Silent Calling

Friday, Charlie Lustman will reopen the Silent Movie Theatre, the only venue in the country dedicated to this early 20th century art form.

Six months ago, he’d never even seen a silent movie. Even now, on the verge of opening, he’s watched only a handful. But he’ll have lots of opportunities to catch up on his film history in the coming months.

“We’re going to show the old silent, fun classic stuff for the first half year,” he said, “and then little by little we’ll start to get into film preservation week, pre-code things, blacklist, all the specialized themes. Eventually.”

But not at first. First will come the popular comedians. He knows his audience. He is his audience.

“Most people have never been to a silent film before, so if people come here for the first time--families with kids--I want them to see Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin or Harry Langdon or Charlie Chase, and get a great laugh and have a great time.”

Silent movies: It’s an unexpected business to enter in this digital age, when people own DVD players and surround-sound home theater systems. But 34-year-old Lustman hopes moviegoers will enjoy flickering images on a silver screen with a little live organ music. He also thinks--no, believes--that if he stays true to the vision of John Hampton--who built the theater more than 50 years ago--it will work.

And he’s betting nearly a million dollars on it.

*

The Silent Movie Theatre always has been something of an anachronism. Despite being built in 1941-42--a decade after studios had converted completely to sound film production--it became a landmark business on Fairfax Avenue for nearly 40 years. More recently, in 1997, the theater gained notoriety as the site of a shocking murder for hire.

By 1999, perhaps the only person in Los Angeles who hadn’t heard about the murder was Lustman. He’d spent the last two years in Copenhagen, where he made a living writing pop songs in English for Danish bands. He came back to Los Angeles, his hometown, to write songs for Clark Anderson, an American singer who was recording an album for Sony. But, at the same time, he was getting burned out on songwriting for money. He was looking for something different.

He’d been back in town a few months before he drove by 611 N. Fairfax Ave. on his way to get a falafel at Shula & Ester’s restaurant. He turned, and looked, and saw a “For Sale” sign on the building.

That single glance upward changed Lustman’s life. Random? He doesn’t think so. He didn’t realize it yet, but the late founder, Hampton, was calling to him. Hampton told him, in short:

“ ‘Hey! Buddy! You! You’re the one. I have been watching cars go by for the last nine years--no, for the last three years--and I know you’re looking for this kind of a thing. You can do this. You’re the crazy young guy who knows nothing about this who is . . . just what this theater needs to get back to showing the standard great silents. Don’t get fancy. Just come in here give me your heart and soul, and I’m gonna give you a theater. You’re gonna have a great time and you’ll be able to pay your rent and raise a family and have kids and be happy. And write songs again.’ That’s what he said to me.”

Lustman hadn’t quite deciphered that message, however, when he looked at the building with a real estate broker the next day. Blood still stained the floor more than two years after the shooting.

“I walked in the door into the main theater. I had driven by this place a million times growing up in L.A., but I never went in. . . . I didn’t know if it was 10 seats or what. I was mesmerized. It was magic. It just grabbed me.”

Then the broker told him about the murder, Jan. 17, 1997. That evening, Laurence Austin, who had run the place starting in 1991, was shot and killed in the small front lobby. The gunman had been in the theater, watching the shorts that were to precede “Sunrise.” After 30 minutes, he came to the candy counter, asked to see the manager and started firing a revolver.

As bizarre as the initial crime was, the details that emerged afterward were even more so. Christian Rodriguez, the 19-year-old from South Gate who killed Austin and shot and wounded a young female clerk, was hired for $25,000 by James Van Sickle, the projectionist with whom Austin lived, on and off, in the apartment above the theater. To say their relationship was tumultuous is an understatement.

Police released a composite sketch of Rodriguez, and he was arrested about eight weeks after the shooting. Van Sickle, who claimed to have found a handwritten will in which Austin left everything to him, was arrested a few days later. Rodriguez, 21, and Van Sickle, 36, were convicted of murder earlier this year and are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole.

