Charlie Lustman greets me wearing A 1920s-style cap and a black T-shirt with “Movie” written in script across the front—the original logo design of the Silent Movie Theatre. He ushers me energetically through the lobby and up a staircase to a café area with vintage furniture. As I sit down, a phone rings in the back somewhere; over the coming hour, it will rarely stop. I look around at the posters of silent movie stars adorning every wall: Pickford, Fairbanks, Gish, Brooks, Garbo, and more. The place is well-lit, freshly painted, and ultra-clean—in a word, comfortable, which is as it should be. Lustman has in the past year invested all his time, money, and energy into this landmark, the only theater in America dedicated to silent film. Cappuccino in hand, my host sits down across from me, under a poster of Harold Lloyd, and starts talking movies.

What in blazes is a 35-year-old songwriter doing with a silent movie house in the 21st century—and a movie house with an infamous history at that? The answer may surprise you, for Charlie Lustman is more than a newborn silent film aficionado, more than a newborn (and reluctant) businessman. He is a man with a mission: to spread the magic of silent movies to the far corners of the globe. Literally. Perhaps a little backstory is in order...

In 1941, a movie-mad Oklahoma couple named John and Dorothy Hampton drove to LA to build their long-cherished silent movie house, having been unable to raise the money to do so back home. Originally called Old Time Movies, the Fairfax Avenue theater opened in 1942 with a screening of Cecil B. DeMille’s King of Kings (1927).

A few months later, the theater closed when Mr. Hampton, a Quaker, was sent to prison for being a conscientious objector. But he was able to hold onto the property, and he reopened the theater after the war. Hampton was such a fanatic about silent movies that he mixed toxic chemicals in his bathtub above the theater to preserve his film prints. The theater closed in 1979 when Hampton fell ill.

After Hampton died of cancer in 1990, an old friend and theater devotee, Laurence Austin, persuaded Dorothy to let him reopen the theater. Some say Austin took advantage of the mentally deteriorating woman and got her to legally sign the theater over to him for next to nothing. Be that as it may, the theater enjoyed some success in the 1990s, and Dorothy even helped take tickets for a while until Alzheimer’s Disease forced her into a nursing home, where she remains.

This MovieMaker correspondent visited the theater regularly in those years. It was a special place. Austin, a bit of a nut (in an endearing sort of way), would stroll down the aisle to introduce the evening’s program while the organist played “Pomp and Circumstance.” Every program began with a Felix the Cat silent cartoon. During the intermissions, Austin would stand in the doorway and kindly share a word about the movies with his customers. And the audience consistently turned out, especially for the comedies.

Lustman: “The lost culture of our country is right here in this building...”

end. Christian Rodriguez, after paying admission for Sunrise (1927) and sitting down in the back row of the theater, walked into the lobby during a short film and pulled a gun on the popcorn girl, Mary Giles. He demanded to see the owner. Giles called Austin, who calmly gave the gunman his money. But Rodriguez shot both people anyway and then ran through the dark theater, firing over the heads of audience members before escaping through a back door. Giles was wounded. Austin was killed.

After an intense manhunt, the police captured Rodriguez on a tip, and then in a bizarre plot twist Rodriguez confessed that he had been hired for $25,000 by one James Van Sickle to eliminate Austin. Van Sickle was the theater projectionist and Austin’s live-in lover, and he stood to inherit the theater and all its contents. Rodriguez and Van Sickle were convicted and are currently serving life sentences without the possibility of parole. Meanwhile, the theater was gated up and lay vacant for two years, bearing a “For Sale” sign.

Enter Charlie Lustman, who had recently moved back to LA from Copenhagen, where he wrote English-language songs for Danish musicians. Lustman was driving down Fairfax Avenue one day, looking for a falafel sandwich, when he saw the “For Sale” sign. Something made him stop. “Originally I thought it would make a good artists’ loft, a place where everybody could hang out and talk about their art. The realtor met me almost instantaneously when I called, and he said, ‘I have to tell you, there was a murder here.’ I was like, whatever, there’s a murder everywhere in LA. It didn’t phase me at all.

“Then we went in and I saw there was still blood on the floor. But when I walked into the actual theater, and saw all the star portraits on the wall, that kind of took me. I was like, what is this place? Who are these people? Of course I recognized Chaplin, and maybe a handful more, but the others, I had no idea who they were. I had never seen a silent film. And I started to realize that if I don’t know anything about this, probably just about everyone else my age knows nothing about this.

“So that night I went to the bookstore and took out a book on early cinema, and I was fascinated. I thought, wow, I just found the lost culture of LA—the lost culture of the country—in this building, and that was it, that’s what pulled me in. I had no experience at all, not in silent films, not in theaters, exhibition, business.”

Lustman raised $1.3 million from a combination of private investors and bank loans to buy and renovate the theater, including mounting a snazzy neon sign. It opened in November, 1999, with a glittering screening of Modern Times (1936), and was trumpeted by the media, who had also closely covered the murder story.

