A Woman of Vision Focuses on Business

Florence Keeler only has eyes for you.

And has for more than four decades.

The Hollywood Bowl, Pasadena Civic Auditorium, Greek Theater, Shrine Auditorium, Royce Hall Theater at UCLA, Terrace Theater in Long Beach, the Wilshire, the Wiltern--Keeler is as much a part of a night at a local performance as the footlights.

Since before World War II, she has given Los Angeles a vision, renting binoculars to anyone and everyone who has wanted to think big.

Facial Expressions

“Anybody who does without a pair is depriving himself of complete enjoyment,” she said. “If I attend a play, I want to see the facial expressions. If I attend the ballet, I want to see the toework.”

It was with this in mind in 1941 that Keeler, a secretary at the time, borrowed what was then the large sum of $500 to buy up dozens of the binoculars remaining on the store shelves.

“I knew the war would mean there would be no more made,” she said. “I put mine in the closet and waited. As the various theater managers--most of whom had that concession--went off to the service, I approached the owners and asked for a contract.”

Along the way, as she progressed from jobs to eventually become a corporate accountant, it was always with the understanding that she could keep her sightline activity.

She now has many of the local houses signed up (until recently she had the Music Center), has a stock of about 600 eight-power Bushnell glasses, and has crews working for her.

At age 70, however, the time has come to put the caps on for good. Her building contractor husband, Walter, is building them a retirement nest in Sedona, Ariz., and they plan to settle there at the end of the year.

A new hand, someone she has been guiding in the business, will be in charge of putting things into focus at the various booths. For Keeler, the present only enlarges the past.

“At the old Philharmonic Auditorium, I used to work at a card table in the lobby. The fee was 25 cents for opera glasses for a show, and the deposit was $5.” Keeler was reminiscing inside her Los Angeles home, thumbing through souvenir programs from appearances here by performers such as Paul Robeson and Charles Laughton.

An indication of how times have changed, the current fee is usually $2.50, and a patron renting binoculars nowadays must hand over his or her driver’s license as security.

“At one time I took credit cards as deposit, but too many of them turned out to be stolen,” the concession operator said. “You can’t fool me or my people with a fake driver’s license. We know what to look for.

A Feel for Honesty

“I don’t like to take a cash deposit, but sometimes a person will say he left his driver’s license in his other wallet, and I’ll agree to hold $25. You get a feel for honesty.”

It has happened that someone, intentionally or otherwise, will walk away from a performance with a pair of rented binoculars. Keeler or her operatives, reputation at stake, go to great lengths to keep that person’s honesty intact.

The business is a concession that Keeler retains by paying the owners a percentage of the rental fees, and thus it would seem logical for her to seek volume. Not always.

“I recommend binoculars for the 18th row and back,” she disclosed. “If you are closer than that, you don’t need them. Sometimes a person will volunteer that he is in a certain row, and I’ll reply that his own eyes will be good enough.

“I have no way of knowing what row a theatergoer is in, but sometimes you unintentionally find out. When Elizabeth Taylor was playing here in ‘Little Foxes,’ one of my customers came back to the booth at the conclusion and said she had lost a lens cap.

“She showed me her ticket stub and we went looking with a flashlight. She had been watching Taylor through binoculars from the second row.”

Keeler’s three rolling outdoor stands and three indoor ones are courtesy of the construction skills of her husband.

Year in and year out she has sat out front and in the lobbies, listening to the emanating sounds of everything from rock concerts to ballet.

“My biggest volume is for ballet,” she said. “For a single performer--and this was without a note of music--it was Lily Tomlin, just sitting on a chair on the stage.”

Richard Chamberlain a Customer

As for her customers, they have included some whose names might just as easily have been on the marquee. When Bing Crosby and his wife showed up for a ballet performance, Kathy was required to leave her driver’s license as security for the power glasses. So was Richard Chamberlain when he showed up with his lady for the ballet.

“No matter who had them, after the instruments are turned in, we always clean each lens with silicone tissues,” Keeler said.

And, about once a year, she sits at a kitchen table cluttered with about 600 binoculars, cleaning them with a toothbrush.

She avoids halls with insufficient seating capacity to generate demand for her specialty. And she declines to rent her glasses for symphony concerts, on the assumption that people go to listen, not watch. Nor does she bother with sporting events. “The fans come and go through too many exits. It would be too much trouble to set up a central point where they would have to rent and return.”

Problems are the only thing she doesn’t want to magnify.