ANAHEIM RECEIVES A GIFT OF BROADWAY IN THE ROUND

Even though Anaheim has Disneyland, where imagination rules, the story of the city’s downtown is one of harsh urban realities. In the mid-1970s, the commercial district was crumbling and businesses were vanishing. Now, many old structures have been razed and city officials are trying to bring the area back to life. Some of their hope rests with the new Freedman Forum, a theater spawned by a fiscal fantasy worthy of a Walt Disney movie. “The city didn’t have to pay a cent because Leo is paying for it all,” said Mayor Ben Bay of the $8-million, 2,300-seat theater, which opens Jan. 13 with a new production of the Broadway musical “42nd Street,” starring Peter Marshall and Constance Towers.

Leo is Leo Freedman, in whose honor the theater is named. Over the years, Freedman has invested in Anaheim hotels--the Hyatt and the Grand--and a theater called Melodyland that has since closed. But Mayor Bay and other officials in Anaheim say they have had little personal contact with him. He does not live or work in the county, but in Beverly Hills. He doesn’t show up on the local social circuit, like many arts patrons. “I think he’s kind of a lone wolf,” Bay said. “But he has the money, and he’s willing to risk it.”

Even James Woodin, managing director of the Freedman Forum, who has worked in various capacities for Freedman since 1963, didn’t appear to know much personal data about his boss. “I know he drives a white Cadillac convertible,” Woodin said. “He always insists on being called Leo, and he looks like an elf.”

It was a good description of the smallish man who, during a recent interview in his penthouse atop an apartment building near Century City, seemed from the first moment to embody a contradiction. “Ask me any question you want,” said Freedman one minute; “I don’t want any publicity,” he added moments later.

With small eyes, neat black hair and an impish smile, he seemed far more anxious to promote his theater than expose even the basic details of his life. For example, he declared the subject of his age off-limits. (He is 77.) He speaks confidently about plans to offer Broadway musicals and Las Vegas-style acts in Freedman Forum, a theater-in-the-round. Despite the crumbling fortunes of Broadway theater, he insists it is a good omen that the City of Anaheim granted his wish to rename a street outside his theater 42nd Street, which intersects with one that was already called Broadway.

“I’m bringing culture to Orange County,” declared Freedman.

“That other guy isn’t the only one bringing culture down there. Uh, what’s his name? Uh . . . ,” referring to developer Henry Segerstrom, the guiding force behind the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

“What he’s done is terrific. Just great. But he’s not alone. His theater will be a fine complement to my theater and mine will complement his.”

Freedman lives in a roomy apartment with a signed photograph of President Reagan on one wall, a large bearskin rug on the floor and photograph of a nude Marilyn Monroe in the foyer. The Monroe picture is signed by the photographer with the legend: “Leo, Marilyn would have loved you.”

Ever since selling Melodyland to a church in 1969, Freedman said, he has wanted to own and run a theater. Unable to persuade institutional lenders that the Freedman Forum was a worthy risk, he has had to use his existing properties as collateral and borrow about half of the $8 million. “I tried everybody. I tried the banks. The pension funds, the institutions, they all said the same thing: ‘You’re crazy.’ But there is a difference between being insane and being a visionary.”

He said he never tried bringing in partners on the deal. “I don’t get involved with that. I don’t take partners or associates or contributors,” he said. “I work alone.”

The theater is built on 1 1/2 acres of redevelopment land that he bought in 1985 from the city for about $500,000. Originally proposed by Freedman as a 2,000-seat proscenium theater, the project was switched to a less costly theater-in-the-round design. “All the contractors knew that around $80 million was being spent on that place over in Costa Mesa (the Performing Arts Center) and they wanted me to spend more money,” he continued. “The word we’re talking about here is greed. . . . I had to fight all the way.”

Gradually, Freedman began to talk more about his long climb from modest beginnings. He was born in London, to which his father, a peddler, had immigrated at the turn of the century from the Russian port city of Odessa. “He left Russia, like Tevye in ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ ” he said.

