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The Nickelodeon is owned and operated by Santa
Cruz resident Jim Schwenterley. The Nick is
a business, but over the years it's become
a
Santa Cruz institution as well. Jim feels honored
to be the caretaker of such an important part
of the Santa Cruz scene.
In February 2002 Nickelodeon Theatres added
the operation of the Del Mar Theatre at 1124
Pacific Avenue to its ongoing business at
210
Lincoln Avenue in Santa Cruz. We are very excited
to be part of saving this historic Santa Cruz
landmark and look forward to using
these additional
screens to bring even more quality film to our
community.
View
some of our featured articles linked below,
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Del
Mar Articles: 11/25/02 • 2/8/02 • 1/8/02 • 1/3/02 • Aptos
Article: 11/28/06
BEGINNINGS OF THE NICKELODEON
By Bill Raney - founder
How do you know where things begin? Before
something happens there is always something
leading up to it. Then something that led up
to that. Where did we all begin, really? I
think the Nickelodeon began in Afghanistan.
My first wife, JoAnne Walker Raney, ran an
art theatre, The Movie, in San Francisco's
North Beach district during the early 1960s.
In 1965 when we got married, JoAnne introduced
me to show biz. I never knew you could have
so much fun making a living. JoAnne had employed
a film buyer, Chan Carpenter, who confided
to me one day that he wished he had the money
to build an art theatre in Santa Cruz. A new
University of California campus was being built
there, he said. JoAnne and I were not interested.
With The Movie we already had more problems
than we could handle. In 1967 we sold The Movie
and flew to Europe, where we bought a Volkswagen
bus. Along with our ten month-old baby, Eric
Xerxes, and our two-year-old miniature dachshund,
Tarzan, we struck out to drive around the world.
One day in Eastern Turkey, not far from the
Iranian border, while looking at a map, we
discovered we were exactly half way around
the globe from San Francisco. A few
days later, an unsettling thought began to gnaw
on us: somehow we were now heading towards home,
not away from it. Whatever "home"
meant. We weren't sure. The Vietnam War was
near its peak. We had talked about never returning
to the U.S. Yet suddenly there it was, the USA,
getting closer and closer--the "real world,"
intruding. The long drive East through Iran
and what was then known as West Pakistan kept
adding to this growing sense of unease.
Somewhere in Afghanistan the geometry of relentless
eastward motion conspired with Protestant notions
of guilt, and together they began robbing us
of our carefree, fantasy lifestyle. I think
we both realized we were having too much fun
for it to last. "You can't be a beatnik
forever," I said self-righteously. "Why
not?" JoAnne countered. "Because you
can't raise a kid in the back of a mini-van!"
That was the bottom line. What were we going
to do with our lives after such a marvelous
adventure, anyway? Heavy stuff! Somewhere in
the conversation Chan's words about Santa Cruz
came back to me. JoAnne and I talked about the
Santa Cruz idea. And talked some more, mile
after mile. She said Santa Cruz sounded like
a good place to raise kids. I said it sounded
like a good place for a theatre! Thus it was
that somewhere near the end of the earth a plan
for a theatre. A year or two previously, JoAnne
had introduced me to Philip Chamberlin. Phil
had been a professor at UCSC that first year,
when the students were living in trailers. He
said there was little to do on campus, entertainment-wise.
He had started a film society at the Rio Theatre--one
showing a week. People ate it up, he said. Santa
Cruz was just waiting for us! Pretty soon the
three of us were hot on the trail of a new art
theatre. The trail led to Dick and Casey Daniel
who had worked with Phil at the Magic Lantern
Theatre in Goleta when Phil had been a professor
at UC Santa Barbara. Pretty soon Phil had his
wife, Pat, on board, too, and on October 1,
1968, the Nickelodeon Corporation was formed
by the three couples. The Nickelodeon was in
business! On paper. Thanks to a big loan arranged
by Don Falconer at County Bank, we were able
to buy two adjacent lots at 210 and 214 Lincoln
Street. On the lot where the Nickelodeon lobby
stands today was the aging Lincoln Bakery--which
we unceremoniously ran a bulldozer through.
On the other lot, where the patio is today,
was an old Victorian house where we lived during
construction and during the early years of the
Nickelodeon.
Berkeley architect John Elphick was hired to
design a movie house for us. We explained to
John that what we wanted was basically simple:
an innovative theatre design that was both
a
"work of art" and "state of the
art." Cutting edge. The latest in motion
picture design. A twin theatre. What a concept!
