Cities Scratch Heads for Ways to Skin X-Rated Pussycat : Seattle Suburb’s Case May Apply in Whittier Fight

This city’s eight-year legal fight to shut down the X-rated Pussycat Theatre--a thorn in the side of merchants and officials pushing to redevelop the once depressed Uptown Village business district--now depends on a legal battle in a city thousands of miles away.

The U.S. Supreme Court next month will hear arguments about a case involving a Seattle suburb and an adult movie theater. Like Whittier, the city of Renton, Wash., has a zoning ordinance prohibiting X-rated movie theaters within 1,000 feet of churches, schools or homes.

First Amendment

The court is expected to decide whether the ordinance violates the theater operators’ First Amendment guarantee of freedom of expression.

Whittier Mayor Myron Claxton said the Renton case may be the key to his city’s long-standing fight to close the Pussycat Theatre. If the city of Renton loses, Claxton admits Whittier officials may abandon attempts to push the Pussycat out of Uptown, a legal effort that has become one of the most expensive in the city’s history.

Since the city first filed a suit against the Pussycat owners in 1977, City Manager Tom Mauk estimates Whittier has spent more than $100,000 in court costs and attorneys fees. Owners of Pussycat Theatres, Walnut Properties, Inc., have filed a countersuit and are seeking damages against the city that could tack thousands of dollars more onto Whittier’s legal bill.

Freedom to Operate

“It boggles my mind that in this day and age we are still having to fight for the freedom to operate our business,” said Jim Johnson, president of Pussycat Theatres, a statewide chain of 48 movie houses, including 33 adult theaters. “We will do whatever it takes to keep them from censoring us. So far we are winning.”

Which is why Claxton and other Whittier officials will watch the Renton case closely.

“If they lose, it might be bleak for us,” said Claxton, a lifelong Whittierite whose deceased uncle Aubrey Wardman built the theater now owned by Hollywood-based Walnut Properties. “I’m afraid our chances of winning wouldn’t be good. We’d have to take a long look at whether it’s worth going on.”

The mayor, like many officials and merchants in the largely conservative city of 71,000, said he still strongly opposes the Pussycat with its marquee burning nightly in the heart of Uptown, the centerpiece of Whittier’s multimillion dollar effort to draw new business and shoppers.

Claxton acknowledges that times have changed since scores of residents picketed the 1930s-era movie house soon after Walnut Properties purchased Wardman Theater in May 1977 and started showing adult films.

The theater’s presence among the boutiques, cafes and children’s stores of Uptown is no longer a highly visible issue, according to many who live, work and shop in the city’s old downtown. There is a grudging acceptance that the theater has become a permanent fixture in the village.

“It’s been one of the most frustrating chapters in Whittier’s history,” Claxton said. “But the fact remains, it still opens every day at noon for business. I’m sure my uncle wouldn’t relish the way that theater is being used today.”

While Mauk and other Whittier officials publicly say they are prepared to take the city’s case against the theater to the U.S. Supreme Court, it is clear the fight is at a crossroads.

Justification Not Sufficient

In July, a federal judge tossed out a section of the city’s zoning ordinance that would have forced the theater to either move or stop showing adult films. It was the second time in two years that U.S. District Judge Manuel Real had ruled that the city failed to provide sufficient justification for banning an X-rated theater within 1,000 feet of a church, school or residence. Real ruled that the restriction was arbitrary, and that the ordinance did not give an explanation for selecting it rather than banning such businesses within a 1,000 feet of a “pink house.”

The city has until December to decide whether to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review Real’s decision. Although oral arguments in the Renton case are scheduled for Nov. 12, a decision is not expected before the end of the year.

Attempts by Renton officials to close Playtime Theater--the only adult theater in the former mining town of 34,000--parallels Whittier’s X-rated saga, Kaufman said.

Soon after Renton adopted its adult business ordinance in April, 1981, a group of Seattle investors bought a vacant theater in the city’s downtown and began showing X-rated films, said Renton City Attorney Larry Warren. The theater is a block from a central park and a Catholic girl’s school, he said.

Playtime owners immediately challenged the ordinance in court, but both the state court and a U.S. District Court in Washington state upheld the law. But a federal appellate court overturned the lower court decisions, saying the law violated the owners’ Constitutional rights. So Renton officials appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Whatever the outcome of the Renton case, the debate in Whittier over the propriety of a theater showing such films as “Sex Appeal” or “Take My Body” in the middle of a pedestrian-oriented shopping area is likely to continue.

Johnson, who has been with Pussycat Theatres for 17 years, said his Uptown movie house brings potential shoppers to the area.

