Port is Adjourned

Carol Selva wasn’t exactly teary over the imminent shuttering of the Port Theatre, but she did have a distant look that said something about the power of nostalgia.

Selva, a 48-year-old mother of two from Newport Beach, has been a fan of the Corona del Mar movie house for more than two decades. She grew accustomed to the worn seats when her first husband was wooing her in the ‘70s, and soon became a regular.

On Friday, Selva got her ticket for Manuel Poirier’s “Western,” the Port’s final film before it closes Thursday, and gulped.

“I read in the papers about it closing and I’m not happy,” she said. “You always know these things are going to happen, because there’s change. That’s really OK in a way. . . . Progress can be good. But I’ll really miss it. . . . I bet a lot of people will.”

True enough. Most of those who attended shows over the Port’s final weekend stressed that it was more than just a place to see pictures.

To them, a movie multiplex in a mall--the one with the screens numbering in the teens and foamy stadium-seating climbing up the walls--is just a place to see pictures. The Port, they agreed, was more: It was a landmark--stylish, funky and a little ruined, all at the same time.

Mark L. Jackson and his wife, Anne, trekked from Balboa Island, something they’ve been doing for years. Mark Jackson, 39, said he was first brought to the theater by his dad in the early 1960s. It seemed different then.

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“I was a kid [so] it looked huge in that way everything seems big and great to you when you’re young,” he recalled. “I wouldn’t exactly call it majestic, but it always impressed me. I grew up with the Port, so it’s like I’m losing something that belongs to me.”

Agreed Anne Jackson: “It has character, like all old things do.”

Character wasn’t enough in the end.

In recent years, the Port frequently changed its playbill to build a more diverse following, but the plan never took. Except for the loyalists, attendance has been slipping, and Landmark Theatre Corp., which has run the single-screen, 930-seat institution since 1989, decided to let its lease expire at the end of the month.

The Port’s manager, Mike Peterson, lamented the move.

“We showed a huge variety of films, and I loved working here,” he said. “The customers were always extra friendly, and a lot of people said it was their favorite theater.”

It clearly was for Dennis Leslie, who managed the Port from 1974 to 1987. A fixture to patrons, he chatted with them about the movies and their lives. Leslie noted that the theater frequently staged tributes to stars who settled in Orange County, including John Wayne, Ruby Keeler and animator Chuck Jones.

The Port was built in 1951 by Ted and Peggy Jones of the Western Amusement Co. of Los Angeles. Major Hollywood movies were offered for a quarter century, then the Port turned to foreign imports in 1976 when it screened Bernard Tavernier’s moody French release “The Clockmaker.”

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“With the final curtain coming down, it brings to a close the last bastion of single-screen movie houses that, at one time, dotted every neighborhood in Orange County,” Leslie said. “Its passing will leave a void in movie memories.”

The void for Audrey Ko, 59, of Seal Beach will be the arty and sometimes idiosyncratic flicks she’s come to expect. During the last 30 years, Ko has seen the works of Fellini, Bergman, Kurosawa--all the masters of cinema--at the Port, where she went Friday for a last visit.

So have lots of others. Michael Morgan, who was working the box office Saturday, reported that business has been up as people have come to pay their last respects, with attendance averaging about 100 people per show.

“It’s been pretty busy, more busy than usual, and people are curious about what’s going to be in its place,” Morgan said. “People seem pretty upset; you can tell they are feeling nostalgic.”

Ko can still watch imports closer to her home, in Seal Beach’s Bay Theatre, one of the last antique theaters around. But it won’t be the same.

“The Bay is very nice, and I go there a lot, [but] the Port is my favorite,” she said. “The range of movies and the selection, [it’s] just always the best for me. I never even really minded it when it was so hot in summer you had to fan yourself.”

While Ko sighed, Anthony Reyes just grinned, puzzled by the concern. Reyes, a 20-year-old surfer from Huntington Beach, dropped in Thursday evening with his girlfriend, Pati Dunn, 19, also of Huntington Beach, to see a wave-rider double-bill of “Big Wednesday” and “The Endless Summer II.”

A cool place, nice looks, being so quaint and all, but why the hand-wringing?

“I like it [because] they have movies like this, surfing movies,” Reyes said. “Anyway, there are other places for that. They’re always tearing down ancient things, [so] you can’t get too down.”

His girlfriend, however, worried that such film fare won’t be shown anywhere else: “It’s just bad when things people like aren’t there anymore,” Dunn said.