United Artists Says It Won’t Renew Adult Movie Theater’s Lease

United Artists Communications will not renew its lease with the Mitchell Brothers adult movie theater in Santa Ana when it expires in 1990, a company official said Tuesday.

That decision came a day after Santa Ana city officials ended their 11-year effort to close the theater, agreeing to pay the owners $200,000 and to drop about 40 lawsuits in exchange for the firm’s promise to stop advertising its X-rated movies on its 17th Street marquee.

Although council members had said they feared that there was little they could do to prevent the theater owners from signing a new lease, United Artists senior vice president Arnold Childhouse said Tuesday that city officials need not worry.

“It will not be renewed,” Childhouse said. “I made the decision just now. No, I don’t have to think about it. We don’t enter into those kinds of leases today.”

The theater once was a United Artists theater, and the company holds a long-term master lease on the property. Childhouse said there probably “wasn’t much thought” given to the 1975 decision to sublet the building to the San Francisco-based adult theater chain. But today, he said, “We don’t like the idea of that type of tenancy.”

The decision is final, Childhouse said. “I would have something to say about who would get that lease, and it will not be Mitchell Brothers.”

Mayor Dan Young said he was “absolutely delighted” to hear Childhouse’s announcement. “I think that it is a very responsible position for them to take, and it shows their great sensitivity to this issue which has tied up the city financially and politically for so many years,” he said.

Young added that Santa Ana probably will hire a consultant within a month to begin work on a redevelopment plan for an area including the theater site. “However,” he stressed, “we are not doing this for the purpose of bringing any eminent domain action against the Mitchell Brothers.”

Jim Mitchell, co-owner of the adult-theater business, said Tuesday that he had heard of United Artists’ decision and that he and his brother, Artie, will try to find another location or build their own theater when the lease expires.

“It’s a matter of going to a city, be it Santa Ana, Laguna Beach or Beverly Hills and asking where we could operate a theater,” he said. “It doesn’t matter which town. I want a place that I’m going to improve the area.” He said the courts consistently have cited First Amendment rights in blocking the city’s efforts to close the theater. The Mitchells didn’t want to be “run out of town on a rail,” he said. “Good people have the right to assemble and go to the movies. There’s no inherent harm in the movies themselves.”

Artie Mitchell said, however, that adult theaters may not continue to be viable businesses as X-rated home videos cut into the profits. He said that whether he and his brother continue to have an adult theater in Orange County will depend on the demand for it.

“If people want to continue to support the theater, we would be there,” he said. “If the fans stay away, we don’t need the government or people like (Santa Ana’s attorney James J.) Clancy to shut us down. We would just stop operating.”

Clancy, who specializes in anti-pornography litigation, has represented the city in its battle against the theater.

Artie Mitchell said the brothers also own two movie theaters in San Francisco and have interests in the home video market, film production and commercial fishing. They are working on two films now, he said--one, which is not intended to be X-rated, about columnist Hunter S. Thompson and another, a sex comedy, entitled “Bride of Bigfoot.”

Although Artie Mitchell declined to discuss profit and loss figures, he said the firm “ran in the red” last year largely due to losses in their fishing interests. The brothers also have spent about $500,000 in legal costs during their battle with the city, far more than the $200,000 settlement, he said.