But though the 74-year-old Austin was the victim of a horrible murder, as manager of the theater he had his detractors as well. He apparently exaggerated (or made up) familial connections to Old Hollywood and excised two convictions for embezzlement from his personal history. After his death, the county’s Public Guardian’s office also claimed that Austin had persuaded the elderly Dorothy Hampton--John’s widow--to sign over the building and business for no payment and with no attorney present.

“I know Larry gets some credit,” Lustman said. “He did bring the theater back, and that in turn was good for the public. But all the dirty dealings and the shady things--it’s hard to take an opinion until you know all the facts.”

The courts eventually ruled that Austin was, in fact, the owner of the theater and the remaining film and memorabilia collection. Austin’s heirs auctioned off nearly everything and sold the building last May.

*

There were three parties interested in buying the Silent Movie Theatre. One wanted to make it into a parking lot for the neighboring nursing homes. Another person wanted to open a Persian rug warehouse.

Despite early talk from film preservationists about saving the theater, that task finally fell to Lustman.

“I always claimed that L.A. didn’t have a lot of culture--especially just coming from Europe. It does--but it’s so privatized or commercialized. I thought, ‘This is an opportunity to bring back the old culture of this city.’

“I felt a purpose all of a sudden. I had a mission: Bring back early movies to the city of L.A., the movies this city was built on.”

It is almost believable that Hampton would pick Lustman out of the crowds driving by. He’s a natural showman who leaps into photos, strikes poses and probably wouldn’t be above standing out front and shouting, “Step right up, folks!”

The theater seems to have invaded his every pore. He walks around in T-shirts with the theater’s original Movie logo. He sports the type of newsboy cap favored in the ‘20s. There’s something extra-expressive about his face; he would have been a perfect player in Mack Sennett short films.

He is also persuasive. He got investors to buy the building for its $650,000 asking price (he has a 20-year lease on it) and invest $200,000 in renovations. He has also put $75,000 of his own money--and countless hours--into the renovations.

“Look,” went the pitch, “this is an opportunity. The Farmers Market is being built up again. Fairfax is gonna make a real turnaround in the next 10 years. It’s gonna be like Melrose. This theater will be a premier place. Trust me.” Dramatic pause. “I convinced them. I was very convincing.”

*

John Hampton wasn’t quite so convincing, but he was just as determined. He first wanted to build his little silent film shrine in Oklahoma City, but no bank would give him a loan. In L.A., he told loan officers just that he was building a movie theater.

The Silent Movie opened Feb. 25, 1942, with “King of Kings,” Cecil B. DeMille’s 1927 epic about Jesus. But within a few months, it closed for four years while Hampton, a Quaker, went to prison as a conscientious objector during World War II. It reopened in 1946, and the Hamptons kept it going until 1979. The modest building may have lacked creature comforts, but the films got special treatment.

To some people, silent movies were worthless. Worse than that, really--they were dangerous. Nitrate film stock is highly combustible and was the cause of many devastating film vault fires in the ‘30s. Film scholars estimate that 90% of silent movies have been lost forever. It they didn’t burn, studios basically threw them away--and Hampton collected the trash.

Film historian David Shepard knew the Hamptons for decades. “He was the most extraordinary man. He began collecting, with the idea that he would like to show them to people, in the bottom of the Depression.”

The Hamptons lived in the space above the lobby, which today will be a coffee bar and gallery for theater patrons. The space also functioned as a poster shop--Hampton made his own signs--and he restored films in the bathtub.

Hampton ran the theater with Dorothy until 1979, screening “King of Kings” every year. “He never would run a show on Sundays,” Shepard said. “He regarded [the theater] as a temple to this art form that he really loved.”

The couple closed the theater in 1979, intending for the closure to be only temporary, but never managed to reopen it. John Hampton developed cancer in the 1980s and sold a large portion of his film collection to Palo Alto collector David Packard to pay his medical bills. (Packard, the son of Hewlett-Packard computer pioneer William Packard, also bought much of the remaining collection at auction earlier this year.) Hampton died in 1990.

Enter Laurence Austin. He’d grown up in the neighborhood and had known the Hamptons, even worked at the theater. He convinced Dorothy Hampton to let him reopen the theater, and he undertook its first major renovation in nearly 50 years. He hired Van Sickle to help with the work.

