28-year old mass murderer Howard Unruh so much enjoyed a double-feature at this theater of THE LADY GAMBLES and I CHEATED THE LAW on September 5, 1949 (both films had been in release for several months) that he stayed for three showings each, before walking along his neighborhood street the next morning and killing 13 people (Unruh was taken alive, incarcerated for insanity, and died in custody in 2009).
Things Farris Shanbour didn’t like: 1) Doormen drawing a fairly accurate picture (including back-lighting) of the ET from CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND giving the Kodaly hand signal on the ticket stub sack for the film before it was returned to the main office that night (there was a direct reprimand for this). 2) Candy counters left unlocked upon nightly concession closing (his comment was, “I want it ALL locked up.” Trivia: Shanbour’s theaters carried Mars Candy products, not Hershey.) 3) An employee using napkins and magic markers to create the jagged hand-wrought wording “Pickles-$1” on the concession board when the sour treat had been added to the menu (there was no other indication about their price). It should be remembered that the swarthy theater owner, in moments of sell-out largesse, would permit a doorman to drive his luxury Lincoln Continental to the nearest gas station for a fill-up.
Perhaps the raciest film the West Park or Shanbour’s sister theaters ever exhibited was the British 1971 Philip Saville adultery drama SECRETS, which was not released in the US until 1978 to capitalize on star Jaqueline Bisset’s recent publicly notorious wet t-shirt mania from Peter Yates' film of Jaws author Peter Benchley’s THE DEEP. Blown up from a 16mm negative, the end of its second act features a completely uncensored, heated scene of copulation between Bisset and co-star Per Oscarsson. The scene was so graphic that several members of the staff would time their 15-minute shift breaks to it.
This theater opened Christmas Day, Thursday, December 25, 1975 with Edward Dmytryk’s THE ‘HUMAN’ FACTOR starring George Kennedy (quote marks intentional, not to be confused with a later 1979 Otto Preminger film) and Walter Hill’s HARD TIMES.
An entire first-night screening’s box office take for Bruce Lee’s ‘last’ official film GAME OF DEATH (a cobbled-together action film incorporating 30 minutes of previously-unseen Lee footage) was ruined when a well-meaning but naïve West Park usher inaccurately believed the film was supposed to be the competing posthumous Lee-written film CIRCLE OF IRON starring David Carradine (which had been released 6 months earlier) and convinced the manager to have the marquee for Auditorium 2 changed to the wrong title. When customers walked up to the theater for the first 7pm showing and saw the completely different listing from the advertised title many of them walked off shaking their heads or asking the staff if they had a ‘Bruce Lee’ film or not showing (the mistake was corrected during the second show).
By early 1978 it was felt operational standards at the West Park had slipped so badly that an emergency mandatory group meeting (excluding janitors) was scheduled for a Saturday morning. Groggy employees were greeted with a host of citations including tardiness, fraternization with non-employees during business hours, incorrect inventory (concession girls had been required to count items such a soda cups weekly), and popcorn literally coming out the color of bright red orange. In conclusion the staff was ordered to sign a hand-written attendance sheet hanging next to Auditorium 1’s projector verifying they understood the meeting’s new goals. As the list hung largely unsigned for week after week, one of the projectionists—perhaps tiring of the list hanging in the area of his equipment—added signatures of several ‘West Park employees’ solemnly pledging to the cause of flawless theatrical presentation; the names included “I.M. Broke” and “I.M. Dedd.”
Tapes on the West Park’s 8-track player for broadcast into both theaters' sound systems during intermissions included soundtracks to the films GREASE and THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY, Gino Vannelli’s “Brother to Brother,” and Chuck Mangione’s “Feels So Good.”
