Great story!
Dave
----- Original Message -----
From: Ron Moore
To: [email protected]
Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2010 10:01 PM
Subject: Re: [MOPO] Tales Of Lost Treasure - You Got One?
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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