Curtain Falls on Lindquist’s Role Amid Tinseltown’s Woes

Former Disneyland President Jack B. Lindquist, who played a major role in the creation of Tinseltown Studios in Anaheim, said Monday he is parting ways with the entertainment division of New York-based Ogden Corp., which bankrolled the struggling dinner theater.

Lindquist, 72, said he is not being made a scapegoat for Tinseltown’s woes, which include disappointing ticket sales and a union organization effort.

“Like any new project, it takes awhile to work out the kinks and takes awhile to work up attendance,” said Lindquist, who has been in charge of ticket sales and marketing. “It had been planned that once it was open and operating, everything including sales would go in-house. Realistically, you only need one management group to run an operation like that.”

Tinseltown General Manager Ron Drake called the move a “transition” that would enable all of the operations of the dinner theater to be run by Ogden alone instead of subcontracting to GarLin Productions, a company run by Lindquist and business partner Jim Garber.

“It greatly enhances our ability to carefully administer contracts if everyone is under the same roof,” Drake said. “We feel strongly that this is a step in the right direction. We are working on a transition with them to take place over the next three months.”

Tinseltown, located in the parking lot of Edison International Field of Anaheim, is a 678-seat dinner theater designed to make guests feel like they are insiders at a Hollywood awards show. Guests at the $15-million theater are greeted by autograph hounds and paparazzi. During a musical tribute to Hollywood, eight best actor and best actress “nominees” from the audience are spliced electronically into actual movie scenes and shown on huge monitors. Winners get the Oggi--a gold-colored statuette.

The club opened last November and initially offered twice-nightly shows six days a week. In late December, slumping ticket sales prompted the shows to be reduced to four days a week with one show a night, with two shows on Saturday. Tickets sell for $44.50 per person.

Earlier this year, members of the union that represents employees at some of Anaheim’s major entertainment venues began a campaign to unionize the 200-employee club.

Jack Kyser, the chief economist with the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp., said the departure of Lindquist will “probably raise a lot of question marks. People are going to be watching very closely.”

Lindquist was a 38-year Disneyland veteran, serving the last four as president. He retired from the park in 1993. He joined the Magic Kingdom when it was only six weeks old as the park’s first advertising manager and is widely credited with making Disneyland a world-famous tourist attraction.

Kyser, an expert on the area’s tourism industry, said he believes Tinseltown’s slow start can be attributed to an overall decline in the popularity of what he calls “eatertainment,” themed restaurants along the lines of Florida-based Planet Hollywood, which also is struggling.

Ogden’s Drake said Tinseltown has managed to book conventions and other groups during the days it is closed to the general public, and theater officials hope to work back up to six days a week once summer tourism season is in full swing.

Kyser believes that Tinseltown will be a tough sell this summer because no new major attractions are being opened at Disneyland and the city’s main tourism area is plagued by freeway construction and the building of a second theme park inside the Disneyland parking lot.

“The buzz is to not go there because it is so chaotic getting in and out of there,” Kyser said. “So is somebody going to go to Anaheim just to go to Tinseltown? No. They would be going there as part of the Disneyland trek.”

Both Lindquist and Ogden officials said their parting is a friendly one.

“There are certainly no hard feelings on my part,” Lindquist said Monday. “It’s their prerogative, and I wish them nothing but the best.”

Drake had only praise for Lindquist.

“Jack is a first-class individual,” he said. “He provided good leadership and good ideas to get things going.”