But it would have to be cheap, because we didn't
have much money to spend. John drew us up some
plans for a big auditorium, to be called the
Odeon (music hall, in French), and for a little
auditorium next door, the Nickelodeon. Back
in the real world again we soon discovered we
might be just able to afford that little auditorium,
provided we cut out most of the fancy stuff.
Who needs all that junk, anyway? The Nickelodeon
was never quite the theatre of our dreams, but
by the time it opened I had come to love it.
Maybe someday we would be able to put up that
Odeon.
With the help of designer Roy Rydell and contractor
Ed Cacace, we slowly got our little theatre
up. Near the end of construction JoAnne and
I hired our first employee, Christopher Jones,
General Factotum. Jack of all trades, trouble-shooter,
operations manager, good and loyal friend,
Chris still holds down the fort today. The
Nickelodeon Theatre opened for business on
July 1, 1969 showing a Swedish art film about
a draft dodger and his girlfriend running around
in the woods in the nude, in slow motion--plus
City of Gold, a Canadian documentary about
the Yukon gold rush, a personal favorite of
mine.
We soon learned to be wary of those, "personal
favorites." Our programming expertise,
such as it was, had been learned in San Francisco
and Santa Barbara. We found that many of the
films that were popular in other cities did
not "draw" in Santa Cruz. People were
somehow different here. Gritty, hard-nosed,
realistic movies typically played to near-empty
houses. Santa Cruz seemed to march to its own
drummer. It liked far-out comedies. And films
about the arts. Musicians, dancers, actors,
painters: Santa Cruz ate it up! Best of all,
we discovered, were films about crazies. I can't
begin to count the times ("back by popular
demand," of course) we played KING OF HEARTS
and HAROLD AND MAUDE, often on a double-bill
and more often than not to packed houses. Finally
we had it figured: insanity was where it's at
in Santa Cruz!
Besides foreign films, that first year we played
a lot of "underground films," as we
called them, independently made "experimental
films." Independent filmmakers didn't give
a damn about the Motion Picture Production Code.
They liked being shocking. So did I. And there
were those movies from France and Sweden, too.
Everyone just knew those people were a bunch
of libertines. Were it not for an "unhealthy
regard for sex," and for a whole lot of
"prurient interest," I doubt that
any of the art theatres back then would have
survived very long.
A few weeks after the Nickelodeon opened, JoAnne
died of a cerebral aneurysm. That left me as
sole operator. A few years later I bought out
my partners. Not a lot of people remember JoAnne
Walker Raney today. She never lived in Santa
Cruz very long. But without her there never
would have been a Nickelodeon.
In 1971 I remarried, and pretty soon Nancy
Raney was hard at work at the Nickelodeon,
first doing bookkeeping, and later on, as our
kids grew older, developing a badly needed
publicity/promotion/public relations system.
Pretty soon we were acting like professionals!
We managed to keep our head above water through
the early seventies in spite of an onslaught
of new multiplex theatre screens being built
all over the place. When I had originally
"analyzed" the Santa Cruz movie market,
all I had really been concerned with was whether
or not--with five existing screens (Rio, Del
Mar, Soquel Cinema, Capitola, Skyview Drive-In)--there
was room for one more. Soon there were fourteen
screens. Then twenty-two. Then thirty- one.
Where were all the movies supposed to come from,
I wondered? Today there are twenty-nine screens.
About 1975 this guy from Cuba shows up. He
says his name is Rene Fuentes-Chao and he's
here to build an art theatre. I gradually learned
to appreciate Rene, and by 1978, when he decided
to move on, we were friends, and I was the
person he approached to buy the Sash Mill Cinema
when he decided to move away. The Nickelodeon
operated the Sash Mill Cinema as a repertory
house--and Rene's Sash Mill Café--from 1978 through
1994. At one time or another the Nickelodeon/Sash
Mill employed all four of our children. By 1976,
after seven years of operation it was time to
start thinking about that Odeon next door. We
sold the Victorian to Alan Goldman for $2,000
cash and carry, take it away. Alan did. Early
one Sunday morning before most people were up,
Nancy and I and the kids went rolling up Lincoln
Street--looking cool--in the front bay window
of a neat old two-story house. We turned left
on Washington Street and continued on for another
block and a half, before coming to rest on Alan's
newly built foundation. Alan fixed it up really
nice. The old Victorian is still there today
at 616 Washington Street--unless Alan has taken
it joy riding again. The Nickelodeon II opened
in 1976. By then, with a proliferation of multi-screen
theatres all over the country, the economics
of the motion picture exhibition business had
changed. Large auditoriums like our proposed
Odeon were seldom built. We decided on another
smaller auditorium, one that would leave room
on the lot for a third auditorium when we could
afford it.