Hoboes were an especially vexing problem to OKC retail business owners during the 1970s, as a huge downtown urban renewal program begun in the late 1960s spearheaded by Mayor Patience Latting not only destroyed several longstanding cinemas there such as the Cooper Cinerama and Criterion (which until then had provided comfortable sleeping places for them when they couldn’t get into the YMCA), but also pushed bus stop/soup kitchen vagrants more into the suburbs and near-central districts. The West Park’s own regular would have to have been a tallish grey-haired streetperson in his 50s always wearing a brown corduroy jacket even in the hottest weather, who would weekly walk unaccompanied to the mall carrying the latest copies of Variety or the Los Angeles Times, go straight to the theater lobby to purchase a soda, and then cheerily chat up the entire staff for up to a full hour while never buying a single ticket. It is not known if the new West Park owners in late 1979 might have asked him to move on or if he simply moved on his own, but the same vagrant was later a less-regular fixture at the Continental Theater some 3 miles east of the West Park a year or two later—still walking in off the street, still carrying his newspapers, still buying soda, still uninterested in watching a movie—and finally at a major chain bookstore next to the Continental that opened up in the mid-90s, where he could be seen buying his newspapers until the early 2000s. To the last known sighting, he was still in the exact same brown corduroy jacket he was wearing in 1978.
Saw DUNE in 70mm at this theater while visiting Atlanta in late 1984, I know it was 70mm because we looked at the Atlanta newspaper and I was insisting it had to be 70, not 35 (we had missed RETURN OF THE JEDI in 70mm in Atlanta the previous year while visiting, and I had been in too many mono or weak 35mm stereo presentations by then), and the only one on Atlanta’s east side with a 70mm print was this Perimeter Mall. The multi-channel sound was remarkable, equal to 70mm presentations of ALIEN or ALTERED STATES I’ve been to where it almost becomes artistic, I distinctly remember—not just the loud weirding-module voice explosion effect they were using for weapons—but that soft, creeping, extrasensory “hearing effect” that Kyle Machlachlan’s character would experience, the effect would start from behind the screen, then begin audibly ‘walking’ to each speaker around the entire theater several times.
OU’s legendary football squad was sometimes transported en masse to the West Park from Norman, Oklahoma—almost an hour long drive—in case there was a film playing they wanted to see but unavailable closer to campus. Ushers were strictly instructed not to interrupt the team if they got a bit rowdy during a film’s runtime, as it was felt the movie was a way for them to let off steam before the next game. The boisterous admixture of yelled punchlines, earsplitting whistles, seat-slamming, and competitive bursts of intergroup laughter was particularly noticeable during a screening of Sylvester Stallone’s 1978 Hell’s Kitchen wrestling melodrama PARADISE ALLEY, especially the climactic match between actors Lee Canalito and Terry Funk, where the resultant Dolby Atmos-level cheering literally shook the outside lobby. Afterwards, several of the players nicely took the time to meet & thank employees and sign autographs.
Shanbour’s ushers were always issued a long clipboard with an extensive printed call sheet (other company employees had no equivalent itemized form) they were required to sign into and send back to the main office nightly along with their doorway ticket stubs, confirming they’d hourly-inspected both the bathrooms for cleanliness and the auditorium’s temperature gauge readings (using an illuminated flashlight on both room’s sides while the film was running). On Easter evening 1979, in commemoration of the holiday, each doorman donned oversized floppy jackrabbit ears during the 8pm auditorium check.
During the very-early 80s the young lady manager of this theater kindly permitted an OU student newspaper staffer to view films like FORT APACHE-THE BRONX, OMEN III-THE FINAL CONFLICT, and MY BLOODY VALENTINE so they could provide some reviews to the Entertainment page (in less than 2 years the theater managers of that town elsewhere started getting highly resistant about credentialed reviewers getting passes). The stair walk up to the theater on the second floor was REALLY long and steep—I doubt if federal equal-access laws could permit that kind of entrance nowadays without an elevator—but the interior was very plush, and the screens were rather tall & well-illuminated for such a narrowed auditorium. Wherever that manager is now, you have that reviewer’s eternal thanks…
There was a lot of local press coverage in Oklahoma that opening weekend as to why EMPIRE was not available to OKCityans (many of whom had vigorously supported STAR WARS profits over the previous 2 years at the North Park 4 [initial engagement], South Park 4, and West Park Twin Theaters)], including an uncomfortable theater-owner Farris Shanbour being interviewed at his office desk on a local major-network affiliate (also a local hard-news KTOK-AM 1000 radio station interview where he was literally illegible). Odd since he had ponied up the money for a very good 70mm exclusive premier presentation of ALIEN, from the same movie studio, on opening weekend the year before at his North Park branch.