Dorothy still lives in a local nursing home, but she has Alzheimer’s disease.

*

After Lustman bought the theater, he couldn’t help but learn more about Hampton. But he felt his first real connection after the auction last May, when he bought 13 Douglas Fairbanks feature films for $4,250.

“It was almost one of the last lots of films, and I had to get something back to the theater,” he said. He faced heavy bidding by a New York collector who, for some reason, finally gave up. “And so I got them. It turns out they were John Hampton’s favorite films.”

So he lugged the films and other items back to the theater and was looking for a safe place to put them. There was a little door beneath the projection booth, but it was locked. So he started digging through the pile of keys that came with the building--50 years worth of keys.

“And the first key I chose was

the key that opened the door. No kidding. The first key,” Lustman said. “I open the door and guess what? It’s a film vault. I’m like, ‘OK, John, I get it.’ ”

He learned more about Hampton from the small circle of silent film collectors, aficionados and archivists who came forward after reading in the newspaper that he’d bought the theater. Some offered help, others offered to sell him things he might need. One gave him a photo of Hampton, holding a small case, standing in front of the theater.

An hour later, Butterfield’s auction house called saying it still had some items from Austin’s estate auction, including a camera.

“It turns out it’s this classic ‘30s Graflex and it was John’s. So I came back with the camera and I look up and I’m like, ‘That’s it. I can’t buy any more of your stuff.’ ”

Not every spooky thing felt like a good omen, though. The fax machine--which belonged to Austin--never wanted to work. The telephones were haywire; callers got busy signals for no reason. Both Lustman and the theater publicist, Jennifer Fader, heard jingling keys when no one was around.

“We were told that was how you always heard Larry Austin--he always had these keys,” Lustman said.

“We had an American Indian ritual guy come here--a shaman. He was burning [sage] everywhere. He did the entire theater, every corner, for three hours. And then we put rose crystals down where Laurence was murdered. And we sat there and tried to cleanse the whole thing.”

They also threw away the fax machine.

“Since the shaman, things have been cool,” he said. “I mean, I don’t believe in this stuff--but it’s all for the theater.”

*

The theater, at last, is ready for its close-up.

New paint inside and out, a new neon marquee, new wood floors, a new projection booth and a top-of-the-line Harkness Hall screen from England. A stage beneath the screen has a removable top, so it can function as a pit for about seven musicians. But most nights the music will come from a $7,000 digital keyboard donated by Yamaha.

“It was sort of stuck in time,” said Shepard, who will be lending the theater some of his prints. “Charlie has invested a lot of money to make it a more comfortable place. I never saw anyone go at something with that much enthusiasm.”

Film collector Stan Taffel, too, is excited about the reopening. He’s agreed to speak there before some screenings and also hopes to push shorts by his own favorite silent-era comedian: Charlie Chase.

“Having this theater provides a very valuable focal point for a lost art form,” he said. “Where libraries and universities can show a silent film, this one venue, above all others, stands as a sort of beacon for fans, followers and novices who once heard silent films were popular. With all the due respect to archives, this is the one place we can turn where we know we can continually see the work from master practitioners, those who taught the world to listen with their eyes.”

Lustman knows the anticipation is there. He says that every time he goes out the front door, practically, someone asks him when the place is going to reopen. The question is whether he can fill the 224 upholstered seats with people like himself--people born long after “The Jazz Singer” changed everything.

“It may take time to create an interest. So we’re very open . . . someone can get married here, and have a reception in the back. It can be fun. You walk down the aisles, you go on the stage, put flowers everywhere. Birthday parties. . . .”

Indeed he’s already lined up some private events, and the songwriter in him hopes for an intimate concert or two. But one suspects that something--or someone--will keep him from straying too far from silent films.

“Every time we go too far from what was here, it doesn’t work,” Lustman said. “And we know why. John Hampton. He lets us know, ‘Hey, guys, it’s not that difficult. Just look at what I did, and just make it a little better.’ ”