The news from Lido Theater

It isn’t that I don’t know it. But sometimes I forget. I forget what a jewel the Lido Theater is. We were there Friday evening to see Robert Altman’s newest work, “A Prairie Home Companion.” Are you a “Prairie Home” fan? I am and have been for about 25 years, tuning in on Saturday whenever I can at the stroke of 6 p.m. for Garrison Keillor and “A Prairie Home Companion” from Minnesota Public Radio.

It’s an acquired taste, and I suspect a lot of people who see the movie won’t even realize that the ditzy radio show it emulates is actually quite real. If you’re not familiar with “A Prairie Home Companion” and its startlingly quirky host Garrison Keillor ? one of the funniest, brightest and oddest-looking people ever created ? it’s hard to explain.

We’ll get back to that later, but Altman’s movie suits it perfectly. Like all his films, it moves in an odd, wobbly line so that you’re never quite sure where things are going and whether to cry or laugh, but you’ll do both by the time it’s done.

What made Friday evening muy bueno, which is Spanish, was that the Lido Theater is also a perfect fit for both the film and the radio show it emulates.

Talk about a national treasure. The pre-war jewel box of a theater, which opened in October 1938, was originally owned and operated by the D.W. Griffith Co. How many theaters have you seen with tropical fish in day-glow colors on the walls? None, that’s how many. Ever been to a movie theater with a balcony? If not, get to the Lido and sit in the balcony at your earliest possible convenience because once it’s gone, the movie balcony in these parts will be no more. Those of us who are being ravaged by time and gravity grew up in the balcony, in more ways than one. We could tell you incredible tales about what went on up there during many a double feature, but then, we’d have to kill you.

The Lido also has to be the only theater left in the universe where the manager, Jim Woodin, makes a live announcement in a booming voice before the film. With a few jokes and a few notes about coming attractions, he then points with a flourish to the Lido’s majestic red cascade curtain and announces, “Ladies and Gentlemen, Robert Altman’s ‘A Prairie Home Companion.’ ”

On Friday night, the manager also told the story of how the restrooms in the Lido came to have their strange separation ? with the ladies’ room in the main lobby and the men’s room halfway up the stairs to the balcony.

In 1938, while the theater was being a built, it caught the eye of a local resident who happened to live nearby, who happened be an actress, who happened to be named Bette Davis. Davis’ new film, “Jezebel,” in which she starred opposite Henry Fonda, was nearly done. She contacted the Griffith Co. and told them that when their spiffy new theater in Newport Beach opened, it had better open with “Jezebel.”

Needless to say, it did. The Griffith Co. knew that if you’re going to get sideways with an actress, pick someone other than Bette Davis. On a pre-opening visit to the Lido, Davis was appalled that both men and women went through the same door in the lobby to get to their respective restrooms. And thus, the men’s restroom was relocated to the odd location it occupies today, halfway up the stairs.

But Davis wasn’t done directing the scene yet. The period vanity tables and mirrors in the ladies’ room today are there specifically because Bette Davis willed them there.

The other reason I have a soft spot for the Lido is that in 1983 I produced a documentary for PBS that called for a 1950’s “Back to the Future” scene with kids strolling into a neighborhood theater. We dressed the outside of the Lido as if it were 1954, with “The Creature From the Black Lagoon” ? an unspeakably bad B horror film that scared me senseless and kept me wide awake between the ages of 6 and 9 ? as the main attraction. We had two blocks of Via Lido awash with extras in bobby socks and poodle skirts, leather jackets and engineer boots, along with a parade of Studebakers, Chevy Nomads and a red Buick Skylark convertible that made people stop and gasp.

The piece de resistance was a life-sized, totally cheesy fiberglass replica of the film’s namesake creature ? a half-man, half-lizard, big-frog thing that came lurching up from the depths of a lagoon in the Amazon now and then. The replica was originally used to promote the film and somehow ended up outside a retro store on Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood.

We rented the fiberglass beast for two days and hauled it down to the Lido from West Hollywood, standing tall and proud and scaly in the back of a pick-up truck, causing a frenzy of honking and cheering from other drivers all the way.

OK, fine, but just what is “A Prairie Home Companion”? Hmm. This is hard.

Garrison Keillor first coined the name for an early morning show he began for Minnesota Public Radio in 1969. He named the show after the Prairie Home cemetery in Moorhead, Minn. The show evolved over years into a full-on spoof of an old radio show coming from an imaginary Minnesota town ? Lake Wobegone ? with loopy commercials for imaginary products like Powder Milk Biscuits: “heavens they’re tasty and expeditious”; and Bertha’s Kitty Boutique: “for people who care about cats.”

I listened to the show for over a year before I realized that none of the places or products Keillor pitches exists. The show features guest artists and musical regulars who provide a mix of jazz, bluegrass and what used to be called “old timey” music, along with comedy skits complete with live sound effects.

The highlight of the show is a rambling, half-whispered monologue from Keillor about the mundane lives of the people of Lake Wobegone, mostly God-fearing Lutherans of Scandinavian descent who have had a hard time adjusting to anything that happened after 1962 and are faced with the daily challenges of living in a small town in the precise middle of nowhere in northern Minnesota. You might think of it as “Fargo” with music, although that’s not it either.

In the film version, Keillor plays himself and the setting is the supposedly final broadcast of “A Prairie Home Companion.” Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin are singing sisters ? Yolanda and Rhonda Johnson. Rhonda and Yolanda make a living, barely, doing country tunes and old-timey hymns and reminiscing about their deceased mother, Wanda.

Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly are fall-out-of-your-seat funny as Dusty and Lefty, two singing cowboys who specialize in western songs punctuated with off-color jokes.

Even teen idolette Lindsay Lohan is great as Yolanda’s daughter, Lola, who spends her time backstage writing poetry, most of it about committing suicide. I can’t wait to see it again, but be advised: Unless you are a “Prairie Home Companion” fan and/or like your movies wild and wacky and absurd, go at your own risk.

Then again, even if you don’t understand a word of the film, you’ll love Yolanda and Rhonda and Dusty and Lefty, and just being in the Lido is worth the price of admission. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the news from Lake Wobegone, “? where all the women are strong, the men are good looking, and the children above average.”

I gotta go.