Each theater’s screen had a 6 ft. extension concrete stage, which helped with room acoustics.
For whatever reason—either by then-owner Shanbour’s unexplained preference, his subordinates not insisting on an exception, or some obscure Warr Acres municipal code—there was never a marquee of the playing films alongside either the busy MacArthur Blvd. or 63rd streets or on the mall’s sides or even one-sheet posters in other areas of the mall interiors—only a simple listing of “West Park Theater” along with the other mall tenants on a single sign outside, no different than a dentist’s office. Customers were expected to read a newspaper, call the theater, or leave their car and go inside if they wanted to know what was playing.
Info on the West Park Twin Theater circa 1977-79:
Owned at that time by local theater magnate Farris (not “Ferris,” like in Bueller —he hand-signed each paycheck personally) Shanbour (see addl. info on OKC Theaters/”Interstate North Park 7” page). The primary screen was prob. a fairly-wide 400-seater divided by 2 aisles, the other one much more narrow and prob. a 300-seater. Precursor of the deadly-dull 1980s-type ‘cardboard shoebox’ multiplex theater design with plate-glass & aluminum frontage, all-gray/black cement floors in the auditoriums, and red curtain walls for auditoriums (red carpeting on the aisles and lobby). Small lobbies, concession area in center behind the ticket window with plywood wall paneling—you entered the projection booth through the back of concession stand and walked up 3-4 stairs. Projectionists were union all the way so you at least got a professional picture. Non-janitorial support staff was mainly culled from several north OKC high schools outfitted in rayon/polyester uniforms (which needed once a week dry cleaning to defumigate the aroma of popcorn smoke). Nominal concessions but pure coconut oil popcorn, though—and it was a big deal/irritation in 1978 when the menu included nachos (the machine took forever to clean).
Marquee at first tended toward profitable second-run big studio product or nominal low-cost first runners that might generate some quick cash (for some reason the very last 20th Century Fox films by director Robert Altman like A WEDDING or QUINTET ended up there) but by early 1979, and with a full dollar increase in admission prices, the owner was probably already thinking of selling the place (Sample 1978 triple feature: the two Disney WITCH MOUNTAIN films followed by the local premiere of the Christian soaper BORN AGAIN starring Dean Jones—on opening night there was ONE single viewer for the entire 5 hour runtime [not the films’ fault, though—my research shows until summer 1979 all the major studios cut back on production right after STAR WARS got big, a declining theater like the West Park wasn’t going to get the serious A-list releases)]. A projection-TV store salesman from the other side of the mall once half-jokingly complained to the irritation of the manager, ”When you guys first opened you were only charging 3 dollars a ticket and you were showing some pretty good stuff. Now you’re charging 4 dollars and you started showing [expletive deleted].” The theater was sold sometime in Fall 1979 and even though they still were able to retain local screening rights to the first STAR TREK movie and installing stereo sound the place was closed within a few years.
One other sad ‘the only person in the audience” story: one day a major snowstorm had literally shut the entire city down but the West Park—like the Post Office—gamely opened for their evening showings as scheduled. When it was clear by almost 7pm that nobody had shown up & no sensible person would be risking death to watch a Richard Dreyfuss double feature of THE GOODBYE GIRL and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS the little 3 person staff was praying that nobody would show up by the 30 minute mark so they could all go home. Of course, sure enough, right after the projectors began running (without the projection bulbs), a lone single male customer happily approached the window, bought his ticket and entered the theater, forcing the theater to light up the projector bulb and guaranteeing the staff a nightmarish 1AM pitch-black drive home on a solid sheet of ice unless he left early. After a full hour, and assuring that an 700 screen duplex was now running a private showing for one single viewer, it was agreed that an usher would go to the customer, apologize deeply for the interruption and that he (the customer) was certainly entitled to stay if he wished, but explaining he was the only ticket holder keeping open the entire theater during a blizzard, and if he’d agree, the West Park would happily refund his money if he’d go home. It worked—and the staff got home alive.
