Fired Because of

The Exorcist.....?

by Michael Copner

There are trends and fashions which unfold in the entertainment field, as they evolve in most other areas of our daily life. Let me tell you about one cycle of evolution which took place between 1931 and 2015.

For me, it began in the mid 1970s and concerned the film The Exorcist, and my first real enjoyable employment as a daytime relief manager for Sterling Recreation Organization (or simply SRO). The job required that I get in at 11 am to get three Seattle movie houses up and running: The Music Box, Town and 7th Avenue Theatre (alas, all are now gone). At age 18 it was the closest to show business I’d achieved and often allowed me to see six new movies for free—weekly! My employment with SRO lasted three months.

There was tremendous advance publicity for The Exorcist, beginning in late 1973. SRO had a blueprint for showing the film exclusively at the 7th Avenue Theatre on 7th and Olive Street. The manager for this theater, Mr. Ib Johanson, was delighted that his house had been chosen to run the film. Huge crowds were anticipated and perhaps added screenings would be necessary. In those days, theater managers—at least in Washington State—were working for less than minimum wage as they received a commission from the concession sales. This insured that managers would rule the popcorn stand with an iron fist, keeping an accurate inventory of the soft drink cups, popcorn bags and candy bars.

A few words about Mr. Johanson who was the enthralling “mystery man” of my young life: He spoke with a thick German accent, and was therefore unable to conceal his origins. Briefly a Nazi sympathizer, Mr. J. fled Germany for the US and offered his services and some information to our government thereby aiding the Allies during WWII. Another manager at SRO once told me that Mr. J had been a language translator for the US at the Nuremberg Trials.

To show its appreciation, the US Government helped create a false identity and made up the new moniker “Ib Johanson” for this man, when he returned to civilian life. I heard a rumor that Mr. J still maintained connections to The White House. Could this man have been involved in espionage; living and working undercover while selling theatre tickets? As Bela Lugosi said in the WW II mystery Black Dragons, “Who knows in this crazy world?!”

To Mr. Johanson, theater operations were as vital as defeating Hitler. Upon meeting him when I reported to work, his first words to me were: “Whatever you’re doing, you will get here each morning and open these theaters come hell or high water! Can you see that my friend?”

Yes, he seemed to take all his endeavors most sincerely. It broke his heart, therefore, when at the last minute SRO decided to premiere The Exorcist—not at the 7th Avenue, but—at their Cinerama Theatre on 4th Avenue, closer to Seattle Center.

A brief history of the 7th Avenue Theater is in order. Originally planned as The Mayflower, it opened in 1929 as The Fox. It contained an amazing 2,282 seats and went through several names changes until at last becoming the 7th Avenue in 1967. In 1977 as movie attendance was falling, the place was converted to a supper club with musical shows, thus receiving the new name The Music Hall. In the 1980s it was renamed once more as The Emerald Palace, but the shows rarely turned a profit and the entire building was demolished in 1992.

And now, at long last, to the point—The Exorcist—and the sudden change of plans amongst the SRO top brass. It was decided that, at over 2,000 seats, The 7th Ave was simply too huge to play the film. It was feared the film would play itself out in a few weeks and then vanish from the movie viewing scene. The suits decided to show The Exorcist at the much smaller Cinerama Theater for many reasons. They wished for people to see the film amidst capacity crowds thus creating word-of-mouth publicity. They were further desirous of the citizenry to drive by on this main street and witness crowds a block long or more, waiting to buy tickets for the film, thereby exciting further curiosity. With each show a sell-out, a few more candy bars might also be sold.

Mr. Johanson told me he was sad and enraged that he’d lost The Exorcist to another screen. (I’ve sometimes wondered if any politician in Washington, DC compensated him for that loss…)

For me it simply meant some overtime hours for exactly one week. I’d do the 3-house opening in the afternoon, the go directly to The Cinerama for crowd control—both inside and out. It was needed. Ticket scalpers were in full operation and a few customers fought each other and our cashiers to purchase tickets for The Exorcist.

In out lobby, a space had been set aside as a nurse’s station, and medical people were on duty for each screening. This too was needed. Early screenings and market testing on the East Coast proved that this film was a shocker—as it was intended to be! Some viewers were impacted on a physical level by such moments as the head-rotation scene. This film packed a one-two punch, hitting some people where their spiritual beliefs might be. These viewers might come out scared they were taken over by demons simply by watching a few scenes from the film. Others were afraid to go home, convinced the devil was lurking there, awaiting their arrival. In a majority of theaters showing the film, audience members so disturbed were to be directed to the above-mentioned nurse’s station. It’s possible that the production company (Warner Bros.) made these medical precautions a mandatory part of the film booking (à la William Castle).

