Ron Moore posted this on MOPO...thought you guys would enjoy it. Or be sickened by it. Ha.
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 MooreCinema Icons