Cinemark not planning to renew lease: http://www.wset.com/story/29942520/falwell-cinemark-not-renewing-movies-10-lease
28-year old mass murderer Howard Unruh so much enjoyed a double-feature at this theater of THE LADY GAMBLES and I CHEATED THE LAW on September 5, 1949 (both films had been in release for several months) that he stayed for three showings each, before walking along his neighborhood street the next morning and killing 13 people (Unruh was taken alive, incarcerated for insanity, and died in custody in 2009).
Link to New Hampshire Union Leader story on this drive-in: http://www.unionleader.com/article/20150804/NEWHAMPSHIRE02/150809762
Things Farris Shanbour didn’t like: 1) Doormen drawing a fairly accurate picture (including back-lighting) of the ET from CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND giving the Kodaly hand signal on the ticket stub sack for the film before it was returned to the main office that night (there was a direct reprimand for this). 2) Candy counters left unlocked upon nightly concession closing (his comment was, “I want it ALL locked up.” Trivia: Shanbour’s theaters carried Mars Candy products, not Hershey.) 3) An employee using napkins and magic markers to create the jagged hand-wrought wording “Pickles-$1” on the concession board when the sour treat had been added to the menu (there was no other indication about their price). It should be remembered that the swarthy theater owner, in moments of sell-out largesse, would permit a doorman to drive his luxury Lincoln Continental to the nearest gas station for a fill-up.
Perhaps the raciest film the West Park or Shanbour’s sister theaters ever exhibited was the British 1971 Philip Saville adultery drama SECRETS, which was not released in the US until 1978 to capitalize on star Jaqueline Bisset’s recent publicly notorious wet t-shirt mania from Peter Yates' film of Jaws author Peter Benchley’s THE DEEP. Blown up from a 16mm negative, the end of its second act features a completely uncensored, heated scene of copulation between Bisset and co-star Per Oscarsson. The scene was so graphic that several members of the staff would time their 15-minute shift breaks to it.
This theater opened Christmas Day, Thursday, December 25, 1975 with Edward Dmytryk’s THE ‘HUMAN’ FACTOR starring George Kennedy (quote marks intentional, not to be confused with a later 1979 Otto Preminger film) and Walter Hill’s HARD TIMES.
An entire first-night screening’s box office take for Bruce Lee’s ‘last’ official film GAME OF DEATH (a cobbled-together action film incorporating 30 minutes of previously-unseen Lee footage) was ruined when a well-meaning but naïve West Park usher inaccurately believed the film was supposed to be the competing posthumous Lee-written film CIRCLE OF IRON starring David Carradine (which had been released 6 months earlier) and convinced the manager to have the marquee for Auditorium 2 changed to the wrong title. When customers walked up to the theater for the first 7pm showing and saw the completely different listing from the advertised title many of them walked off shaking their heads or asking the staff if they had a ‘Bruce Lee’ film or not showing (the mistake was corrected during the second show).
By early 1978 it was felt operational standards at the West Park had slipped so badly that an emergency mandatory group meeting (excluding janitors) was scheduled for a Saturday morning. Groggy employees were greeted with a host of citations including tardiness, fraternization with non-employees during business hours, incorrect inventory (concession girls had been required to count items such a soda cups weekly), and popcorn literally coming out the color of bright red orange. In conclusion the staff was ordered to sign a hand-written attendance sheet hanging next to Auditorium 1’s projector verifying they understood the meeting’s new goals. As the list hung largely unsigned for week after week, one of the projectionists—perhaps tiring of the list hanging in the area of his equipment—added signatures of several ‘West Park employees’ solemnly pledging to the cause of flawless theatrical presentation; the names included “I.M. Broke” and “I.M. Dedd.”
Tapes on the West Park’s 8-track player for broadcast into both theaters' sound systems during intermissions included soundtracks to the films GREASE and THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY, Gino Vannelli’s “Brother to Brother,” and Chuck Mangione’s “Feels So Good.”