Film collectors have surely seen pressbooks for horror and sex films which include the promotional gimmicks. “Pay people to picket your theater in protest!” and “Have nurses in your lobby!” Rarely would those “nurses” have any medical credentials. Not so at this event! The nurses in our Cinerama lobby were sent from Seattle General Hospital on Capitol Hill.

And my stupidity about obeying company policy cost me my employment with SRO. One night, after a week of helping out at The Exorcist showings, I was in the lobby when—halfway through the movie—a man came out of the auditorium in a zombified, trance-like condition. He was pale-faced and his eyes had a faraway look to them. I did my job up to a point. I went up to him and asked if he was okay or did he want to see the nurse. He neither looked at nor spoke to me, but kept walking for the exit. And I let him leave. One of our cashiers or concession sales people saw that and told it to a higher up. Next day, when I came to work, third in command from SRO—Mr. Bob Bond—came to see me, disturbed over my non-action. “If that man walked in front of a bus in his trance-like state last night and a ticket stub from our theater is found in his pocket, we could be subject to a lawsuit. I don’t think you know much about running theaters. We’re letting you go.”

I was out of work because a terrified man walked out of a film in a state of shock.

Enter dear old Uncle Forry Ackerman. He, as Editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland, received a letter from a young kid (it had to be) which stated in essence, “Everybody knows that nobody was really scared by those old original Frankenstein and Dracula films. But this new Exorcist film—that’s real terror!” Kindly Forry ran the letter in FM with the reply, “Young Man, you just would have had to have been there in 1931.” And there the matter rested for decades.

In the last 10 years, I’ve looked in on screenings of The Exorcist, or seen clips from it in documentaries on horror in the cinema. And something takes me by surprise each time I see those scenes: people in the audience always laugh. And I can’t quite equate these reactions, albeit 40 years past; that a scene with the power to make people vomit in disgust or be afraid to enter their own homes, now gets treated as a slapstick comedy. Though I usually remain silent, I often feel like Uncle Forry and want to tell these viewers, “You just would have had to see The Exorcist in 1974.

Sometimes familiarity with a film or genre can breed contempt. As Frank Dello Stritto told me, “Often when a film is a success it gets duplicated just too often. Soon audiences are bored and believe they’ve seen all this before.”

It’s true that The Exorcist impacted the film industry this way. Fans will recall Abby in 1974, a virtual black-cast remake of the Linda Blair film. An Italian film along demonic lines, Beyond the Door, also cashed in during 1974. The Devil’s Rain with William Shatner was released in 1975. The Omen in 1976 combined Satanism with Nixonian politics as it concerned a demonic child close to operating out of The White House.

The old saying that nothing is new except that which has been forgotten may apply to film cycles and appreciation. In October 2015, Universal Pictures tried a very novel experiment throughout the US. They offered up the Bela Lugosi Dracula for theatrical re-release on a double-bill with the Spanish language version with Carlos Vilaros in the lead. My partner on Cult Movies—Buddy Barnett—went to see the showing three times in Las Vegas and reported that the audiences were always respectful.

Armed with this information, I had a few chats with a friend here in Los Angeles, Mr. Lee Harris. Over the years, Lee has evolved into being a talented actor and voice artist as well as a film historian, writer and collector. With that background, he vowed never to watch a classic horror film with a theater audience. (A few years previous to this, he’d seen a screening of Dracula at a Hollywood film society and some of those in the audience laughed at it—even at the great performance by Lugosi.)

Fortunately, I convinced Lee to try it “one more time”. We went to an afternoon screening of Dracula at an 18 screen AMC multiplex in Burbank. We were among an audience of slightly more than 50 people—of all ages. And there was no snide laughter. Everyone seemed to be in awe of the legendary Lugosi and impressed by the eerie effectiveness of the atmospheric beginning at Castle Dracula, not to mention the later scenes deep in the basements of Carfax Abbey.

It was fine to note that nobody got up and left during the Spanish version. Everyone seemed moved by both films. What a turn of events! Young audiences of today may laugh at The Exorcist, but are now holding these vintage classics in high esteem.

I hope these results will induce Universal to put their other monster and thriller films into theatrical release once again. Some of you know my favorite film in the 1935 Karloff and Lugosi shocker, The Raven. A fond hope is that eventually it will get a new double-billing with their Poe-inspired The Black Cat of 1934.

If such a miracle occurs, be assured that Mondo Cult Online will have a reviewer in the audience to report back to you as to how it went.