Has Success Spoiled Ben Sack?

That's right. There are eight--count 'em, eight--right now. And three more on the way. Sound a bit like a Christmas card from Bobby Kennedy? Well, no--it's just another annual business report from the Sack Theatres. Within 15 years, Ben Sack has managed to piece together a chain of eight movie houses which dominate Boston. Not since Cotton Mather has one man managed to dictate so successfully what passes for entertainment in the town.

"We like to think of our theatres as exclusive country clubs," says Sack. "Where else can a nice young couple go out for an evening for four or five dollars? Just a hamburger and a cup of coffee costs a dollar and a half." The Sack Theatres have become an established part of institutionalized Boston. Sack is right: that lends the enterprise a certain prestige. Yet its very success seems to threaten the unconventional approach which Sack claims has helped him make it.

Dark Suits, Tight Jeans

Stretching from the Charles River to the fringes of Back Bay, downtown Boston has about 16 first-run movie houses. Eight are Sack Theatres. Of the remaining eight independent theatres, one deals mainly in Cinerama, four others usually deal in foreign films. Thus, it is Ben Sack who chooses the majority of American films to be presented in Boston. Sack, who merely acts as an exhibitor, could not be charged with any sort of monopoly violations. But the temptation so to accuse him remains.

When questioned about his possible stranglehold over the surrounding competition, Sack quickly shrugs it off. "Getting movies is like being in Las Vegas--you shoot craps. Often I have to decide whether or not to buy a film I haven't even seen. A recent one cost me a $300,000 advance. Now anyone who wanted to put up $300,000 could have had that picture." He ignores the fact that his theatres are practically the only Boston houses with the past record and potential capacity to justify such an outlay.

The seating capacity of the individual Sack Theatres ranges from 600 to 4,000. Diversity is the key to the operation. Sack explains, "It's like clothes. Some people like dark suits, some like sporty jackets, some, tight jeans. Having eight theatres, we have a different type of picture in each so that we can accommodate the picture to the person. We can play to any taste."

And, despite Sack's frequent protestations against being stereotyped, his individual theatres have taken on their own personalities. A grand tour of the Sack line would have to begin with the Beacon Hill. Hidden away by itself on the north end of Tremont Street, across from the burial ground of King's Chapel, lies the most risque' of the Sack Theatres. Perhaps because its marquee is removed from sight of the proper old ladies who chase pigeons off the Common, the Beacon Hill was the first to specialize in the now ubiquitous "recommended for mature audiences" film. Ever since Tom Jones broke house records, the theatre has presented Sack's more "sophisticated" movies. The mature audiences--possibly, the same ones who wear those tight jeans--seem to respect the delicacy with which Sack treats the theatre.

Further down Tremont, you come across the two big volume houses. First you reach the Sack Savoy, with its capacity of 2,800. A false front enables the Savoy to straddle the entire block in order to maintain an entrance on both Tremont and Washington Streets. It attracts a varied audience. With a film like its Christmas attraction, Valley of the Dolls, the Tremont side draws from the slightly vulgar matrons. Not Boston's grandes dames, mind you, but the displaced suburbanites who just love to come into The City. After they poke around in the nylons at Stern's and buy half a Bavarian cheese cake for a buck-twenty at S.S. Pierce, while they are still foaming at the corners of their reconstructed mouths with the salivary marshmallow of their Bailey's sundaes, they decide to duck into a movie so they can haul off their heels for a bit. Then, over on Washington Street, you see the higher level of the Combat Zone clientele: the pimply teenagers, the drifters, the sailors and their girls. The Savoy has the finest interiors of any Sack Theatre. It shows the lowest quality films.

"The Bible" Didn't Sell

Next, there is the Music Hall. The old Metropolitan, it is still called by older Bostonians. It is the second largest movie house in the country. It seats over 4,000. The Music Hall tends to stick with sure hits. Whenever the Boston schools relinquish their charges for a week of vacation, the management never fails to be ready with the latest James Bond extravaganza or yet another Italian western. At $1.50 a head, 4,000 popcorned kids make for a pretty respectable showing on a rainy Saturday afternoon.

Across the street, the big, expensive films are lodged. Road show films--with their promises of ever-enlarging screens--were Hollywood's answer to encroaching television. They are the sprawling films which run over their budget while assiduously reproducing illustrated trots to Great Books. Road shows inevitably run about three hours; tickets are sold on a rerseved seat basis ranging from $1.50 for balcony seats at 10:00 Saturday morning to $3.30 for the orchestra on a Friday evening.

