Sureseaters

In movie trade lingo, a sureseater is a small "art" theater specializing in upperbrow films for upperbrow audiences. The word was originally used to suggest that every seat is sure to be filled. A skeptical Hollywood crack favors another interpretation: whenever you go, you are sure to get a seat. Last week the Hollywood joke rang hollow; having grown in a year from 226 to 270, U.S. sureseaters were booming. Symptoms:

P:The Selznick Releasing Organization had turned down a chance to book the British-made The Fallen Idol into Manhattan's 6,000-seat Radio City Music Hall, instead waited patiently to put it into the 550-seat Sutton theater, where the British-made Quartet was in its 28th week.

P:On gaudy Times Square, the Embassy Newsreel theater was working on a deal with the J. Arthur Rank Organization to become a showcase for topnotch British films.

P:Sureseaters had opened in San Diego and Salt Lake City. Others were planned in Denver, Seattle, Portland, Tacoma. Los Angeles, which had gotten five new sureseaters in twelve months, would soon get one more which has hitherto specialized in westerns.

P:The East Coast's Trans-Lux theater chain had shocked the industry by passing up Walt Disney's Ichabod and Mr. Toad in favor of The Fallen Idol for its Washington house.

The usual sureseater formula is simple: give moviegoers what they rarely get in standard cinemansions--a single feature, no popcorn, well-behaved next-seat neighbors, super-comfortable seats and, most important, high-quality pictures from Britain, France, Italy and sometimes even Hollywood. Some 70 of the U.S. sureseaters show this kind of film exclusively; the rest, as often as they can get them.

For such pleasures, the art theaters' customers seem increasingly willing to pay premium prices (up to $2.40) while admission prices elsewhere are slipping. Because the theaters are small, the runs are long.

For producers like Rank (Henry V, Hamlet), the sureseaters have been a bonanza. Eagle Lion, distributor of Rank's The Red Shoes, has grossed more from its 40-week run in Philadelphia's Trans-Lux than from all its other pictures in Philadelphia theaters during the same period. Better still, less receipts have to be splurged on costly ballyhoo; a sureseater hit automatically woos the kind of audience that is eager to seek out a good film.

Will Hollywood moviemakers go after some of this rich gravy by aiming more pictures at adults? Obviously, Hollywood's bosses cannot neglect the mass audience that keeps 19,000 U.S. theaters going. But as the sureseaters keep growing, their operators--and their surefire audiences--are hoping that some producers will be tempted.

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