For someone who just a year ago didn’t even know who Buster Keaton was, Lustman lights up when talking about silent movies. (Keaton, in fact, is now his favorite, “with Chaplin a close second and Lloyd a strong third.”) Lustman’s awe for the form knows no bounds. Current moviemakers, he says, could learn a lot from silent pictures by seeing how the technical limitations of the time fostered creativity. “The problem with art today,” Lustman muses, “is there’s too many gadgets, too many easy ways to create, and you’re not pushed enough creatively—because there are no boundaries. And actors should come see someone create a scene by expression only. If you can do that, when you open your mouth it’s even better. It should be—otherwise don’t say anything. Don’t cry hysterically; watch Clara Bow in a scene. She’ll make you cry by just looking in the camera.”

A natural showman, Lustman has imbued the theater with his own strong style and energy. He loves presenting his shows. When the house lights dim, he races down the aisle at top speed and leaps up onto the stage to introduce the night’s program. Sometimes he’ll lead trivia quizzes with prizes and giveaways. Before a screening of William S. Hart’s superb western Hell’s Hinges (1916), he organized a Western Best Dressed contest for audience members. Occasionally he even sings a song. And always, unless a film comes with its original recorded soundtrack, there is live accompaniment on piano or organ—often by 87-year-old Bob Mitchell, who began playing with movies during the silent era. One couldn’t ask for greater authenticity.

Lustman is rewarded for his efforts by the audience’s reactions during and after the movies. “I never knew what was going on behind these doors,’ people tell me. They’re just amazed they walk out feeling this way for a silent film.”

But the rest of Lustman’s job is “hell on earth. It’s business, business, business, it’s battles every day, and I’m the only one working here. I do everything. I book, promote, ship and receive, market, inventory, do the payroll, and scrub a toilet when I need to.

And I’m completely in debt.”

attention, one of his biggest struggles has been maintaining consistent support. To this end, he has taught himself the delicate art of programming. The fact that a given movie is a great classic is not necessarily going to draw a paying audience. To get that audience Lustman needs exposure, and to get exposure he needs to program titles that the press will want to write about.

(He has little money to conduct his own advertising.) “What makes the papers want to talk about the fact that I’m running Speedy this weekend with Harold Lloyd? The Best Pick in the LA Weekly was The Godfather I and II. Well, anyone can go and rent The Godfather I and II, or have seen them already in the many times they’ve been run in revival houses. Speedy has not been seen in this city in 12 years, sure as hell not in a gorgeous 35mm print from the Lloyd estate with three rare one-reelers, all with live music. That’s my struggle.”

After a weekend program of the epic drama Wings (1927) bombed, Lustman decided on a schedule that has worked well. Generally, the Silent Movie Theatre runs the higher-grossing silent comedies on weekends, dramas during mid-week, and talkies on Tuesdays—and the only talkies allowed are from the ’30s and ’40s. “Very few revival houses show a lot of early talkies. Plus it’s interesting for the crowd here to see the crossover into the early sound period.” Some recent rarities included Frank Capra’s Submarine (1928) and a handful of very early films starring “Biograph Girl” Florence Lawrence, the first ever movie star. Lustman also rents out his theater for private screenings, script readings and other events.

As rewarding as his audience’s reactions are, they’re not fulfilling enough for Lustman the artist to sit tight. “My life used to be to sit every day and compose, period. Showing the films, at $8 a ticket, ain’t gonna do much for what I want, which is not necessarily to be rich, but to be creative and have a good time.” And so, by spending time and money in building up the theater’s reputation, Lustman has been slowly laying the foundation for his ultimate goal—to take the show on the road.

“My whole purpose now is to get this theater to a place where it can be self-sufficient without me being here. We’ll be merging soon with a non-profit institution that can take over the operations of the theater, and then we’ll tour the world with the Silent Movie Experience. Because of our name recognition, we feel we can fill universities and revival houses all over the world. We’ll take it to every city in America, then Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand.” Lustman tosses off “every city in America” pretty casually, but when you consider all that he’s accomplished already, it really doesn’t sound like too grandiose a plan.

Lustman has written a song about the theater and its founders, and he plans to shoot a 16mm documentary to run with the song during the tour, which will start in early 2001 and could last over a year. “We’ll open with the story of John and Dorothy, and then of course they’ll get a cartoon and some 2-reelers. We don’t know yet which feature we’ll tour with, a Lloyd, Keaton or Chaplin. All three estates are interested. They all want these artists to have center stage again, and they will.”

And after the tour?

“This project ends with the end of the world tour. Then I’ll hand the baton over to somebody else. I’ve been working on a musical for a couple of years, on and off, and I want to finish it. I feel I’ll have more of a chance to get it produced if I travel the world with silent movies and music.”

In an era of fast cuts, deafening soundtracks, and film-free cameras, a silent movie tour may be a pretty good idea. All of us, moviegoers and moviemakers alike, could do well to remind ourselves what movies are capable of in their purest form: issues/40/images telling a story and creating emotion. Chances are we’ll discover that these pictures are often much more complex, compelling, and innovative than we might have imagined.

In the meantime, Charlie Lustman has prints to secure, schedules to write, a theater to run. That damn phone in the back starts to ring again. Charlie looks at me. “Do you mind letting yourself out? I really should get that.” MM