Plan for Watts Movie Theater Taking Shape

If it were a movie script, the story of Watts after the 1965 riots would be a pretty grim tale. Once the violence ended and the fires were doused, dozens of businesses closed shop, including the only movie theater in the community.

For nearly 35 years, Watts residents have had to travel up to seven miles to see movies in Hawthorne, South Gate or at theaters near USC.

But for moviegoers at least, there may be a happy ending in Watts.

A nonprofit group, with major financial backing from the city of Los Angeles and the support of school officials, is expected to submit construction plans this month to convert a school auditorium in Watts into a one-screen movie theater with 650 seats and a modern sound system.

Approval by state architects would allow the group to launch a $2-million renovation at the Markham Middle School auditorium, in hopes of offering Watts residents feature films at discount prices by June 2000.

It won’t be a traditional movie theater: The Wattstar Theatre, as it will be called, can show movies only on weekends and after classes, and it will show few first-run Hollywood films because of the high cost of renting them.

Still, Watts residents say that the new theater will be welcomed and may break a long-held stereotype that movie theaters cannot succeed in Watts.

“There is a stigma that we are bad and we don’t want to have anything in Watts,” said “Sweet” Alice Harris, founder of Parents of Watts, a 20-year-old community activist group. “We are about to outlive that stigma.”

Arturo Ybarra, director of the Watts/Century Latino Organization, said the movie theater can also help African Americans and Latinos in Watts better understand each other through films about the two cultures.

“I hope it will act as a catalyst to remove misunderstandings between Latinos and African Americans,” he said.

The project has been spearheaded by Barbara Stanton, the executive director of the Watts Cinema and Education Center. For the past five years, she and her group have worked to raise the $2 million needed to renovate the 1957-era auditorium. Last year, the Los Angeles Unified School District approved a 15-year lease that gives the nonprofit group access to the auditorium after school and on weekends for only $120 a year. The lease allows the school to occasionally use the new theater for after-school productions.

Stanton believes that converting the auditorium is the only way Watts can get a movie theater.

“Major malls do big movie theaters and we don’t have any new developments around here,” she said. “Chances are we wouldn’t get a new theater for another 32 years.”

Located about eight miles south of downtown Los Angeles, Watts has the most public housing projects of any community in the city. Despite many renewal efforts since the riots, Watts has an unemployment rate nearly four times higher than the regional and national average. At one time a gateway for Southern blacks, the community has been transformed by an influx of Central American and Mexican immigrants.

In theory at least, the new movie theater has a potentially large audience, since nearly 1 million people live within five miles of the school.

Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr. helped the group get a $1.6-million grant from the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency and County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke was instrumental in getting a $50,000 grant from the county.

Most of the rest of the money came from private donations from such supporters as PepsiCo, TRW, City National Bank and the Walt Disney Co. The advisory board for the nonprofit group includes Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) and Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks.

Last month, Stanton’s nonprofit group raised about $15,000 at a Hollywood event attended by actress Halle Berry and R&B; artist Eric Benet, among others.

The renovation, expected to begin in December, will include construction of a glass atrium adjacent to the auditorium to house restrooms and a food concession. The nonprofit group also plans to install a new sound system and replace the auditorium’s 800 wooden seats with 650 plush movie theater-style seats. New carpeting will cover the floors.

A firm that supplies equipment for the Mann Theater chain has donated 16-millimeter and 35-millimeter movie projectors.

“People have said, ‘You are trying to get a Cadillac when you should settle for a Volkswagen,’ ” Stanton said as she stood on the steps of the school auditorium. “I’ve been working on this for five years, and I’m not going to settle for a Volkswagen.”

The theater will host plays and foreign and independent films. But Stanton said she may wait a few weeks after Hollywood’s big-budget films have premiered at other theaters before showing them at the Wattstar because movie distributors charge more to rent first-run films. Tickets will cost $3.50 and $2 for children and seniors.

Stanton said she also worries that the Magic Johnson Theaters in Baldwin Hills will launch a legal challenge to stop her from showing first-run movies. She said the president of Magic Johnson Theaters, Ken Lombard, told her several years ago that the Wattstar may create unfair competition for the Magic Johnson Theaters because of the discount ticket prices.

But Lombard said last week that he supports the Wattstar. “There are no legal issues,” he said through a spokeswoman. “We wish them success.”

Stanton said her group is still trying to raise another $2 million to renovate a back wing of the movie theater to open a technology center where students can learn about animation, lighting and other multimedia skills. The technology center can be built later without affecting the movie theater.

After the 1965 riots, Stanton said the only movie theater in Watts, a Largo theater on 103rd Street near Compton Avenue, closed. Soon after, then-Councilman Tom Bradley persuaded Bruce Corwin, the president of Metropolitan Theaters Co., to open a theater in the Markham auditorium. But the venture ended after a few months, due to the high cost for insurance, utilities and rent, Stanton said.

Stanton is confident that the theater will succeed this time. But even if the effort fails, she said the school will be left with a newly renovated auditorium.

“People around here are still trying to rebuild the image of Watts from 1965,” she said. “When people in Watts want something, they are fierce.”