe,
but it is a memory and I hereby share my memories.
My vague memory (confabulation?) is that the central protrusion had some imitation-leather seats and a machine for free coffee.
Though I had learned a bit about the technical side of movies from reading Bill Everson’s books and a few other books as well,
I had no clue what a projection booth looked like and I had never seen professional film equipment.
The first time I ever saw a booth was on
Saturday, 11 May 1974, at Donald Pancho’s,
just after a double feature of
The Public Enemy and
Each Dawn I Die.
I saw a young guy descend the miniature spiral staircase and, somewhat timidly, started asking about the equipment.
“Do you have sixteen em em?” I asked, not even knowing how to pronounce mm properly.
“We have 35,” he replied.
That took my breath away.
For some reason, I had thought that 35mm was something exotic to which only a few major cinemas had access.
I asked if I could go up and he said Sure.
No! No! No! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!
That’s how I remembered it for 40+ years, but my memory was playing tricks on me!
Now that I’m thinking about it, it comes back to me.
I did not ask if I could see the booth.
No!
The young guy and I sat down on a small black imitation-leather bench in the central protrusion of the lobby,
and I was quizzing him a little bit about the proper projection of silent movies,
but my questions entirely puzzled him, because he knew exactly nothing about silent movies.
The guy soon asked me, “Would you like to see the booth?”
I said, “Sure!” even though I had no idea what he was offering.
I did not know what “booth” meant,
and assumed he was about to show me some secret phone booth or something hidden away in the back of the building.
He walked me up the little spiral staircase and my mouth nearly dropped to the floor when I realized where he was taking me.
He was taking me to the place of mystery, to the holy of holies, upon which mere mortals were never permitted to set their eyes.
There were two other guys in the booth, three altogether, and I assumed that they were all projectionists, that it took three people to run a show.
They walked me through as the first feature began running again.
I was gobsmacked by those gigantic machines.
The projectionist (one of the projectionists?) had a hippie beard and shoulder-length black hair and a burning cigarette that never left his right hand.
As he sat in his low wheeled swivel chair by the porthole window of projector #2,
he opened the machine’s doors and explained the pieces, bit by bit,
saying, among other things, that the film was drawn down, frame by frame, by a claw.
I took his word for it.
I don’t think he was trying to pull my leg.
I think he really thought so!
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INTERLUDE:
On Friday, 11 August 2023, I was at the Hammer Museum standing in line for a ticket to Harvest, a movie I had long hoped to see.
Yes, I had it on DVD, but I seldom watch a DVD unless I have already seen the movie with an audience on the big screen.
I’m glad I waited for it to reach the big screen, because the film would be unendurable on a TV screen.
On the big screen, though, especially with a full house, which was the case that evening, the film induces hunger.
It shows loaves of bread made from unhybridized wheat that had been baked in a wood-burning oven.
Sumptuous, luscious, unendurably tempting, and I have absolutely no way on earth of baking such myself in my dinky little apartment. Darn!
Anyway, as I was standing in line, I noticed that an email message arrived and so I read it on my phone.
It was from a fellow named E. Michael Friend, who says he thinks he was the one who chatted with me that evening in 1973.
He had a vestigial memory of that.
The fellow with the long hair and the ciggy would have been another Michael, Michael Quinn, but there was something wrong.
Neither one of them smoked.
But then, a few hours later, he remembered that Quinn did try to pick up the habit for a brief while.
Ah.
Also, I have no recollection of Quinn actually taking a puff.
I remember only the burning ciggy in his fingers.
As I looked through Michael Friend’s web site, I saw images of him, but he did not seem familiar at all.
So we spoke by Zoom a week or so later, and yes, that was the face I remember coming down that spiral staircase and chatting with me in the lobby,
though with a few years added to it.
It turns out he never worked at Don Pancho’s; he would just hang out there a lot, whenever he was on furlough.
He was also involved with La Société du Cinéma at UNM.
Small world.
Amazing.
Michael Friend continues to make movies, small things for local causes, but very nice.
Here’s one of his posts.
He references me, and in return, I reference him. Nicely circular.
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The Art Theatre Guild of America, Inc., began business in Columbus, Ohio, in 1954.
When it closed up shop, I do not know — probably in 1986, but certainly by 1998, upon Sher’s demise.
Do its papers survive?
Could anybody tell me?
The ATGoA’s programming at Donald Pancho’s was not as daring as Frank’s programming had been.
For the ATGoA, this was all routine, only routine.
The ATGoA didn’t seek out exciting movies that would appeal specifically to the artsy crowd in Albuquerque,
but only ran the same stuff that the ATGoA was running elsewhere.
It was a big wheel, and each cinema in the chain received what the previous one dumped off.
The consistency was gone, and
the films that came from the heart were intermixed with
the films that came from the investment portfolio.
There were also exploitation and nudie-cutie movies tossed in, generally tasteless, grotesque, and cheap,
and that probably alienated some of the clientèle that Frank had so carefully built up.
It was a comedown, but there was still some good programming.
By mid-1966, though, the ATGoA began to run out of product.
Why?
Apparently because the major mainstream chains decided they were no longer satisfied with their 98% of the market pie,
they wanted that other 2% slice of the pie as well, and so they outbid the ATGoA on future releases.
That is when the ATGoA began to recycle the same movies over and over and over and over.
As ever, with any cinema, including those dedicated exclusively to older movies,
there was absolutely no attempt to get the image or the audio right.
