NATO Is a House o' Weenies

The most historic meeting in Manhattan last week was, needless to say, at the United Nations. But across town, NATO was conducting an even more tumultuous and unstatesmanlike session. This NATO was not the North Atlantic Treaty Organization but the equally embattled National Association of Theater Owners. The gloom at the meeting was almost as thick as the cigar smoke.

Just two weeks before, yet another Moorish movie palace, Miami's Olympia, had shut down.* Typically, rural theater chains like Oregon's Adamson have reported a 30% drop in volume in the past year. In Portland, where business is also dragging, the "nabes" (the trade term for neighborhood houses) are now closed except on weekends, and some metropolitan theaters, even in New York's Times Square area, will be dark until the beginning of the Christmas season. Across the country, weekly movie admissions have steadily and disastrously declined after reaching a peak of 80 million in 1946. By 1963, the total had dropped to 21 million, and at last count was below 18 million. Though box office prices have more than tripled in the past 25 years, gross revenues are down 25%.

Faded Movies. Television is the all-too-familiar villain. By Nielsen's estimate, the average American adult spends 1,200 hours a year in front of his TV set. By contrast, he logs a mere nine hours a year in moviehouses (but watches a movie more attentively than the

TV screen). NATO is concerned about further trouble from the tube; cable or community-antenna television may soon offer viewers 40 different TV channels, plus pay-TV movies.

The economy is partly to blame for the current slump. But, says NATO's Sumner Redstone, president of an 80-theater Midwest chain, "primarily we're suffering from the most severe lack of quality motion pictures in the last ten to 15 years." Many operators make the familiar complaint that there are too few family pictures. What they are waiting for is Son of Love Story, another Airport or a romantic western like Butch Caasidy and the Sundance Kid. The nostalgia fad is not the only reason why so many old movies like National Velvet and Dr. Zhivago are everywhere in revival.

Fried Chicken. Yet, for all their difficulties, the NATO conventioneers and other movie-theater owners (checked around the country by TIME correspondents) seem to be adapting to the straitened times. On paper, at least, some of the statistics are even bullish. In the first six months of this year, the industry opened 123 new theaters and began construction on 152 more. Nevertheless, the nationwide total of theater seats and parking slots (about 30% of U.S. theaters are drive-ins) is not necessarily rising, because the big downtown theaters are coming down. The trend is toward suburban minitheaters with as few as 150 seats. About 70% of the new theaters are in shopping centers; frequently one house contains several separate small auditoriums that share the same box office, snack concession and automated projection operations. Comedian Jerry Lewis, who is franchising such complexes as if they were fried-chicken restaurants, claims to have 55 in operation, another 120 abuilding. In cities, minitheaters are sometimes fitted into the hollowed shells of old urban palaces. The Warner Theater on Times Square, where epics like Exodus used to play to reserved-seat audiences of 1,500, has been rebuilt to house three small halls, two currently playing horror movies, and the third featuring a nudie named Navele.

Such theater clusters will be able to play different movies for different audiences. Bob Moscow, owner of three Atlanta houses, says: "You've got to have movies with class appeal--to blacks, racists, different age and sex groups." Most moviegoers (74%) are under 30, and blacks also attend films in disproportion to their population. In Manhattan's Chinatown, admissions to Chinese movies have doubled in the past five years.

Porn and Corn. According to one count, some 720 of the U.S.'s 14,450 moviehouses are specializing in skin flicks, a 60% increase since 1968. Sexploitation movies seem to be past their prime in some areas, newly blooming in others. Chicago Exhibitor Herschell

Lewis believes that audiences in the area are sated. "After you go so many times, you get bored. There's very little difference in genitalia, even between the genitalia of a star and the genitalia of some unknown." But in Atlanta, Exhibitor Moscow says, "You'd be surprised at the nice ladies who like those raunchy movies. It's snob appeal, hobnobbing with the riffraff."

Loss Leader. Next to product, price was the topic most discussed by NATO last week. Chicago's Lewis reported that "there's been almost an organized rebellion against the $3 ticket," and called for price cuts. Ben Sack, a Boston chain owner, spoke vehemently against reductions, warning that "the next thing you will be giving away dishes again like they did in the Depression." Too late. The price war is on, and in Detroit they are giving away dishes, while elsewhere there are "football widows' nights" on Mondays, "early bird" matinees, even free admissions on off days. San Francisco's Strand, for $1.25, offers a triple feature plus bingo. The nearby Regal one-ups it with four pictures for the price of one.

In some places, the film has become almost a loss leader just to get the customer to the popcorn stand. Martin Newman, executive vice president of New York's Century Theaters, figures that "concessions can mean the difference between life and death." At last week's NATO conclave, where the Hollywood moviemakers were practically invisible, there was a whole midway of barking concessionaires trying to sell the exhibitors the latest House o' Weenies rotisseries, Pronto-Burger rigs and even microwave ovens for veal Parmesan. After all, the average drive-in patron, according to one study, pops for 49-c- worth of refreshments; the indoor theaters count on 22-c- per customer. That adds up to approximately $800 million a year, or close to 40% of the theater owner's total take. In 1971, that's movie biz.

*Unlike Manhattan's Roxy, which was demolished, the. Olympia will be saved as a concert hall, as Pittsburgh's Penn recently became an opera house and the St. Louis Theater, the acoustically excellent Powell Symphony Hall.

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