The family, in which Leo Freedman was the youngest of 10 children, settled in Long Beach after moving from Canada, their first destination in North America. His father opened a grocery store, and the family lived upstairs. Speaking of his brothers, with whom he said he is not close, Freedman at one point declared, “My mother had five sons . . . one genius.”

Asked if calling himself a genius might not seem a bit immodest, he smiled, shrugged and went into more details of his story. Through his 20s he was a traveling salesman of men’s clothing, but his fortunes changed when he invested $1,000 in a 1952 hit recording called “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me,” sung by Karen Chandler. It reached No. 5 on the Billboard charts, and Freedman says he made $10,000.

A banker friend suggested that he invest in some land in Orange County, calling it the future of Los Angeles. He made a down payment on 10 acres in Anaheim for $3,000 an acre, then sold it for $4,000 an acre. He bought and sold land numerous times, eventually acquiring a 100-acre parcel about which he received a strange phone call one day in 1955. “This broker calls and says he’ll buy my land for $10,000 an acre,” said Freedman. “If he had said $5,000, I would have sold, but $10,000? That made me suspicious. The next day, I get another call. This time it’s a broker offering $15,000. You know what it was, don’t you? They were building Disneyland.”

He kept his land just beyond what became Disneyland’s main entrance and built two hotels--the Anaheim Hyatt and the Grand. Meanwhile, he said, he started buying parcels alongside freeways and leasing them to the state as offices for the California Highway Patrol.

“He was smart and he was lucky and he had the guts to go down there to Orange County,” said Danny Dare, a former director-producer who helped run Melodyland, another in-the-round theater that Freedman built and leased to Dare and a colleague. Between 1962 and 1968, Dare and a producer named Sammy Lewis brought dozens of Broadway shows and individual entertainers to the theater. There was “Camelot” with Howard Keel and “Oklahoma” with John Raitt. The theater also featured the likes of Sammy Davis Jr., Johnny Carson and Liberace. Melodyland closed as a theater in 1968 and was sold the following year to the Anaheim Christian Church, which turned the facility into the church’s headquarters.

Recalling Melodyland’s demise, Dare, 82, said: “We ran out of product. Broadway was producing fewer and fewer shows. Universal (Amphitheatre) came in and Knott’s (Berry Farm) and Disneyland and there wasn’t enough product to go around. We were making money, but Sammy and I saw the writing on the wall and we wanted to get out.”

Dare was surprised to hear recently that Freedman had built his own theater. “I don’t know where he’s going to get product. We had 3,500 seats in Melodyland and he has 2,300 seats and how can you appeal to the same performers as Universal Amphitheatre. But he’s a pretty smart guy, and I’m sure he’s got something in mind.”

Freedman said he’s confident of his theater’s success. “I can afford anybody I want,” Freedman said. “I can have Neil Simon. I can have anybody.”

He made it clear that his motives for building the Freedman Forum go far beyond wistful theatrical idealism. “I’m a businessman, and I think I can make money with it,” he said. “I built it because it’s a good tax shelter and also I love show people. I’m a Californian, and we have a native affinity for show business. . . . I’ve been on the periphery of show business all my life, just like Reagan.”

Exactly how near or far from the center of show business he’s been is hard to determine. At one point during the interview, he said he could call up Gene Kelly at any time and have breakfast with him. But later, Freedman said that he really didn’t know Kelly and that he had made the statement to show how relaxed he felt around show business people.

He thinks Orange County has a thirst for entertainment that will fill Freedman Forum and justify his having his own Broadway and 42nd Street corner as a nostalgic reminder of Broadway’s more successful era. “We’re all in show business, and we’re all on 42nd Street, baby,” he said. “New York is the Big Apple, and we’re the Big Orange!”

His production of “42nd Street,” with cast members gleaned from various past productions of the show, is scheduled to run for four weeks, according to Freedman. Anaheim officials appear to have considerable faith in him.

“This is Leo’s Monument,” said Bay. “That’s how I think of it. It’s a monument he wanted to build for himself. But it is also a cornerstone for entertainment in downtown Anaheim. We really want to bring people downtown, and we think this will make a difference.”