Starlight Shines With Vintage Flicks, Discs

In an era of high-volume, high-gloss entertainment stores at every corner mini-mall, Pasadena’s Starlight Roof Classic American Music & Video store harks back to an earlier age.

There are no neon lights, turnstiles or electronic scanners, and none of the current releases that fill most video and record store bins.

Owner John Cooper is up front about what his store contains. A sign posted on his door warns would-be customers:

“Sorry, but we do not sell rock and roll, Spanish, rap, soul, heavy metal, funk, disco, new wave, breakin, punk, Motown, reggae, new age, nor most current music and no X-rated movies, rock videos . . . truck-crashing movies nor most current movies.”

Instead, Cooper dishes up an eclectic mix of traditional jazz, Big Band and Swing Era music mostly from the 1920s, ‘30s, ‘40s, complemented by an assortment of movies from Hollywood’s Golden Era, when the likes of Greta Garbo, Bette Davis, Rita Hayworth, Clark Gable and Cary Grant dominated the big screen.

“The sign delights more people than it disappoints,” said Cooper, 38. “I’m not a fan of contemporary music, and I want people who enjoy older music to know that there is no contemporary music in here. I try to deal in what I like and what is really not commonly available in many places.

“People come in on the strength of the sign.”

Starlight Roof is a throwback in more ways than one. Besides stocking hard-to-find movies and music, Cooper also offers personalized service.

“I always try to greet everybody who comes into my store, just to break the ice. I try to get to know people individually and make them feel at home. I don’t hard-pressure my customers. That makes me uncomfortable,” said Cooper, the soft-spoken son of Greek immigrants.

Cooper’s interest in swing music was sparked when, as a boy growing up in New York, he saw “The Glenn Miller Story,” starring Jimmy Stewart, on television. As a teen-ager, his interest grew and he started collecting Big Band records when most youngsters his age were rocking to the sounds of the Beach Boys and the Beatles.

During high school in the late 1960s, a time when Cooper said he was on his own musical “planet,” he took music theory and choral classes and played Big Band records for his friends whenever he got the chance.

After high school, Cooper went to work for Sam Goody’s record store in New York, and started selling old-time records on his own at swap meets.

In 1976, he moved to Los Angeles and took a job at a music distributing company. In 1987, Cooper opened his first store, called Swing Street, in Temple City. But he was under-financed and in a bad location. The venture lasted about six months.

Cooper eventually scouted out a more suitable location on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. There, wedged between an old-fashioned diner and an optician’s office, Starlight Roof opened for business in December, 1988.

After some prodding by friends and suppliers, Cooper soon made room for his other obsession: classic films. Thirteen months after opening shop, he has added about 2,000 film titles to his original inventory of more than 2,000 musical recordings, and has built up a loyal clientele in the process.

On a recent visit, Richard Banks, a Starlight Roof regular, picked up 17 old-time videos--six of them Andy Hardy movies--for $380.40. Banks considers Cooper’s store a real find.

“I’m an old-movie fan and this store has everything I want,” said Banks, 68, a classics aficionado with a tousled shock of white hair and a wad of cash in his sweater pocket. “The closest one that comes to it is Music Plus, but they aren’t as good as this one. At Music Plus, you hardly ever see any (employees). You get more personal attention here.”

Cooper’s customers consider the store a haven from offenses they attribute to the mass-market chains--loud, blaring music, an absence of personalized attention, and a dearth of knowledge about films and musical performers who predate, say, E.T. or Madonna.

“Service is lousy in a lot of places,” Cooper said. “And the knowledge I’ve found in large video stores is about as extensive as if you walked into a grocery store and asked them which is a better brand of peas. They have no idea. They just sell products. They’re becoming supermarkets.”

Cooper said he chose the store’s name because of its “evocative and somewhat romantic-sounding” connotations. He said he later learned that there is a banquet room by the same name at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

Entering the store, Starlight Roof customers are greeted by a 1941 Crosley “combo” upright console radio/phonograph that, in its day, was state-of-the-art, Cooper said. The console still picks up AM frequencies and plays the old 78 rpm records.

Old movie posters line the walls and an upbeat picture of Franklin Delano Roosevelt presides over the music section.

“It’s a friendly little store,” said Edward Crater, 45, of Pasadena, another regular customer. “It has a great selection and wide variety of older films.”

Another Starlight Roof idiosyncrasy is that the store’s videos are only sold, never rented. Most are priced from $10 to $30. Titles include “Hamlet,” starring Laurence Olivier; “The Human Comedy,” with Mickey Rooney; “San Francisco,” with Clark Gable and Jeanette MacDonald, and other hits like “Splendor in the Grass” and the “Thin Man” series with William Powell and Myrna Loy.

Besides older classic films, Cooper’s tastes encompass selected later works, including “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Au Revoir Les Enfants,” and Francis Ford Coppola’s remake of Abel Gance’s 1927 silent masterpiece, “Napoleon.”

On the music side of the aisle, Cooper carries jazz greats ranging from Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker to Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. Frank Sinatra and Fred Astaire are represented, as are Ray Charles and Nat King Cole. There is even some country music.

“I have either what I like, what’s good or what I approve of,” Cooper said.

Many of Starlight Roof’s customers come for the swing music alone, which is offered on cassette tapes, compact discs and a few record albums, which Cooper says he is phasing out.

Here, mixed in with such household names of the Swing Era as Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman, are lesser-known performers such as Bunny Berigan, Glen Gray and Paul Whiteman.

“We come here all the time. We listen to KGRB (900-AM). It’s the only music we like. You can’t get it anyplace else,” said Robert Wells, 65, of Glendale, visiting the store with his wife. “We rarely go into the Wherehouse and, if we do, it’s only for a few seconds--we can’t stand the music (the store plays).”

Cooper routinely advertises on KGRB, a Big Band station based in West Covina.

A number of other local stores, including Canterbury Records, right down the street from Starlight Roof, sell Big Band records and compact discs. Rare Records in Glendale is another popular outlet for the music. But Starlight Roof is the only store to specialize, said Tracey Gurr, a secretary at KGRB.

As for the shop’s approach to movies, “it’s an extreme rarity to specialize just in classic products,” said Herb Fischer, senior vice president of marketing and sales for MGM Home Video in Culver City. “I think it’s wonderful. It excites us to know that the American consumer is a collector. Where else could you buy a $25-million film for $25?”

Vince Adams, one of Cooper’s chief video suppliers, who also sells to 150 shops in the Lancaster, San Gabriel Valley and San Fernando Valley areas, said: “I haven’t come across another store like John’s.”

Cooper is inclined to agree.

“I’ve never heard of another one,” he said, “and that’s the God’s honest truth.”