The adult film operator believes he contributes to Uptown in other ways. Since buying the theater, he said he’s taken steps to preserve the building’s Art Deco interior. During the city’s annual July street festival, he closes the theater, turns the movie posters around and changes the marquee to read: “Welcome to the Whittier Village Festival.”

Besides the 900-seat theater, he owns a string of stores along the 7000 block of Greenleaf, but most are currently empty. Because movie-goers are rarely seen coming or going from the theater, some merchants speculate Johnson may be losing money on his Uptown outlet.

Not so, said the operator of 33 adult theaters statewide.

“We average about 1,200 customers a week,” said Johnson, who estimates he has spent $80,000 fighting the city to keep his theater open seven days a week from noon to midnight.

“Believe me, if I wasn’t making money, I’d sell in a minute,” he said. “It’s not my biggest-grossing theater, but it’s not the worst either.”

Critical to Business

Matching the city brief-for-brief in court despite the costs is critical to his future business, Johnson said.

“If I didn’t fight, I wouldn’t be in business tomorrow,” he said. “At the first sign of backing down, I’d might be vulnerable in every city where I operate theaters.”

From the city’s standpoint, it is a legal, not a moral issue, City Manager Mauk said. He said the city’s persistence is not an attempt to single out a specific business, but to enforce a law he believes the theater is violating. At least four churches, including two that operate day-care and elementary schools, are located within 1,000 feet of the theater.

“At times, I’ve been discouraged because the city’s position has been misunderstood,” Mauk said. “We simply want to enforce an ordinance, not legislate morality.”

Mauk said the city would not stop Johnson from moving his theater to another part of the city as long as the new location complied with the ordinance.

Whittier’s use of zoning to restrict adult businesses is based on the Supreme Court’s 1976 decision that allowed the city of Detroit to limit where adult businesses can operate, Kaufman said.

Stanley Fleishman, attorney for Pussycat Theatres, believes Whittier’s ordinance is a “blatant attempt to banish” the last adult business in Whittier.

In the late 1970s, the city closed about a dozen massage parlors and a series of adult bookstores along Whittier Boulevard near the 605 Freeway on the city’s westside. Fleishman, one of the first attorneys ever to argue an obscenity case before the U.S. Supreme Court in the late 1950s, said Whittier officials won’t rest until they “stamp out” the Pussycat.

“It is a very important issue in terms of whether we’re really committed to the Constitutional issues Americans boast about,” said Fleishman, a renowned civil liberties lawyer who has represented Pussycat Theatres since 1961.

“When others point and say they don’t like something, and cry ‘let’s change it,’ I’m offended,” he said. “It’s a dangerous practice in a free country to try and tell another man what he can and cannot read, watch or talk about.”

Those who live and work in Uptown are divided about the theater’s impact on the village.

Kathy Arquijo, president of the 450-member Whittier Uptown Association and a hair salon operator, said, “It’s like a bad sore. You keep hoping it will go away, but it doesn’t.”

Down the street from the theater, Ken Conlan, owner of Conlan Bros., a sporting goods store, said he’s surprised the theater is still open with the boom in video cassette players.

“Why pay $5 to sit alone in a dank theater, when you can watch those films at home in your own easy chair?” said Conlan, an Uptown businessman since the late 1950s.

Around the corner at Friends Church, one of the four churches within 1,000 feet of the theater, pastor Klane Robison said the Pussycat detracts from efforts to spruce up Uptown.

“Drive down Greenleaf, and you see the park benches, the trees, the cobblestones, and then the theater,” Robison said. “It just doesn’t fit the city’s character. It’s a nuisance.”

Not All Upset

Not all Uptown merchants are upset.

JoAnn Pepper, who recently bought a store and opened a precious stones and jewels shop a half block from the Pussycat, said property in the vicinity of the Pussycat is cheaper than elsewhere in Uptown. “Besides,” she added, “when customers call up and ask where we are located, I just say near the art theater, and they all say, ‘Oh, that theater.”’

Wilson Turner, who bought the commercial building next to the Pussycat two years ago and lives upstairs in a studio, said the theater’s neon marquee adds a cosmopolitan touch to Uptown at night. He also doubts business at local shops has been hurt by the theater’s existence.

“One of my tenants below runs a comic book store that’s always full of kids,” Turner said. “Apparently, their mothers aren’t too worried about them walking past the theater.

“Besides, the people who go to the movies don’t cause any problems,” he said. “They’re out of their cars and into the theater so fast you can’t recognize them. Usually, they’ve got their money out before they even get out of the car.”