O.C. Theater’s Double Feature: Love Seats

Not since the heyday of the drive-in--they didn’t call it the passion pit for nothing--has there been a more romantic way to see a movie in public.

Love seats debuted last weekend at the Edwards Newport Cinema. They work like those on an airline, with center armrests that retract to convert two singles into one double-wide. The plush seats have high backs and more legroom out front. And they suspiciously resemble the back seat of a car.

Could sloe gin at the snack bar be next?

So popular were the 600 two-seaters at the newly expanded theater across from Fashion Island that the Edwards chain decided this week it will go all love-seat in each of its cinemas under construction in California.

That’s 19,000 people from Fresno to Tustin who will have more room to cuddle, corral squirming tykes or just spread their girth.

The double seats are already popular in the European market, particularly Great Britain, and in Mexico and Hong Kong, says Jim Walsh, vice president of Seating Concepts of San Diego. His company introduced the love seat model now in the Edwards theaters at a March convention of theater owners. Other domestic customers giving the new seats a try include Pacific Theaters, which has selected the two-seaters for its Manhattan Beach cinemas, Walsh says.

Edwards Theaters figures it will spend $350 to $400 per love seat, as compared to the conventional theater chairs for which they’ve paid about $120.

Besides being a hit with the lovey-dovey types, chain founder James Edwards Sr. says the seats have been appreciated by kids who like to sit together and by parents with small children.

Especially grateful, Edwards says, have been the oversized--tired of having to shoehorn between two armrests.

With VCRs in so many households, he adds, it takes a little extra to pry a film fan out of the BarcaLounger.

“I think the patron now has really so much comfort and luxury at home that in order to get a patron out you have to offer something that is just a little bit more grand,” says Edwards, 89, who opened his first theater 66 years ago with, yes, love seats. But more about that later.

Most people attend movies in couples, he says, so the allure of a more inviting snuggle spot is plain. Some test seats at the 21-screen megaplex in Irvine convinced him of that. But compliments on the new chairs at the Newport theater have also come from unexpected customers.

Two wheelchair users--an ailing woman and a child chemotherapy patient--were able to sit right next to loved ones rather than in a designated handicapped area in the back.

“That,” said theater manager James Wooden, “really moved me. I wasn’t expecting that.”

Whether sitting in single or double formation, audience members gushed about another aspect of the seating: They could see better and had more legroom due to the stadium-style arrangement of the seats. The installation of the seats on a steeper incline clears the line of sight from row to descending row. It is a style becoming more common in new theaters nationally.

So how romantic are the love seats?

The new Edwards theater wasn’t exactly make-out city this week, but perhaps that was because the featured film involved aliens destroying planet Earth in stereophonic splendor.

Slumped in their green, cushy velour seats for the 7 p.m. showing were David Katz, an 11-year-old from Newport Beach armed with his own candy tote, and Las Vegas visitor Jesse Stokes, 9-almost-10. They were less grossed out by the conquering outer space creatures than the kissing scenes, to which they winched up their faces and blurted, “Blecchh!”

Two hours and 30 minutes later, the pair assessed the seating situation with a tad more reserve.

“I would never come just because of the seat,” concluded David, “but this one is so much nicer than the larger theater, it makes up for being smaller. I mean, a person with back problems could sit right through.”

A common-sense point, to which Jesse nodded. “And if someone was tired, they could push the armrest up and lay down like, [as] if it’s a bed!”

Although Dave and Laurie March of Corona del Mar were clueless about the versatility of their well-padded movie chairs, their son and his friend were hip to them.

Michael March, 12, watched the invasion of the world horizontally, thank you.

“I laid down the whole movie,” said Michael. His pal, Michael Del Rio, 9, of Newport, concurred. “Pretty comfy. They feel great.”

Geoff Stanley, 32, while performing the manly task of opening his companion’s bag of Raisinettes, noted the “cuddle up” benefits of the retractable armrest. The shipping clerk, bar bouncer and disk jockey gave the theater his highest rating for “all the legroom in front of me. . . . I’m almost 5-11. I’m almost always crowded in.”

A spokesman for the National Assn. of Theater Owners in North Hollywood said theaters throughout the country are beginning to install not only love seats, but other furnishings that better accommodate the moviegoer.

“We have marble and brass ceilings at all of our theaters now, the glass or grand staircases of the old days,” says Edwards of his ever-expanding movie empire. “Marble in our restrooms now and wall-to-wall screens. Things like that. I think the patron is appreciative of that.”

The love seats, then, are just one of the throwbacks to a more glamorous time at the movies.

Edwards certainly remembers those days. He’s been around since the end of the silent movie era and through every new theater wrinkle and ploy since.

“We’ve really come full circle with the seating,” he said.

His first theater in Monterey Park had the love seats. Built in 1930, the movie house succumbed to the 1987 Whittier earthquake.

“We called them divan loges,” he recalls. “They were very wide chairs big enough for two people, with . . . padded armrests, just like a super-chair in your parlor. . . . “

Price tag? “About $6 a chair,” Edwards says. “It was a pretty big piece of money then.”

“Over the years we went to what we call the opera chair, the single-person chair. And over time we’ve sort of upgraded those chairs so that they now will rise as you get out of them, and the bottom of the rocker chair will lift up [because] it’s on a hinge.”

All those things one wouldn’t think of as the route from snack bar to chair is navigated, sometimes with hands bobbling popcorn and candy. Tilt of the chair. Tilt of the seat bottom. Height off the floor. They are features highly valued by moviegoers, says Walsh of Seating Concepts.

Besides the obvious perks for couples and parents cuddling, Walsh said the love seats provide an option if a tiff should break out over hogging the popcorn.

“If you have a fight,” he says, “you can just wham! drop that armrest down.”