The Saxon generally presents the more auspicious vehicles; it favors films based on the works of established authors. T.H. White, Joyce, Pasternak did well, but The Bible didn't sell. Around the corner, the Gary is older, dingier, a bit more stodgy. It usually sticks with Films for the Entire Family. Although a muddy mural in the lobby purports to depict everyone from Socrates to Tolstoy to Thoreau, the pictures shown at the Gary are more akin to Margaret Mitchell and Hugh Lofting.

But, then the scene changes. You must go all the way down Boylston Street, down past the infirmary-like back door of the Playboy Club, past the darkening Italian facade of the Public Library, bitterly sulking amid the surrounding renewal. Then, at last, the pristine but sterile phallus of the New Boston--the towering Prudential Building. And, nestled at its base, not one, not two, but three Sack Theatres happily clustered together under a grand parking garage, the whole complex multiplying with amoebic ferocity. The Cheri 1 and 2 have already given birth to Cheri 3. Cheri 4 and 5 are soon to arrive. These theatres offer the key to Sack's flexibility. They are all relatively small--the smallest seats only 600--and therefore can be made available profitably for movies with a more limited appeal. They also allow Sack to shuffle movies with the ease of a river-boat gambler--large Tremont Street attractions occasionally find themselves in a Cheri for their final days.

The Cheri is still in its infancy. The third screen was installed only last September. They still seem to evoke only the blandness of the architect's original blueprints. But a certain carnival atmsphere has begun to emerge. The Cheri lobby functions something like a county fair. Tickets for each picture are sold in their respective kiosks. There is a huge refreshment stand stranded like a useless life raft in the center of the floor. Off to one side, there is what pretends to be both a sidewalk café' and an ice cream parlor. Remnants of an art exhibition are occasionally displayed on the walls. People mill about, others line up at the various entrances. They are generally enthusiastic. The circus has come to the inner city, and the side shows are just great. The success of Cheri 4 and 5 should be congenital.

Elevator to the Top

"It all began with leaving a gold pencil at a gin game," Ben Sack tells it. Sack is a heavy-set, determined man. A light grey business suit complements his wavy, greying hair. Black cameo cufflinks are the only pieces of ostentation he allows himself. His no-nonsense manner at first appears belligerent. The intimacy of his conversation, however, soon betrays his grim seriousness. "When I went back next day to get the pencil," he continues, "a young boy whose father owned a movie chain asked me if I would like to make an investment in a theatre he was building." Sack contributed $100 when the house opened in Lowell. The theatre only managed to gross $43 on its first day.

At the time, Ben Sack was primarily involved with a copper and smelting plant. In 1949, he was again offered the chance to invest in a movie house. Again he accepted. This time it looked even rougher. The theatre, which had to be refurbished and reopened, was located in Fitchburg, a factory town of 43,000. It had only one competitor, an already successful operation right next door. Within a year and three months, Sack's group bought out the neighboring opposition. It had been owned by Joseph P. Kennedy '12.

For Ben Sack, movie houses became more addictive than Frito's. In 1952, Sack found himself again in another project. This time he was to re-open the defunct Beacon Hill. Days before his first Boston opening, the other investors pulled out. Sack hung on and ended up in the black. The pattern became a familiar one. Choose an unsuccessful or closed theatre, buy it, refurbish it, re-open it. With standardized procedures and good publicity, Ben Sack began to make good.

Simultaneously, the movie industry was staging a comeback. Attendance, which had dropped off sharply after the war, began to increase slowly after the turn of the decade. In 1956, the Saxon, formerly a legitimate stage theatre known as the Majestic, opened with a 70 mm. Todd-AO production of Oklahoma! A year later, the Gary introduced itself with Gigi. Road shows of that magnitude became the foundation of Sack's enterprises. Last year, nine road shows accounted for 43 per cent of gross admissions. Movies may not have become better, but they had become profitable.

The executive offices of the Sack Theatres are the final proof of Sack's accession. They are located in the Sack Savoy. To reach them you must take a small, antiquated elevator, with a hand-operated grate and an erratic control button. It climbs slowly, cautiously--rather like the temperamental lift that displayed more personality than Julie Andrews in Thoroughly Modern Millie. The elevator opens--hopefully--onto a nondescript corridor. You pass a press room, then a secretary's office. The inner sanctum is a large room that, despite its heavy furniture, appears empty. There is an imposing mahogany desk, a matching conference table, an antique, roccoco grandfather's clock. The room is a flashback to a past generation. The beige telephone seems anachronistic.