I think it was during the '70s that we had
the most fun with the Nickelodeon. Nancy had
developed a flair for promotion. One time we
played Lena Wertmuller's Swept Away, a firey,
Italian battle royale between the sexes, about
a man and a woman stranded alone on a desert
island. First Nancy went down to the harbor
to find a cooperative sailor with a nice boat.
Then we put ads in the paper announcing that
if you put your name and telephone number in
a box in the Nickelodeon lobby (after having
bought a ticket to get in, of course), you
might just be one of the two lucky people who
would have their names drawn at the end of
the engagement, in which case you would find
yourself on a lovely yacht out on the ocean,
sharing a bottle of fine wine with a stranger,
eating a gourmet lunch prepared by Nancy, at
the end of which--provided everything went
right (or wrong, depending on how you look
at it)--you just could find yourself truly "swept
away," on a desert island. Cute! The film's
distributor loved the stunt and gave us more
films!
And then there was the time Mount St. Helens
blew up. Suddenly volcanoes were the rage.
I found some old volcano footage and some old
documentaries about Vesuvius, Paracutin and
Krakatoa.. Nancy called a total stranger up
in Washington and asked him how he was doing.
He said his house was covered with a foot or
so of ash. Would he send us some, she asked?
He sent us four gallon jugs.
We stayed up all night transferring the light
grey stuff into little baggies to give away
free with the price of admission. We would
push the little bags across the counter to
people at the box office, along with their
ticket and change. Many would just look at
the little bag of powder suspiciously, and
leave it lying on the counter. Nancy contacted
the elementary schools. One of the teachers
had just had her class build a big papier mache
volcano as a class project. So we offered to
make the kids' creation the star of our volcano
festival. We went out and found some dry ice.
Pretty soon--voilà--there
it was on our funky little stage, puffing its
little heart out during intermissions. There's
no business like show business.
Probably the most satisfying time of all for
me was that time we were given the premiere
of Ingmar Bergman's new film of Mozart's The
Magic Flute. It seemed like the ultimate Christmas
movie for an "art house." The Nickelodeon
was closed in the daytime, so Nancy got on the
phone again to the elementary schools, and arranged
for a number of private screenings. One day
she came home all excited, telling me she had
managed to get a Magic Flute Nickelodeon flyer
taped on the back of every elementary school
child in the county on their way from school.
That's promotion!
The Nickelodeon II was a hit, and in 1981 it
was time to haul out those plans for what was
supposed to be the conclusion of the Nickelodeon
tri-plex. Looking at the plans carefully, I
saw a way of getting two auditoriums into the
space that had been allotted for one. I thought
itty-bity screening rooms were cool. People
in the trade watch movies in them all the time.
I thought I'd be letting the public in on a
good thing. But, as it turned out, the Nickelodeon
IV was probably not my finest hour. Now people
who don't like it know who to blame.
In 1978 when we took over the Sash Mill Cinema,
Rene told me I should be sure and hang on to
one of his employees, who, he told me, was
a man of exceptional talent. Unlike my itty-bitty
theatre idea, hiring Jim Schwenterley was perhaps
the best decision I ever made. Jim is a fanatical
movie buff, as well as a good judge of what
the Santa Cruz public wants to see. Jim was
soon learning to program the Sash Mill Cinema.
He was better at it than I was, and he quickly
picked up the tricks of the trade associated
with buying films from film distributors.
In 1992 I sold the theatre business to Jim--and
retired. Since then Jim has operated the Nickelodeon
in the manner that JoAnne and I had envisioned
on that long drive East through Afghanistan
so many years ago. In the year 2000 Chuck Volwiler
became a partner in the business, and he proved
himself to be a man of considerable talent,
too. It was Chuck who spearheaded the acquisition
of the Del Mar. I doubt that I would ever have
had the patience or ability to guide the Nickelodeon
through such a complex and Byzantine process
as was acquiring and putting back together
this grand old movie palace. This is not the
end of the history of the Nickelodeon. It's
probably just the beginning. I think the Nickelodeon
has a long and glorious future ahead of it,
one now being written by someone else.
--Bill Raney,
March 30, 2002, Santa Cruz, California
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