great story Ron
-Tom
Ron Moore wrote:
The One That Got Away…
August 1990-
Ken Schacter and I were speeding East across Arizona as fast as we
could. Our 1986 Ford Aerostar van was staying cooler than we were. I
was born and raised in the heat of Texas and was used to the 100 +
degree heat, but Ken was a Canadian and not used to the scorching air
of the desert. The only songs on the radio (when we could get a
station) were “golden oldies”. It appeared that Arizona hadn’t moved
past 1959.
“If you can tell me who recorded this song, I’ll give you my Bride
of Frankenstein insert,” Ken laughed.
My knowledge of music was vastly inferior to my knowledge of film-
but our impromptu trivia sessions helped pass the time.
We had already spent a month in New Mexico scouring the state for
posters. We checked every theatre from Truth or Consequences to Santa
Fe. All we had to show for our work was a whole lot a nuthin’- zilch,
and “Nada”. We had started the trip with a bankroll of $6,000 and now
our pockets were about $3000 lighter. We had a couple of hundred bucks
in quarters for the pay-phones and even those rolls were running low.
We knew if we didn’t find something soon, our two month odyssey
through the southwest was going to break us. New Mexico was a bust so
we decided to move on to Arizona.
The theory sounded good- “Let’s go look for posters where there aren’t
many collectors, no sign of poster exchanges, not many antique shops
and remote as it gets.” Where else but New Mexico and Arizona? The two
states seemed to fit the bill. Only problem; it wasn’t exactly a
target rich environment. During the 1930’s and 1940’s the two states
combined only had around 193 theatres. Most of those were in a few
large cities and the rest had about a hundred miles between them.
Our little excursion in the summer of 1990 occurred in the days before
cell phones, GPS’s and laptop computers. We kept notes on the theatres
we checked out on a legal notepad. We started Arizona in the southern
part of the state, heading westbound on I-10 and I-8 and gradually
worked our way north to I-40. Along the way we had stopped in numerous
towns and kept hearing the same response-
“Yeah, some feller come through here a few years ago and picked up
all the posters.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“Nope.”
“How about what he was planning on doing with them.”
“Nope.”
“Does anyone else around here know where we could find him?”
“Nope.”
The Gary Cooper impressions in every city were getting old until Ken
and I hit “paydirt” in Flagstaff. The manager of the Orpheum Theatre
slipped us a business card and stated that the guy that had picked up
all of their posters was a theatre owner himself. Apparently, the
fellow and his brother had gone all over Arizona picking up the
posters and had taken them back to their theatre in Snowflake.
118 Miles to Success, Victory and unknown Poster Treasures. Ken and I
both had visions of grandeur. At my driving speed that was two hours
at the most. It was already 8:00 pm but I figured we could easily make
the city by 10:00. Desperation pushed the peddle of the van past 80.
We careened off the Insterstate at Holbrook and screamed south towards
Snowflake. By the time we pulled into the city and made our way to the
town square, it was already dark. Sure enough, there was the theatre
on the business card- The Snowflake Theatre.
And as luck would have it, there was a payphone in front of the
theatre. I quickly looked at the owners phone number on his business
card and dropped a quarter into the phone. He picked up after a couple
of rings.
“Hello?”
“I’m sorry to disturb you at this hour, but I just drove into
Snowflake and wanted to call you as soon as I could. I’m a collector
of old movie posters and understand that you might have picked up some
posters around the state.” I could feel my heart hammering waiting for
the man’s response.
“Yes. My brother and I have picked up several thousand of them over
the years.”
My mind reeled at that as I asked him more about the posters. I could
see Ken waiting anxiously for the result of my question and I gave him
a thumbs up. Then I returned to the conversation, “Really? Several
thousand?”
“Oh yes. We took them all back to our theatre in Snowflake. Put
them in the basement. But the theatre’s gone now.”
I looked behind me at the theatre in the darkness. “The Snowflake
Theatre?” I asked?
“Yes.”
“I’m standing right in front of it.”
“No you’re not,” the man said sadly. “The theatres gone.”
I was quite confused as I stared at the marquee, the brick
exterior and the poster in the theatres display case. For a moment I
thought the man had gone senile.
The owner continued, “It burned to the ground two nights ago. Go
look through the front window.”
I was stunned! Ken and I went to the theatres door and looked
through. All we could see, where the roof of the lobby should have
been, were the Arizona stars in the evening sky.
The next morning the man agreed to meet us at the theatre so we could
take a look for ourselves. We wanted to see if anything could be
salvaged. He unlocked the door and we went inside. Every time we
brushed up against anything we got covered in soot and ash. As we went
down the steps to the basement we held our breath with anticipation.
The basement floor was still covered by about two or three inches of
water- the last amount not picked up by the pumps after the fire
department had used their hoses. Along the wall ran stacks and stacks
of posters. The piles were about four feet high and ran the full
length of the room, about thirty yards. Ken and I tried to pull some
of the piles apart, but the water had fused them together into one
massive block of paper mulch.
“Yep, this whole room was underwater for about twenty-four hours,”
the owner sighed.
Ken and I knew there was no way the posters could be salvaged. We had
looked all over New Mexico and Arizona for two months trying to find
where the posters had been taken. And when we found them, we “missed”
them by two days. Two days… I felt like Walter Huston at the end of
The Treasure of Sierra Madre; laughing at treasures lost. We had made
finds before and knew we’d find more posters in the future. This was
just a slight setback in our quest.
As we left Snowflake in the van’s rearview mirror, Ken tapped his foot
to the tune on the radio and said, “If you can tell me who recorded
this, I’ll give you my whole collection.”
Ron Moore
Cinema Icons
--- On Sat, 7/24/10, Michael Spampinato <[email protected]> wrote:
From: Michael Spampinato <[email protected]>
Subject: [MOPO] Tales Of Lost Treasure - You Got One?
To: [email protected]
Date: Saturday, July 24, 2010, 10:08 PM
When I was around 12 years old our house was almost 100 years old
and the attic was never really touched. When the time came to gut
it and insulate it, add a floor (you had to walk between the
beams) etc they cleared out a ton of old stuff.
But what I found up there was a rolled up piece of paper. Upon
opening it I was looking at a one-sheet from Lon Chaney Sr's
PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. It was a beautiful poster in beautiful
condition. I still remember the colors. I stored it away rolled in
"my cabinet" which, a few years later, my mother apparently
decided to clean. Bye bye PHANTOM.
In later years when I started collecting old film posters I
scoured the place for that poster just in case. No luck.
I was already a huge film buff (as mentioned in the Expanding
Hobby thread) with a tremendous affinity for the old horror and
sci-fi films, and I actually recognized this as something special.
I think this find sank deep in my subconscious and help steer me
to collecting old horror and sci-fi posters.
Anyone else have one that got away?
Pov
May the holes in your collection be filled.
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