Port is Adjourned

Mom always said that when you find something good, squeeze all the enjoyment you can out of it before it disappears. Good things often don’t last very long.

The Port Theatre in Corona del Mar lasted longer than it should have, really. Built in 1951, it switched to showing foreign films in 1976 and from that point depended on a small but loyal group of customers.

This would have been less of a problem in a real city with its concentrated population. But in Orange County, the land of the commute and the home of the chains? Not likely.

Still, they kept the theater afloat for 23 years, until business realities finally overtook them. The Port closes Thursday, probably for good.

I went back last week for a final look and realized what a quirky place the Port has been all these years. No one but a loyal Porter could understand the sense of loss.

The Port is the only theater I’ve seen that had a notice on the box office window like the warning label on a pack of cigarettes:

“This theatre [yes, theatre--an art house to the end] is not air conditioned!!! We apologize for the inconvenience.”

Inconvenience? During hot summer months they had huge fans blowing from beneath the movie screen, adding their constant hum to the soundtrack. The side exit was always propped open for whatever fresh air could be enticed inside. Car headlights would sometimes flash onto the screen, but it was a small price to pay.

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A mainstream movie house wouldn’t have lasted a week under these conditions. At the Port, sometimes only two or three customers would show up and brave the heat.

But sometimes 700 would come. The true Porters would sit upstairs, where it was hottest, just for the joy of sitting in such a relic as a movie balcony.

Behind them in the projection booth, it was even worse. Inside were two huge and ancient Peerless projectors, the kind that use white-hot electric arcs for light. A massive vacuum-tube sound amplifier added to the heat.

Hot? It was like a pizza oven in there. Running a movie at the Port was like stoking a boiler. But the projectionist I met said he didn’t mind. “I love this old stuff,” he told me. “It’s like, if these machines could talk . . . ‘ “

The management set out a water pitcher and paper cups on the snack counter as a humanitarian gesture. It was the most popular item at the snack counter, and it was free.

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The snack bar is where mainstream theaters make their profit, “but foreign-film people don’t eat junk food,” the manager, Dennis Leslie, told me back in 1983. “It’s a very unusual crowd. You know, they clean up after themselves. They bring their popcorn boxes and cups and put them in the trash. They figure this is their theater.”

Actually, it was Mother Jones’ theater back then, and she was the real reason the Port persisted. Peggy Jones was head of Western Amusement Co., a grand name for a family-owned chain of 16 movie houses in small towns such as Lancaster, Victorville and Barstow.

She was 78, and the Port was her pet. “It’s like Mrs. Jones’ child,” Leslie had told me. “She nurtures it.”

She said she could keep the theater going as long as it broke even, which wasn’t that hard to do. When she built the theater, she had leased the land at a 1951 price that would extend to the year 2001. In later years, hardly anything was spent in upkeep (it showed), and Leslie did almost everything, including sweeping the sidewalk.

Perhaps it was a reaction to the homogenized chains that dominate Orange County, but, despite the hardships, a night out at the Port was spiritually refreshing.

For us, it started at the equally eccentric restaurant hidden behind the Port--the Pirate’s Inn. It was the kind of place that advertised “Buccaneer” prices, served “Arr, Matey” shrimp and set the table with Long John Silverware. Something like that.

But, surprise!--the food was good, and the service, alternately good and bad, was provided by people whose personalities had not been obliterated by corporate training.

It was endearing, and it fit right in to the Port experience; it closed years ago.

Landmark Theatres took over the Port in 1989. They spiffed up the place a bit, installed a new screen, a new sound system and a modern projector and eventually adopted a repertory program format.

But in the end, Landmark said there just were not enough customers. It will pack up and leave Thursday, a week before the lease expires.

A petition is on the theater’s snack bar nowadays. People sign it to urge the Newport Beach City Council to do everything possible to preserve the building as a movie theater. I doubt they can succeed. The land has simply become too valuable.

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* Manuel Poirier’s “Western” is at the Port Theatre, 2905 E. Coast Highway, Newport Beach. Ends Thursday. (949) 673-6260.