Port Theatre

Charles Spencer Chaplin, creator of the greatest movie character ever to grace the screen, was known the world over as The Tramp, The Little Fellow, Charlie, Charlot, The Little Tramp. "How well we know the image of Charlie in flight," critic and author Parker Tyler has written, recalling how he turned a corner "somewhat like a sailboat, frantically holding on to his hat and pivoting on the immobile axis of one foot . . . the cane at arm's length to maintain balance."

Just four months after launching its new programming schedule, which promised weeklong bookings (two weeks at most), the Port Theatre in Corona del Mar has broken that promise and scheduled "Ma Vie en Rose" ("My Life in Pink") for a three-week engagement beginning Friday.

The Port Theatre, a Corona del Mar landmark and one of Orange County's oldest art houses, will close in two weeks, manager Mike Peterson said Thursday. Employees got word Wednesday of the impending closure, he said. "The mood is just somber. Everybody is sort of reminiscing. "We showed a huge variety of films, and I loved working there," Peterson said. "The customers were always extra friendly, and a lot of people said it was their favorite theater." Landmark Theatre Corp.

The novelist and philosopher queen Ayn Rand, born Alice Rosenbaum in 1905, advertised many things about herself but not her real name. "Who Is Ayn Rand?," an adoring 90-page biographical essay by her disciple, Barbara Branden, also makes no mention of it. Rosenbaum apparently did not suit the ambition of someone who intended to become a legend.

By today's standards it seems a marvel that Woody Allen turns out roughly a film a year. Yet for the 41 years from 1925 to 1966--longer even than Allen's entire career--Alfred Hitchcock made 50 films, and nobody thought his average of more than one a year the slightest bit unusual. The Hitchcock festival "Five From the Fifties" at the Port Theatre in Corona del Mar, beginning Friday, taps just a fraction of his huge output.

Just a few lines to say thank you for your wonderful column on the closing of Corona del Mar's Port Theatre ("Port Is Adjourned," Aug. 18). If it were not for your article, many people would have missed the final days of this grand old theater on Coast Highway. In the years that I managed the Port, it would have closed or been taken over by the Edwards chain 10 years sooner had it not been for the Times writers. So it is through the efforts of writers that many of our landmarks have had extended life spans.

Orange County's theater community underwent some dramatic changes last week. First, SoCal Cinemas opened a 43,560-square-foot cinema called Cinemapolis in Anaheim on Wednesday. The theater features 10 screens. Then Landmark Theatre Corp. bought the historic Port Theatre in Corona del Mar for an undisclosed sum. For 28 years, Port--one of only three art movie houses in the county--was operated by Western Amusement Co. of Pacific Palisades, which returned audiences to the past by, among other things, featuring a singer between movies.