Severe cropping was the norm, and, as for older films that had high-end/low-end roll-off, well, they became nearly inaudible.
A small investment of a few hundred dollars would have remedied those problems.
The ticket sales from a single evening would have covered that cost — with change to spare.
A processor to pull out the suppressed highs, lows, and reverbs from older movies would have worked wonders.
An audio technician could have installed and adjusted that in an afternoon.
Pretty much the same result could have been achieved by a low-tech means.
You see, attached to the entire lengths of the house-left and house-right walls were curtains to dampen the sound.
If those curtains could have been put on runners so that they could be pulled back when older movies were shown,
the acoustics would have been sufficiently live.
Why did nobody know that?
Two more lenses for each machine, one for 1:1.375 and one for both 1:1.18 and Silent, could have been ordered over the phone and would have required no special skills.
The anamorphic lenses could have been swapped out for proper ones, again, with a mere phone call and a trip to the Post Office.
Aperture plates for 1:1.18 and Silent could have been filed in a few hours if they were no longer available pre-cut.
Speed controls and other modifications for Silent would have been a little bit tricky,
but an outside technician could have installed the necessary gimmicks in a day.
Better masking could have been installed for pocket change.
More expensively, the exit should have been moved so that the screen could be centered.
That would have been an expense, but a worthy one, and the profits over a few weeks would easily have covered the costs.
Yet nobody cared.
Nobody in management cared.
Nobody in the audience cared.
It is sad that most movies look far better on Blu-ray or even on DVD
than they ever did in battered 35mm prints run by uncaring personnel on wrongly configured equipment.
Oh. It just now comes back to me.
In the wall cabinet in the western end of booth was an extra anamorphic lens.
On the outside it looked like any other anamorphic lens, with a cylindrical barrel and a larger supplement,
but on the inside the supplement was made of a prism with a knob to adjust from 1:1 to 2:1 or anything in between.
There was only one. I never tried it. (I never had time to try much in that booth.)
I assume that was used in 1961 but was quickly abandoned when the Bausch & Lomb “Cinemascope”
anamorphics arrived instead.
I assume. I don’t know.
Those Bausch & Lomb “Cinemascope” thingamaroos were already antiques by 1961.
NOTE ADDED ON THURSDAY, 3 AUGUST 2023:
Oh heavens to Betsy!
It just now occurs to me.
I know what happened!
When Pancho hurriedly purchased anamorphics to handle Expresso Bongo, he purchased a pair of prism lenses.
He plopped in the .715"×.839" apertures but the image spilled about a foot off the screen in either direction.
So he turned the knobs to squeeze the picture until it exactly fit the screen.
When Louie Scher took over, he and his techie looked at those prism lenses and said, “What the heck?”
They pulled out a pair of disused Bausch & Lomb cylindricals from their own storage and used those instead,
with .715";×.715" apertures.
They also tried a pair of .650×.775" apertures but decided against using them.
That’s what happened, and I am absolutely certain about it, though I have no proof at all.
List of Films
That the Art Theatre Guild of America
Presented at Don Pancho’s Art Theatre
in 1962
That the Art Theatre Guild of America
Presented at Don Pancho’s Art Theatre
in 1962
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| Fri 03 Aug 1962 | Forever My Love (1962; Albuquerque première) | |
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| Thu 09 Aug 1962 | Dangerous Love Affairs (1959; Albuquerque première) | |
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| Thu 23 Aug 1962 | The Savage Eye (1960; Albuquerque première; review) Private Property (1960; Albuquerque première) | |
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| Thu 30 Aug 1962 | Jules and Jim (1962, New Mexico première) | |
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| Thu 06 Sep 1962 | Viridiana (1961; Albuquerque première) | |
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| Thu 13 Sep 1962 | Last Year at Marienbad (1961; Albuquerque première) | |
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| Thu 20 Sep 1962 | A Matter of WHO (1961; Albuquerque première) | |
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| Thu 27 Sep 1962 | Tomorrow Is My Turn (1960; Albuquerque première) | |
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| Thu 04 Oct 1962 | Don Quixote (1957; Albuquerque première) | |
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| Thu 11 Oct 1962 | Boccaccio ’70 (1962; Albuquerque première; review) | |
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| Thu 15 Nov 1962 | A Coming Out Party (aka VIP, 1961; Albuquerque première) | |
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| Thu 22 Nov 1962 | Tales of Paris (1962; Albuquerque première) | |
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| Thu 29 Nov 1962 | Operation Snatch (1962; Albuquerque première) | |
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| Thu 06 Dec 1962 | Not Tonite Henry! (1960; Albuquerque première) | |
| Mon 24 Dec 1962 | CLOSED | |
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| Tue 25 Dec 1962 | Phaedra (1962; Albuquerque première; review) | |
My psychic prediction: There are two and only two possibilities.
Either you found that stroll through the old listings enjoyable, or you didn’t.
Well, am I right? See, I’m psychic!
On the slim chance that you actually did find that enjoyable, here is more:
1963 through 1974.
Why did I do this? Terrible waste of time that makes me feel guilty,
but I couldn’t help it, it was a compulsion, because I’ve been curious since I was seventeen.
Now, decades after the ugliness and hatefulness and sabotage,
I am sufficiently distanced from the horrors, at long last, to satisfy my curiosity.
Besides, this is a part of Albuquerque’s history, a part of our history that has never been properly recorded.
It is by now clear that nobody else will record it properly, and so I shall do so, to the best of my abilities.
Too bad that the people I would most love to interview have all passed to the great beyond.