Hoboes were an especially vexing problem to OKC retail business owners during the 1970s, as a huge downtown urban renewal program begun in the late 1960s spearheaded by Mayor Patience Latting not only destroyed several longstanding cinemas there such as the Cooper Cinerama and Criterion (which until then had provided comfortable sleeping places for them when they couldn’t get into the YMCA), but also pushed bus stop/soup kitchen vagrants more into the suburbs and near-central districts. The West Park’s own regular would have to have been a tallish grey-haired streetperson in his 50s always wearing a brown corduroy jacket even in the hottest weather, who would weekly walk unaccompanied to the mall carrying the latest copies of Variety or the Los Angeles Times, go straight to the theater lobby to purchase a soda, and then cheerily chat up the entire staff for up to a full hour while never buying a single ticket. It is not known if the new West Park owners in late 1979 might have asked him to move on or if he simply moved on his own, but the same vagrant was later a less-regular fixture at the Continental Theater some 3 miles east of the West Park a year or two later—still walking in off the street, still carrying his newspapers, still buying soda, still uninterested in watching a movie—and finally at a major chain bookstore next to the Continental that opened up in the mid-90s, where he could be seen buying his newspapers until the early 2000s. To the last known sighting, he was still in the exact same brown corduroy jacket he was wearing in 1978.
Saw DUNE in 70mm at this theater while visiting Atlanta in late 1984, I know it was 70mm because we looked at the Atlanta newspaper and I was insisting it had to be 70, not 35 (we had missed RETURN OF THE JEDI in 70mm in Atlanta the previous year while visiting, and I had been in too many mono or weak 35mm stereo presentations by then), and the only one on Atlanta’s east side with a 70mm print was this Perimeter Mall. The multi-channel sound was remarkable, equal to 70mm presentations of ALIEN or ALTERED STATES I’ve been to where it almost becomes artistic, I distinctly remember—not just the loud weirding-module voice explosion effect they were using for weapons—but that soft, creeping, extrasensory “hearing effect” that Kyle Machlachlan’s character would experience, the effect would start from behind the screen, then begin audibly ‘walking’ to each speaker around the entire theater several times.
OU’s legendary football squad was sometimes transported en masse to the West Park from Norman, Oklahoma—almost an hour long drive—in case there was a film playing they wanted to see but unavailable closer to campus. Ushers were strictly instructed not to interrupt the team if they got a bit rowdy during a film’s runtime, as it was felt the movie was a way for them to let off steam before the next game. The boisterous admixture of yelled punchlines, earsplitting whistles, seat-slamming, and competitive bursts of intergroup laughter was particularly noticeable during a screening of Sylvester Stallone’s 1978 Hell’s Kitchen wrestling melodrama PARADISE ALLEY, especially the climactic match between actors Lee Canalito and Terry Funk, where the resultant Dolby Atmos-level cheering literally shook the outside lobby. Afterwards, several of the players nicely took the time to meet & thank employees and sign autographs.
Shanbour’s ushers were always issued a long clipboard with an extensive printed call sheet (other company employees had no equivalent itemized form) they were required to sign into and send back to the main office nightly along with their doorway ticket stubs, confirming they’d hourly-inspected both the bathrooms for cleanliness and the auditorium’s temperature gauge readings (using an illuminated flashlight on both room’s sides while the film was running). On Easter evening 1979, in commemoration of the holiday, each doorman donned oversized floppy jackrabbit ears during the 8pm auditorium check.
During the very-early 80s the young lady manager of this theater kindly permitted an OU student newspaper staffer to view films like FORT APACHE-THE BRONX, OMEN III-THE FINAL CONFLICT, and MY BLOODY VALENTINE so they could provide some reviews to the Entertainment page (in less than 2 years the theater managers of that town elsewhere started getting highly resistant about credentialed reviewers getting passes). The stair walk up to the theater on the second floor was REALLY long and steep—I doubt if federal equal-access laws could permit that kind of entrance nowadays without an elevator—but the interior was very plush, and the screens were rather tall & well-illuminated for such a narrowed auditorium. Wherever that manager is now, you have that reviewer’s eternal thanks…
There was a lot of local press coverage in Oklahoma that opening weekend as to why EMPIRE was not available to OKCityans (many of whom had vigorously supported STAR WARS profits over the previous 2 years at the North Park 4 [initial engagement], South Park 4, and West Park Twin Theaters)], including an uncomfortable theater-owner Farris Shanbour being interviewed at his office desk on a local major-network affiliate (also a local hard-news KTOK-AM 1000 radio station interview where he was literally illegible). Odd since he had ponied up the money for a very good 70mm exclusive premier presentation of ALIEN, from the same movie studio, on opening weekend the year before at his North Park branch.
