When the Tea Room Theater (145 Eddy Street) closed earlier this year, I began to wonder how institutions like it came into being. Unlike gay bars, the history of "adult" gay movie houses had an astounding lack of persecution. Perhaps it was because, unlike bars, pornographic cinemas sprang up at the end of the 1960s. Or perhaps it's because heterosexual porn was frowned upon as well. Regardless, things were in disarray in the early days and heterosexual pornographers took the heat while the gay industry grew.
It didn't start out that way. On September 25, 1964 the San Francisco Police seized a copy of Jean Genet's film Un Chant d'Amour when it was shown by the San Francisco Mime Troupe at the Abandoned Church at 20th and Capp streets.
However, though police thought the film "filthy and crude," they returned it, probably because obscenity cases were not going their way in San Francisco in the wake of the "Howl" trial, where the publisher of Allen Ginsberg's famous epic poem was not deemed to be obscene.
Police stopped Genet's film from being shown in Berkeley and a subsequent case regarding it went all the way to the Supreme Court, where the film was declared obscene.
By 1966, there were already theaters in San Francisco showing straight "nudies," which were mostly short 8mm loops. In 1967 the Roxie was the first theater to advertise their "adult films" in the San Francisco Examiner. In '68 the Screening Room Theater on 220 Jones opened and showed straight porn from owner Alex de Renzy, who battled San Francisco censors to show his films.
The Park Theatre in Los Angeles was the first theater to show softcore gay porn on June 26, 1968, in what the owners Shan Sayles and Monroe Beehler called "A Most Unusual Film Festival." The program included short films from Pat Rocco and Mike Kuchar. Sayles and Beehler would bring these film to San Francisco at the Park Show Room at 459 Geary beginning Oct. 1, 1969.
When Sayles arrived, he already had competition. The Harding Theatre at 616 Divisadero began showing gay films on June 30, 1969. Though the Harding is better known as a rock venue where the Grateful Dead played, it was also the first movie house that showed gay films in San Francisco.
The police Bureau of Special Services (vice squad) got a new director in 1969, Ed Nevin. Nevin decided to institute a new policy to stop the proliferation of porn theaters in San Francisco: arrest the patrons of movies as well as the owners.
During August and September, police shut down the Screening Room, the Peerless Theater (148 3rd Street), the Reel Theater (1013 Mission), Gay Paree (122 Sixth Street) and the Nob Hill (729 Bush), arresting patrons and owners alike.
It had an unintended consequence. Within a year both the Peerless and the Nob Hill began showing gay films. The Peerless had two screens and showed both gay and straight films. The Nob Hill changed owners (being bought by Sayles) and went gay.
The police policy lasted only a few months. By November 14, they went back to citing the owner of the theater and seizing the film being shown. That day, the target of the raid was the Showroom Theater (as the press then called it) at 459 Geary. It was the only authorized police raid on a theater showing gay "adult" theater in San Francisco I found reported in the press.
The theater was showing Kenneth Marlowe's The 12 Faces of Love. Police watched the film for about 20 minutes, stopped the screening, cited the owner and seized the film. Marlowe, also known as "Mr. Madame," was not cited. The author of a book, also called Mr. Madame, told the press, "I've never been arrested, even when I ran a house of ill repute."
He was there to give away a door prize: one of the male models in the film (the police left the door prize behind). Marlowe described the film as "an astrological sort of film about sex."
Marlowe went on to perform in The Kenneth Marlowe Show at the Nob Hill through 1971 and later lectured in prisons about homosexuality and transgender topics, transitioning and becoming Kate Marlowe in 1974 (and marrying an inmate, becoming Mrs. Robert Lonnie Barnes in 1977).
Police raids largely stopped by 1970. On May 17, The Nob Hill began showing gay films and continues to do so till today. The first gay film shown was Song of the Loon, from the novel of the same name. Richard Amory, the author of the book, wrote the first movie review for a gay porn film in San Francisco in the July 1970 issue of Vector. He was not pleased. In his review "Song of the Loon Becomes a 'Looney Tune,'" he disassociated himself from the film.
Though the raids had stopped didn't mean there was no further objection to the films. The San Francisco Examiner ran a series of articles early in 1970 with titles like "Underworld Link To Porno Films" which suggested connections between sex in films and crime.
By November, they had an ally. Newly elected supervisor Dianne Feinstein visited a porn theater in the Mission and didn't like what she saw. She told the paper she was considering strategies for "drying up these moral cesspools" and said, "I am outraged not only as a supervisor but as a citizen, a wife and a mother as well."
Feinstein also took her campaign to a meeting of the Society for Individual Rights in 1971. The Berkeley Barb reported she told them:
"The gay community's well-meaning goals and aims will not be realized by the sick films that are being shown in smut theaters. Porno movie houses and bookstores and smut papers are making it harder for the gay community to become part of the accepted mainstream of America."
Though Feinstein's campaign against porn would continue through the 1970s, it did not have much effect. There was an explosion of gay theaters.
De Renzy's Screening Room went gay in 1980 and become Savages and then the Campus Theater, which closed in 2004. The Aquarius Theater stopped showing art films in 1976 and became the Tea Room. Sayles would open the Century Theater (816 Larkin) in 1978 and it would remain gay till new owners took over in 1989. The New Laurel (2111 Polk) and East of Castro Club (3968 17th Street) and Spartan Theater (150 Mason) spread adult theaters to the gay neighborhoods of the Polk, Castro and Tenderloin.
Even the Strand Theater (1127 Market) got into the act in 1983 (the balcony had something of a sex scene going even before the gay films started), before being recently renovated into a new theatre by American Conservatory Theatre (a few salvaged seats from the old theatre are by the downstairs bathrooms).
What was missed by the moral critics was that many of these venues contributed to the community. John Karr, long-time porn reviewer for the Bay Area Reporter, told me that when Clif Newman moved from managing The Nob Hill to the East Of Castro Club, he created "visual tone poems of porn," often running multiple films and slide projectors for a multi-layered artistic effect.
Artists and thinkers like porn actors Scott O'Hara and Aiden Shaw came to our community from this world. Mister Marcus held charity slave auctions at Savages, and Turk Street Follies held AIDS fundraisers.
Ultimately it was the VCR, the DVD and the internet that closed most of them, not moral naysayers. And in the end which side would you rather be on �" Dianne Feinstein's or Pee Wee Herman's?
The author would like to thank John Karr and Jack Fritscher for their assistance and information.