THEY PUT SHOW IN ROADSHOW : From Snakes to Road ‘Biggies’

Looking out over Monarch Bay from her mobile home, Hildegarde Esper, 90, called the roadshow past she shared with her late husband, Dwain “truly a Ma and Pa operation.”

“There was not a thing in the movie business we did not have our mitt into,” she said. “When we decided to make films, I did the writing, Dwain was producer-director-sound man-cameraman and editor (and sometime actor). I did most of the ad layouts and drew up the poster ideas. Dwain sold. Boy, could he sell!”

Hildegarde was only 8 when she shilled as a snake charmer for an uncle who sold snake oil from the back of a horse-driven wagon. She was a 21-year-old Times city general-assignment reporter when she met Esper, then a motorcycle stunt man at the Motordrome in Venice.

The death of a physician-uncle who had been addicted to opium prompted her to write the script for “Narcotic,” the first of their roadshow vehicles. Filmed for $8,900 and launched in 1932, it played more than 2,000 engagements and was a staple of the roadshow market through the ‘50s.

Hildegarde went on to write other roadshow “epics” like “Marijuana,” “How to Undress in Front of Your Husband” (starring Elaine Barry, John Barrymore’s wife) and “The Beast of Berlin.”

Blonde and slightly built, she was the physical opposite of her big, muscular husband. While the smooth-talking Dwain was trying to schedule a film somewhere like Omaha or Dallas (“he liked to go after the big barns”), she would motor to a small mountain town, carry the cans of film and tack up garish displays. Still later that night, she wandered up and down the “theater” aisles, selling books.