Movies : Guild Keeps It Clean, Makes It at Box Office

In 1978, the president of Landmark Theater Corp. asked Bill Richardson, who managed the Landmark’s Ken Theater, if he thought a porn theater in Hillcrest would succeed as a place to see foreign films.

“I told him it would never fly,” Richardson recalled.

Steve Gilula and his partner, Gary Meyer, bought the Guild Theatre anyway.

Now, as Richardson puts the final touches on a 10-year anniversary festival of classic theater at the Guild, all he can say is, “I’m very happy I was wrong.”

Starting at 8 a.m. Saturday, the Guild will show comedy shorts starring W.C. Fields, Charlie Chaplin and Bugs Bunny; “Tales of Beatrix Potter,” featuring The Royal Ballet Company at 9:30 a.m.; “The Red Balloon” at 11:30 a.m.; and a noon double feature of “Fire Over England” with Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh and James Mason and “The Third Man” with Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton.

The festival concludes with the San Diego premiere of “Bagdad Cafe,” the film scheduled to play the Guild after its current attraction, “White Mischief,” concludes its run.

All proceeds from the $12 general admission price will benefit KPBS radio, the National Public Radio station for San Diego.

The 500-seat Guild has come a long way since it achieved a reputation for being the first place “Deep Throat” played in California.

The transition was “sort of difficult,” according to Richardson, who now manages the four Landmark theaters in San Diego. In its nine years as an X-rated movie house, the Guild had built up an audience that expected a certain kind of title on the marquee. When the new owners put up the name of their first foreign film, “The Man Who Loved Women,” it seemed to fit right in with the standard fare.

After the regulars poured in to find themselves at a Francois Truffaut movie, they got up, disgusted, and demanded a refund.

The confusion continued with the next two films: “Outrageous” and “Madame Rosa.” Richardson remembers “Gallipoli” as a turning point, mainly because it was hard to confuse that name with anything racy.

“Gallipoli” ended up running nearly five months. The longest-running Guild film, however, was yet to come: “La Cages Aux Folles,” which ran seven months and three days.

One of the reasons Richardson doubted the Guild’s ultimate success was that 10 years ago, there wasn’t much foot traffic in Hillcrest. But the opening of the art movie house helped, and it in turn was helped by a general resurgence of interest in the Hillcrest area.

Now Hillcrest has proved to have such a healthy appetite for first-run art and foreign films that a year ago Landmark converted another porn theater, the Capri, into the Park Theatre. According to Gilula, the company is looking for another San Diego site. (The company also owns the Cove Theater in La Jolla.)

The only dark lining to the silver cloud is that managing four theaters bleeds from Richardson’s other life as Jose Sinatra, a character he has fashioned from a pastiche of numbers by Wayne Newton, Sammy Davis Jr., Jerry Lewis and Frank Sinatra. Jose Sinatra, according to Richardson, sees himself as God’s gift to women and to humankind itself.

Richardson, who will be accompanied by the Troy Dante Quintet (a.k.a. his friend and guitarist Jan Tonnesen) will perform at the Spirit Club in Bay Park the night of the festival. But Richardson said he doesn’t want the timing to make anyone jump to false conclusions.

“There’s no truth to the rumor that Sinatra will be appearing at this benefit, despite several calls from anxious females,” Richardson said. “But we will be giving away passes to the theater and some really fine movie posters.”