Lobo, Don Pancho's, The Guild

It was surely the downtown Screening Room misadventure that drained the finances at Movie, Inc., and drained Movie, Inc., of Mark Brown, too. Everybody liked him as manager, but now that money was tight, the owner dismissed him. Mark was horrified and begged to be kept on at least as a projectionist. It was agreed and so a projectionist he became.

I remember visiting Mark Brown at The Guild for a few minutes one Saturday matinée. He was terribly ill from a sinus infection and wanted someone to shoot him to put him out of his misery. For some reason, he would not call in sick. Probably there was nobody to cover for him. On another visit of maybe ten minutes on a Saturday matinée (I think it was Fellini’s Casanova, probably 9 July 1977), when I was saying Goodbye, he looked down the peephole and saw something that he dreaded. In those past few minutes, the ticket seller had walked out and was replaced by Mr. Riot Act’s mother. Oh no. He knew that as soon as she saw that I had been in the booth, she would report him to the owner. With resignation at the inevitable, he told me, “Just walk out of here as though you belong here, as though you own the place. Just walk straight out. Don’t even say Hi to her.” I could not bring myself to do that. On my way out, I emitted a tiny little Hi, and she emitted a tiny little Hi, and then I’m sure she phoned the owner immediately.

Not long after that little peep through the peephole, Mark couldn’t take it anymore. The salary was impossibly low. Nobody earning a Movie, Inc., projectionist’s salary could pay rent or purchase groceries. So Mark gathered up Ernie and the third projectionist, stomped over to Movie, Inc., headquarters and sat down to demand that the owner give all three of them a raise. So the owner fired him on the spot and then gave the requested raises to the other two projectionists. I never saw Mark again. I wish I knew what became of him. He’s hard to locate because he has the commonest name in the world.

As for the Screening Room, it was a lost cause. After Movie, Inc., withdrew, the lease went to Commonwealth Amusements (Kansas City), which re-opened the place as the Galería Twin on 23 July 1976 with repertory. Well, not really repertory. I suppose the proper term would be “leftovers.” Commonwealth probably had a two-year lease, since it ran the cinema only through Thursday, 13 July 1978. As far as I know, the twin cinema sat empty for a year, until Will Smith of Hoffmantown ended his association with TLT’s Far North and took over the Galería lease beginning on Friday, 24 August 1979. He now bestowed upon it a new name: the First Plaza Twin. He was not a success and he ran his last show there on Thursday, 28 February 1980, which was also when he finally closed the Hoffmantown Cinema. After Will lost his investment, the Screening Room was gutted and turned into store space. To this day, I have not worked out how the Galería shopping center or any of its shops earns any money.