"The elevator would only allow three people at a time to come up," Sack explains. "The only thing different is that we don't have the guards he kept here. That antique clock, this table, that desk over there--they all belonged to Ambassador Kennedy, too, when he owned the RKO chain." Yes, Ben Sack, having acquired a Kennedy theatre, went on to inhabit a Kennedy office. Why, Norman Podhoretz couldn't have done it any better.

The Gimmicks

"We don't do anything stereotyped," Ben Sacks keeps insisting. As a showman, he seems to have taken the advice of the three jaded strippers in Gypsy--namely, you've gotta have a gimmick if you want to get ahead. While the Sack Theatres are basically fairly conservative establishments, they are not above a few well chosen publicity stunts.

His innovations--as Sack euphemistically prefers to call the gimmicks--can range from serious advancements in film exhibiting to mere trivia. After all, the Cheri is Sack's prize innovation: it is the only indoor movie complex in the country where you can park your car, step into an elevator, and arrive in the theatre's lobby. On the other hand, the much heralded ice cream parlor in the lobby is quite another matter. For 65 cents, you can make your own sundaes. So there you are. A Man for All Seasons finally reaches intermission. Quick, Harry, get into that line. Uh, vanilla, please. But Harry, I'm allergic to that strawberry sauce. Pardon me, sir, but I didn't mean to spill the chocolate. Helen, really, is it my fault if there are only four tables, can't you stand? And so with only five minutes of intermission remaining, you must gorge yourself on all that gluttonous ice cream. You miss Scofield's first scene. But movies really are becoming more stimulating.

The publicity stunt which quite literally ended all publicity stunts isn't even mentioned by Sack. At 1:00 a.m. on the morning of last May 4, 15,000 students began to collect outside the Sack Savoy for a 4 a.m. preview of Casino Royale--free, if you wore a "super sleuth trenchcoat." With the aid of police, a bona fide riot broke out. Meanwhile the theatre's assistant manager, having filled the 2,800 seats to capacity, began rolling the film early. He later told police, "They were fighting in the aisles every time someone left his seat. [About 1, small fires broke out under the seats.] Patrons carried a fire hose down the center aisle, but the hose broke loose from a standpipe fitting. The water spurted and under pressure knocked six people from their seats." The Globe hysterically reported that 20 persons were arrested, 30 injured. Mayor Collins was promised that there would be no more pre-dawn previews.

But the Sack Theatres do plan to expand in other areas. Cheri-type theatres are to be built in Hartford and New York. The Music Hall and the Savoy have already presented performances by the Bolshoi Ballet and the New York Metropoltan Opera. More legitimate theatre will be presented in the large houses in an effort to reduce the high ticket prices currently charged by Boston's smaller legitimate showcases.

Ominous Future

Movies are another matter. Twelve road shows--each expected to run from two to 12 months--will clog the Sack schedule during the coming year. Films guaranteed a showing must wait months to get into town. If Doctor Doolittle must be postponed, there is little chance to see a smaller film like Edith Evan's The Whisperers. This fall, in an unprecedented move, Funny Girl is to be opened simultaneously in the three Cheri theatres. It will be easier to see Funny Girl, but there will be fewer new films because of a lack of theatres. In any case, there is yet no evidence that the Sack Theatres will be adventurous enough to capture films which are either stylistically or thematically inventive. In past years, they did not exhibit The Endless Summer, Alfie, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, or Bonnie and Clyde.

The future should be even more ominous. As Alan Friedberg, Sack's vice-president, film expert, and resident visionary, sees it, "automated theatres, automatic ticket purchasing, and even automated transportation to and from theatres will be introduced. The film patron will have the advantage of knowing that every film being shown has been pretested as to its effect, impact, and pleasurability. There won't be any 'bad' movies. Motion pictures will be fitted to the patron's personality." Perhaps, the Czechs were correct to suggest at Expo '67 that movies could ultimately depend on the audience. For if the audience is allowed to determine the twists of a movie's plot, they determine the film's form.

"A good film is one that makes money," concludes Sack. Don't knock the profit motive. It has permitted Ben Sack to bring new life to the Boston theatre district. Certainly, Sack's success has encouraged the creation of Boston's new independent theatres like the Abbey and the Charles Cinema. Sack makes no promises about his films. You can be sure that the popcorn will be buttered better, even if the film isn't quite up to par. And when your great-grandson gulps down his soma and runs out for a night at the "feelies," you can also be sure, that he will be going to a Sack Theatre--possibly the Cheri 73