Adult Theater

The Pussycat Theater is back, much to the dismay of Santa Monica officials. The adult theater on Second Street closed for a month and was replaced by a foreign-film operator. The theater shut down after a Beverly Hills chiropractor took a three-month sublease on the theater space, a block west of the Third Street Promenade. Since mid-August, Dr. Shahin Ravery had been showing Iranian films at the theater, which he renamed Asia Theater.

Once upon a time, in a fair and distant land known as Los Angeles, comedian Paul Reubens debuted a stage show called "The Pee-wee Herman Show. " It aired as an HBO special in 1981 and led to "Pee-wee's Big Adventure," which was director Tim Burton's breakout film, and soon Reubens was starring in "Pee-wee's Playhouse," a successful children's show that ran on CBS for five years. Then, in 1991, Reubens was arrested for indecent exposure in an adult theater and the show was shut down permanently.

The city attorney's office has obtained a court order to impose strict operating conditions at an adult movie theater on Main Street, officials said. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William Burby issued a five-year injunction that calls for owners and operators of the Regent Theater to install additional interior lighting, repair seats, patrol aisles and keep the facility in "sanitary condition."

Avant-garde dance theater duo Blue Palm, award-winning solo artist Jude Narita, the progressive East West Players, the innovative Collage Dance Theater--these are children's performers? They are at the 24th Street Theatre, for which the Glorious Repertory Company has recruited professional artists from adult theater as well as more traditional children's theater.

Facing a judge's order calling for $50,000 in attorney's fees, some Santa Ana officials conceded Thursday that they are ready to abandon the city's 10-year legal battle to close the X-rated Mitchell Brothers Theatre. The unanimous sentiment against the theater is still there at City Hall. But for the first time, some City Council members were acknowledging publicly Thursday that the more than 40 lawsuits filed against the theater may be a hopeless--and costly--cause.

A Superior Court commissioner levied a $1,000 fine Wednesday against attorney James Clancy, who represents the City of Santa Ana in its fight to shut down the Mitchell Brothers adult theater. Commissioner Jane D. Myers imposed the fine in reaction to two instances in which Clancy appeared in court requesting temporary restraining orders with no supporting material. It was the first time in the 11-year-old legal battle that the court has imposed fines.

In a case raising free-speech issues, the California Supreme Court on Thursday refused to block the revocation of a Los Angeles adult theater owner's permit to show films on charges he knowingly allowed patrons to engage in illegal sexual conduct. The court, over one dissent, declined to hear claims that revocation of the permit by city officials violated the constitutional rights of the theater owner.

For 11 years, Robert McGuire never missed a movie at the Mitchell Brothers Theatre, the only X-rated movie house in Santa Ana. He not only watched the movies, he took notes, tape-recorded the sound tracks and used an 8-millimeter movie camera wrapped in a towel to photograph the action. If an usher came by, McGuire said, he would drop the camera into his lap and act nonchalant.

Robert McGuire, who has been paid by the city for the last 11 years to film movies at the Mitchell Bros. adult movie theater, can go back in and take notes but can't use a camera or a tape recorder pending an Aug. 8 hearing, a Superior Court judge ruled Monday. The retired police officer earned $30 an hour to record activities at the 17th Street theater that the city has been trying to shut down via lawsuits for more than a decade.

The bankruptcy of the Pussycat Theater, one of two adult movie houses here, is giving city officials a long-awaited chance to demolish what they see as a blight on their stretch of Beach Boulevard. The city is awaiting approval from a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge to buy the theater for $300,000--a sum that would be recouped under a plan to sell the property to Ted Jones Ford.

The Pussycat Theater, a movie house for adult films, has been shut down, boarded up and soon will make way for an expanded Ted Jones Ford auto dealership, officials said. "The city has no use for, and will not tolerate, facilities that cater to a degenerate environment," Mayor Don R. Griffin said in reading a prepared statement at Monday's City Council meeting. City officials had long said they wanted to close the theater.

The Pussycat Theater is back, much to the dismay of Santa Monica officials. The adult theater on Second Street closed for a month and was replaced by a foreign-film operator. The theater shut down after a Beverly Hills chiropractor took a three-month sublease on the theater space, a block west of the Third Street Promenade. Since mid-August, Dr. Shahin Ravery had been showing Iranian films at the theater, which he renamed Asia Theater.

The bankruptcy of the Pussycat Theater, one of two adult movie houses here, is giving city officials a long-awaited chance to demolish what they see as a blight on their stretch of Beach Boulevard. The city is awaiting approval from a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge to buy the theater for $300,000--a sum that would be recouped under a plan to sell the property to Ted Jones Ford.

The city attorney's office has obtained a court order to impose strict operating conditions at an adult movie theater on Main Street, officials said. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William Burby issued a five-year injunction that calls for owners and operators of the Regent Theater to install additional interior lighting, repair seats, patrol aisles and keep the facility in "sanitary condition."

The city attorney's office has filed a lawsuit against an adult movie theater that has been the site of 31 lewd conduct arrests over the past 18 months. The "red-light abatement" lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court against the owner and operators of the Regent Theater at 448 S. Main St. Building owner Morton Wexler and theater operators Abu Tayyib and Kae Sun Cho are named as defendants.

Let's Make a Deal: Actor Paul Reubens, whose alter ego is Pee-wee Herman, has been offered a plea bargain by prosecutors in Sarasota, Fla., that would leave him with no record of guilt on indecent exposure charges at an adult theater. His attorney called it "an offer that's very difficult to refuse" and anticipated Reubens would accept it. Under the deal, Reubens would plead no contest and the state would not seek adjudication of guilt.

The City of Santa Ana's legal fight with the Mitchell Brothers adult theater probably will not be affected by a recent court decision barring closure of the theater for showing allegedly obscene films, attorneys for both sides said Wednesday. Orange County Superior Court Judge Harmon G. Scoville's ruling that the theater cannot be closed despite city allegations that films shown there are obscene merely reiterates constitutional law against prior restraint of free speech, the lawyers said.

The Supreme Court today gave cities wide authority to limit the spread of adult theaters, ruling 7 to 2 that such establishments may be limited to a specific area of town no matter how undesirable the location. The decision in the case from Renton, Wash., a suburb of Seattle, expanded on a 1976 ruling in a case from Detroit that said cities could limit the number of adult theaters in one area.

The Los Angeles city attorney is seeking a court injunction to force a Canoga Park adult movie theater to continue cooperating with a police crackdown on lewd activity. The target of the lawsuit filed by the city in Los Angeles Superior Court is the Pussycat Park Theatre at 21622 Sherman Way. Deputy City Atty. Marcia Gonzales-Kimbrough said police have made 96 arrests during the past two years for lewd conduct in the theater.

The Encino Playhouse will no longer produce children's theater at the Encino Community Center, according to Stephanie Angelini, the playhouse's artistic director. Instead, Angelini will offer her children's shows at the Victory Theatre in Burbank.