Each theater’s screen had a 6 ft. extension concrete stage, which helped with room acoustics.
For whatever reason—either by then-owner Shanbour’s unexplained preference, his subordinates not insisting on an exception, or some obscure Warr Acres municipal code—there was never a marquee of the playing films alongside either the busy MacArthur Blvd. or 63rd streets or on the mall’s sides or even one-sheet posters in other areas of the mall interiors—only a simple listing of “West Park Theater” along with the other mall tenants on a single sign outside, no different than a dentist’s office. Customers were expected to read a newspaper, call the theater, or leave their car and go inside if they wanted to know what was playing.
Info on the West Park Twin Theater circa 1977-79: Owned at that time by local theater magnate Farris (not “Ferris,” like in Bueller —he hand-signed each paycheck personally) Shanbour (see addl. info on OKC Theaters/”Interstate North Park 7” page). The primary screen was prob. a fairly-wide 400-seater divided by 2 aisles, the other one much more narrow and prob. a 300-seater. Precursor of the deadly-dull 1980s-type ‘cardboard shoebox’ multiplex theater design with plate-glass & aluminum frontage, all-gray/black cement floors in the auditoriums, and red curtain walls for auditoriums (red carpeting on the aisles and lobby). Small lobbies, concession area in center behind the ticket window with plywood wall paneling—you entered the projection booth through the back of concession stand and walked up 3-4 stairs. Projectionists were union all the way so you at least got a professional picture. Non-janitorial support staff was mainly culled from several north OKC high schools outfitted in rayon/polyester uniforms (which needed once a week dry cleaning to defumigate the aroma of popcorn smoke). Nominal concessions but pure coconut oil popcorn, though—and it was a big deal/irritation in 1978 when the menu included nachos (the machine took forever to clean).
Marquee at first tended toward profitable second-run big studio product or nominal low-cost first runners that might generate some quick cash (for some reason the very last 20th Century Fox films by director Robert Altman like A WEDDING or QUINTET ended up there) but by early 1979, and with a full dollar increase in admission prices, the owner was probably already thinking of selling the place (Sample 1978 triple feature: the two Disney WITCH MOUNTAIN films followed by the local premiere of the Christian soaper BORN AGAIN starring Dean Jones—on opening night there was ONE single viewer for the entire 5 hour runtime [not the films’ fault, though—my research shows until summer 1979 all the major studios cut back on production right after STAR WARS got big, a declining theater like the West Park wasn’t going to get the serious A-list releases)]. A projection-TV store salesman from the other side of the mall once half-jokingly complained to the irritation of the manager, ”When you guys first opened you were only charging 3 dollars a ticket and you were showing some pretty good stuff. Now you’re charging 4 dollars and you started showing [expletive deleted].” The theater was sold sometime in Fall 1979 and even though they still were able to retain local screening rights to the first STAR TREK movie and installing stereo sound the place was closed within a few years. One other sad ‘the only person in the audience” story: one day a major snowstorm had literally shut the entire city down but the West Park—like the Post Office—gamely opened for their evening showings as scheduled. When it was clear by almost 7pm that nobody had shown up & no sensible person would be risking death to watch a Richard Dreyfuss double feature of THE GOODBYE GIRL and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS the little 3 person staff was praying that nobody would show up by the 30 minute mark so they could all go home. Of course, sure enough, right after the projectors began running (without the projection bulbs), a lone single male customer happily approached the window, bought his ticket and entered the theater, forcing the theater to light up the projector bulb and guaranteeing the staff a nightmarish 1AM pitch-black drive home on a solid sheet of ice unless he left early. After a full hour, and assuring that an 700 screen duplex was now running a private showing for one single viewer, it was agreed that an usher would go to the customer, apologize deeply for the interruption and that he (the customer) was certainly entitled to stay if he wished, but explaining he was the only ticket holder keeping open the entire theater during a blizzard, and if he’d agree, the West Park would happily refund his money if he’d go home. It worked—and the staff got home alive.